Things
have become tense in the past few days, as large numbers of cars, driven
(presumably) by Vox supporters, clogged up a number of cities on Saturday,
calling for President Sánchez to resign (Vox wants him imprisoned for treason)
and a ‘government of national unity’ to take control.
Such
a government would be made up by three main parties to handle the country: PSOE
(the calmer elements, anyway), PP and Vox. Of course, the PP and Vox wings of
this fantasy regime would effectively be running things, even though voters in
the last elections chose otherwise.
The
pandemic and the lockdown seem to be the key reasons behind the current
tensions and protests, well, apart from the fact that no one likes their party
losing an election.
It
all started reasonably enough – city Spaniards had been going out on to their
terraces each evening at 8.00pm to applaud the stretched hospital staff, who
have worked long hours in considerable danger from the unknown properties of
the coronavirus to save many thousands of lives. Country Spaniards (if we can
divide society into two for a moment) haven’t been as cooped up and were able
to spend their time outside - picking the flowers, feeding the chickens and
wondering at the strange antics of the townies.
The
appreciative city-folk appeared to be saying ‘Gosh, nurses and doctors are more
important for our safety than pop stars, actors and footballers’.
Perhaps,
indeed, they always were.
After
a while, people got a bit bored of the eight pm clapping, and took to singing
or playing music from their terraces. It was only a small step before some of
those who had voted for another party than one of the groups currently in the
government coalition – perhaps supporters from the PP or Vox – thought they
could start bashing saucepans as a political protest. Everyone likes a spot of
noise before dinner. They weren’t really in favour of a particular plan, but to
let the rest of us know that they weren’t ‘socio-comunistas’.
Saucepan
bashing, with a stick or something which makes a satisfying ‘clank’, is an
import from Argentina and is known both there and here as ‘una cacerolada’.
The
new government – it only took office on January 13th – had been faced with an
emergency that no one had any experience in handling. Rather than protecting
the economy, as a conservative government might have done – they erred on the
side of caution and, under the advice of epidemiologists and other medical
experts, they went with the lockdown strategy.
An
article called ‘España no funciona’
at Infolibre looks at why Spain has
always been so divided (a massive weakness evident today during the current
crisis). It says in part ‘…The forty years of democracy after the
Franco dictatorship have failed to dismantle the power of the negative Spain –
that of the young gentlemen, the cardboard-generals and the retrograde
cardinals. Rouco Varela (the fundamentalist Spanish bishop) has more media presence than that of popular
priest Father Ángel and thousands of other exemplary priests and nuns’. Of
course, the bishops have their own radio, the COPE, and TV channel, Canal
13. They also have the tacit support of a number of conservative daily
newspapers: La Razón, ABC and El Mundo for example. The Church in Spain is jealous of its power.
An
example of this divided Spain is the current ‘Revolution of the Rich’ or ‘Los Cayetanos’ in the smartest
neighbourhood of Madrid, where the saucepans were being most enthusiastically
bashed and crowds of well-healed people are in the streets wearing their Spanish
flags as cloaks and waving ‘their hammer and golf-club’ revolutionary banners.
The leftist eldiario.es writes ‘What’s happening with the revolution of the
rich has nothing to do with the ravages of the pandemic, or the devastation of
the economy, or the temporary lack of freedom; what is happening is a
manifestation, however freaky, of the struggle of the young gentlemen to hold
on to power’. A more cynical version comes from Meneame: ‘What has already
been coined as the "Cayetano revolution" consists of a group of
people who live in the most expensive neighbourhood in this country and who
have never come out to demonstrate until they have had their vacations in Bali
or Formentera cancelled and their right to a great job without having to study
for it removed. Dozens of Cayetanos are demonstrating without keeping the
required social distance, endangering their lives and that of their families,
and inevitably that of the health workers who will soon have to care for them…’.
Anyone can fall sick from the virus, and the lockdown is only a partial
solution. However, it’s more comfortable in a large apartment than a small one,
or, for some poor folk, stuck for months in a car or a shack. The economist
Marta Flich reminds us, ‘the virus has no
ideological preference’.
On
social media, we are treated to the sad video-clip of a woman rooting through a
dustbin as the flag-wearing militants passed her by and ignoring her completely.
Another clip showed a fellow in the back-seat of his chauffeur-driven
convertible slowly nosing through the brightly dressed crowd while howling
through a loud-hailer: ‘Resign, resign’. A man of few words.
A
meme from the left says. ‘Why bang an empty saucepan when you can fill it with
stew and give it to your neighbour?’
Can
one protest against the government without wearing a Spanish flag as a cloak?
The point is, the Government is seen as a mixture of the wrong kind of
socialists plus the Bolivarian Venezuelan agents of the extreme left (Podemos
to you and me), plus the nationalists, which in Spanish terms are the
anti-nationalists – the boyos from Catalonia, and the Basque Country. Then
there’s the republicans, who don’t like the royal family and have their own
flag. That’s why we wear a Spanish flag, they say, because the others, the fifty-one
per cent, are traitors.
All
good clean fun perhaps, and worth a few column inches. The ultras are on the
warpath. Yawn.
But
they are good at manipulation. The Facebooks and Whatsapps and Twitters are
full of their propaganda. As Donald Trump or Cambridge Analytica or Steve
Bannon can tell you, the point is to be read. And seen. And heard. Truth is in
the eye of the beholder, and fake-news often works better than the real thing.
So
we come to Saturday’s protest. A clever idea to make it a demonstration with
cars (poor people don’t own cars, and lookit, Hertz has gone bust). Six
thousand cars and motorcycles, bedecked with flags of course, jammed the centre
of Madrid, where six or ten thousand people wouldn’t have done the same. The
leaders of the Vox were on their stage, at the symbolic Plaza de Colón:
Columbus Square. ‘We want to bring down the traitor Pedro Sánchez and imprison
him for crimes against the Spanish people’, said Santiago Abascal, the leader
of the far right party, wearing a nifty lapel pin of half Spanish colours, half
black mourning.
The
leader of the larger Partido Popular, generally considered as a right-wing
party by anyone except a Vox supporter, is now struggling for space on the political
perch. Pablo Casado is trying to woo the far-right voters back to his colours
with, as eldiario.es calls it ‘his
total war against the Government’.
Whether
the Government, evidently inexperienced in matters of pandemics, has done or is
doing a good job or not is irrelevant. They will be judged once it’s all over.
Right now, they are facing two dangerous enemies: the virus and the opposition,
both set on scoring maximum damage.
The
fact is that the conservatives are winning the war at the moment – and Spain
most certainly does not need a second open conflict.
