Twenty Years Later, and Something has Changed

One of the most prominent memories in the Spanish scrapbook, along with the picture of the caudillo under the heading ¡Españoles, Franco ha Muerto! and another of the rebel Guardia Civil Antonio Tejero firing his revolver into the ceiling of Las Cortes, the Spanish Parliament, would be the smiling and unctuous photograph of José María Aznar along with Tony Blair and George W Bush at their meeting in the Azores on the eve of the (Second) American Gulf War and invasion of Iraq twenty three years ago this month.

Aznar paid dearly (as did Spain) for getting this country involved in a foreign adventure, especially so a year later on March 11 2004 when Arab terrorists planted some bombs in the local Madrid railway system, killing 193 people and wounding some 2,000 more.

Aznar compounded his error by blaming the wrong set of assassins, the Basque ETA group rather than Al Qaeda. This cost his party the general election just two days later, allowing the PSOE leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to become the new president of Spain.

One of his first acts was to reverse Spain’s participation in the war against Saddam.

The question of course now arises – what policy would an actual PP/Vox government have taken following the current Israeli/American attack against Iran?

As we don’t have such a leadership, let us look instead at Pedro Sánchez.

I like a quote of his: ‘Spain opposes this catastrophe. Because we understand that governments are there to improve people’s lives, to solve problems, not to worsen them. And it is unacceptable that leaders who are incapable of fulfilling this task use the smokescreen of war to mask their incompetence and line the pockets of a select few’. Donald Trump answered this by saying roughly – ‘who needs Spain anyway?’

That remains to be seen; as much of the European Union, after a certain hesitation, now appears to agree with Sánchez. Although, you see, there’s Feijóo ‘and his Mariachis’ who of course continue to see themselves as vassals of Trump. A plan which is not playing well with much of the Spanish electorate.

Why do the conservatives here (with their allies in the Media) always try and sink the Spanish ship of state?

68% of Spaniards, says El País, say they are against Trump and Netanyahu’s war, with 23% being in favour. Even El Mundo (a conservative newspaper) can’t do much better, with 62% against the war (although we are told in the same headline that those respondents prefer China to the USA).

We see that the right-wing’s patriotism, it seems, has exceptions. It works against immigration, against separatists, against the left, against anyone who doesn't subscribe to the right's short-sighted view of Spain. But it vanishes the moment a thug with an American flag arrives and orders everyone to stand at attention.

Sánchez says – before we all cry ¡No Pasarán! – ‘The people must be aware that what may happen to their wallets has nothing to do with the decisions of the Spanish Government, but with a war in Iran that is illegal and that will bring much suffering.”

We’ve already seen the rise in petrol prices and the next electric bill won’t be far behind.

The Guardian reckons that Pedro Sánchez is ‘one of the very few European leaders to openly and emphatically reject the demands of a US president whose trademark negotiating style is an erratic mix of bullying, humiliation and self-aggrandisement’.

The war (or invasion) has had some bad press, from torpedoing an apparently unarmed Iranian frigate in international waters, to callously bombing a girls’ school with at least 165 children dead. Then there was the obscene prayer-meeting in the Oval Office (our fundamentalists are better than their fundamentalists) as ‘non-commissioned officers were elsewhere being told that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth”’. Not my Jesus, Buddy.

Let’s give Sánchez the last word: ‘Es un orgullo ser español. Por defender lo que defendemos ante la barbarie y ante la guerra’. It is a source of pride to be Spanish. For defending what we defend in the face of barbarism and war.

 

 

Taking a Look at Santiago Abascal

Each Western power (at least, the ones in Europe) has a far-right political party which will fight tooth and nail, by fair means and foul, to gain ascendency in the national politics.

Here in Spain, it’s Vox (there are a few others, but currently of no interest). The party today has 33 deputies in the Spanish parliament making it the third largest group. These include their po-faced spokesperson Pepa Millán and the nephew of the disgraced conservative politician Rodrigo Rato, the oddly inept José María Figaredo (known as Frigodedo by his detractors).

Vox began in 2013, when its leader Santiago Abascal dropped his membership in the Partido Popular to start a fresh far-right party. Santi (as he is called by his supporters) is a handsome-looking fellow, and instead of sporting a wild hair-style, like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson or Geert Wilders, he is well-groomed, has a short beard, and – when the cameras are willing – he might jump on a horse in a manly sort of way. In short, he’s more of a Putin than a clown. 

All of the original founders of Vox have since squabbled with Abascal and have left politics – as Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, Macarena Olona, Rocio Monasterio, Víctor Sánchez del Real, Juan Luis Steegman… and now (hanging by his fingertips), Javier Ortega Smith – the Vox spokesperson in the Madrid City Hall, best remembered for swimming into Gibraltar in 2016 and raising – briefly – a Spanish flag on the rock there.

Ignacio Garriga is the party Secretary General, a highly religious man born in Catalonia with a Spanish/Belgian father and an Equatoguinean mother. For obvious reasons, he will have reached his zenith with his current position and is no threat to his boss.  

The party is present in the European Parliament – led by a man who came from the moribund Falange Española de las JONS and a lookalike for the baddie in the first Indiana Jones film called Jorge Buxadé. Vox is aligned with the Patriots for Europe (Fidesz, Rassemblement National, Vlaams Belang and others: parties in thrall to Donald Trump).

Vox is also found in most of the regional governments and many town halls – usually either in an uneasy alliance with the Partido Popular or sniffily standing aside. Says Abascal regarding any deal to be made post-elections in the two regions of Extremadura or Aragón: ‘The PP wants to treat us like savages’, he says. If they fail to come to an arrangement – and Vox increased its number of councillors in both elections – then the regions will need to call for fresh elections. The next regional ballot, with a similar PP/Vox forecast, is Castilla-León later this month.

The party program is simple enough: old school nationalism, tradition, Catholic, anti-immigrant, unimpressed by women’s issues and global warming, and in favour of lower taxes. The party does well with young men (who are apparently concerned that women have too many rights and protections). It’s also popular in the countryside, particularly in the provinces of Murcia, Almería and Cádiz (where there are lots of foreign immigrants working the fields: people – needless to say – who don’t have the Vote). Those underprivileged folk who back the ‘ultras’ are sometimes known as ‘los fachapobres’ – that’s to say, the poor fascists. 

‘Make España Great Again’ could be their slogan, although Santi rarely wears a vulgar baseball-cap. 

Vox is in some ways merely an extension of the Partido Popular (which has recently been moving to the right in an attempt to claw back support), and notable extremists within the PP include Isabel Díaz Ayuso (president of the Madrid region) and the PP deputy Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo.

There’s been another thorn in Abascal’s side down in Murcia, where José Ángel Antelo the alarmingly tall Vox leader there had fallen into disapproval with head office, and (like Ortega Smith above) wouldn’t leave his post. Earlier this week, the rest of the regional party councillors voted together for his summary ejection as leader and spokesperson.

As one headline says with satisfaction: ‘The far right is slowly devouring itself while selling order and discipline to its supporters’. Another is of more concern: ‘Centralized command and a personality cult: Abascal sidelines critics and completes his vision for the new Vox’.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t look like this party will go the way of Ciudadanos or Podemos in the near future…

 

How Spain Has Become an Influencer

Spain has had some good media reports recently – if only from abroad. It started in December with Italy’s L’Espresso naming Sánchez the person of the year. The New Statesman followed with an enthusiastic write-up, and an article late last month at the FT said that ‘Spain leads the formerly weak southern EU economies that are now outpacing France and Germany’.  The Spanish economy is doing well, there are plenty of tourists and the appreciation of Spain’s culture domestically, says the Government, is on the increase.

But let’s jump to where Spain’s brand of socialism is taking the country today. 

The New York Times just last week ran an article written by Sánchez himself: ‘I’m the Prime Minister of Spain. This is why the West needs migrants.’ Yes, one-sided you might say, after all, he wrote it to justify his policies; but look where it shows up!

His ‘guest essay’ appeared to diss President Trump: ‘…What should we do with these people? Some leaders have chosen to hunt them down and deport them through operations that are both unlawful and cruel. My government has chosen a different way: a fast and simple path to regularize their immigration status…’. Furthermore, he writes, the plan ‘…is endorsed by more than 900 nongovernmental organizations, including the Catholic Church, and it has the support of business associations and trade unions alike. More important, it is backed by the people’. The Guardian picks up on this with: ‘Yes, migrants are key to Spain’s economic boom. But Pedro Sánchez’s decision to regularise 500,000 people should rather be applauded for its humanity’.

Spain is getting used to bucking Western political trends. ‘Last year they recognized Palestine as a state, resisted President Trump’s demand that NATO members increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP and doubled down on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. But there can be no better example of Spain going its own way than with immigration’.

Or perhaps we could argue the merits of the new proposal to ban the use of social media for the under-sixteens. ‘First’, said Sánchez at the World Governments Summit in Dubai last week, ‘We will change the law in Spain to hold platform executives legally accountable for the many infringements taking place on their sites’.

Do Spaniards support restricting social media for children?

A Spanish poll a year ago asked whether children under 14 should be banned from using social media: 82% agreed. The current plan of course is for the under-16s.

The Spectator (that bastion of British Conservative thought) says ‘Spain’s PM is on the right side of this battle’.

The X and Telegram owners don’t like the idea – with Elon Musk calling Sánchez ‘a dirty tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain’ and Pavel Durov writing in a long screed on Telegram directly to his Spanish subscribers (including the under-sixteens), that ‘the measures announced by Sánchez are not safeguards, but rather steps toward total control to censor his critics, and that they must fight for their rights’.

Could other apps – maybe purely commercial ones – feel encouraged to send out to subscribers their political opinions?

Sánchez answered this on X with an apparent allusion to Don Quixote: "Let the techno-oligarchs bark, Sancho, it's a sign that we're riding forwards."

It’s certainly a special moment: where a foreign businessman can circumnavigate The State and appeal with propaganda aimed directly at his Spanish followers.

Internet access is starting at increasingly younger ages, and it's not just teenagers who are hyperconnected. 42% of children admit to having browsed the internet before the age of eight, and half of 15-year-olds spend at least thirty hours a week in front of a screen, according to an OECD report.

There will be problems: What age verification systems will be used? How will concerns about the privacy risks of providing proof of age be addressed? To what extent will adult access to social media be restricted to protect minors?

Beyond showing fluffy kittens and creating social bonding, we read that the threats from social media are many, and over half of all teens have experienced some form of cyberbullying, damage in self-esteem, sexual threats, misleading content, scams, risk-taking, challenges, hate-speech and dodgy advertising and claims.

And, for that matter, with less sleep and time for other activities.

In all, Pedro Sánchez demonstrates that the obligation of a good government is to look out for and protect its people, not someone else’s billionaires.

Some Regional Elections for Spain

 

There are seventeen autonomous regions in Spain (plus the two autonomous cities of Melilla and Ceuta). Some of these regions are large: Andalucía comprises eight provinces, Castilla y León has nine, and others are small – such as Madrid, La Rioja, Murcia plus another four, which are all uni-provincial.

Each region has its own government and president.

Right now, we are in election mode in some of the autonomies (every four years unless called before). Extremadura with two provinces just had theirs in December – although the problem in the capital, Mérida, arises with the third party, Vox, insisting on various functions within the minority government of María Guadiola (PP) in exchange for their support.

The final outcome remains unclear – and Extremadura could soon be called to the polls again.

Abascal and Feijóo

Aragón is controlled by the PP and is currently in campaign mode for February 8th. It looks like Jorge Azcón will be returned, but as above, will need the support of a revitalised Vox. The Vox candidate Alejando Nolasco is a little extreme, describing the regional PP as ‘pro Islam’, according to one of the local news-sites.

Meanwhile, the candidacy of a PSOE government minister, Pilar Alegría, probably won’t be of much help for the party’s chances. The far-left once again refuses to join together (a bit like the Life of Brian’s joke of the antipathy between the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front). Thus: IU and Sumar on the one hand, la Chunta Aragonesista on the other and Podemos bringing up the rear.

Aragón is three provinces, with its capital in Zaragoza.

The next up – for March 15th – is another PP stronghold, with Alfonso Fernández Mañueco (PP) holding the keys to Castilla y León. His problem might be the disastrous summer fires throughout the region, badly mismanaged by Mañueco and his team. Nevertheless, he will likely win say the experts (with the support or otherwise of Vox). The capital of this, the largest region of Spain with nine provinces (although the three western provinces of León, Salamanca and Zamora all want to leave) is Valladolid.

Finally, we come to Andalucía – yet again held by the PP. The president is Juanma Moreno and is seen as one of the two leading candidates (along with Madrid’s Ayuso) to take over the party nationally when Feijóo throws in the towel. The PSOE candidate is the heavyweight María Jesus Montero, the current Minister for Hacienda and vice-president of Spain. The date is sometime in June.

There could be the chance of an early surprise general election on the same day as the Andalusian ballot – depending on events and Pedro Sánchez.

And Valencia? Despite the departure of Carlos Mazón, the region can legally continue with the current government if they so wish until late May 2027.

In all these upcoming elections – as indeed elsewhere – the key to the throne-room appears to be in the hands of Santiago Abascal’s Vox party. In an uncomfortable alliance with the PP (which must make allowances and exceptions), Spain is approaching a difficult time.