The Church, Evangelicalism and the Partido Popular.

The modern evangelical church can be something to see. Largely born from the Billy Graham variety of Worship, it can have an enormous impact on believers.

With few exceptions, it leans sharply towards The Right (despite the teachings of Jesus which might suggest otherwise). Donald Trump – despite his obvious flaws – could safely say that he was elected thanks to the overwhelming support of the Christian evangelicals.

We read that ‘Evangelicalism must have an unending supply of enemies’, such as Satan and of course the Democrats (‘Liberals’) as they ponder on the manifest evils of Wokism, inappropriate library-books, George Soros, guns, drag shows and abortion. 

However it may have come about (the evangelists often believe in things like The Rapture and White Pride and, for some reason, they appear to be ferociously against the ‘radically dangerous’ Covid vaccine), the movement is popular in Latin America.

So, by a circuitous route, we come to Spain.

Spain is of course a staunchly Catholic country – if in these times it can lay claim to any religion – and the Catholic influence (inevitably) is Conservative and broadly in line with the Partido Popular (or even Vox). There are some other strands of Christian worship here (all unkindly classed as sects) and the one that is growing the fastest is the evangelical movement (currently with some 4,200 temples mostly serving Barcelona and Madrid) – particularly noteworthy within the Latin American community. Indeed, one Church, called the Iglesia Cristo Viene (24,000 likes on Facebook) and based in Usera, Madrid, has a

strong link to the Partido Popular, reciprocated in kind, as the PP looks for the hispanoamericano vote – the objective being to "unite relations" with these religious groups "around the project and the program" of the party. A report this weekend speaks of ‘The evangelical pastor Yadira Maestre, the leading religious extremist of the PP who warns of pacts with The Devil and The Damned. The pastor has become an important ally of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Alberto Núñez Feijóo in the search to capture the Latino vote’. A video shows Yadira (a Columbian immigrant) in splendid form (Hallelujah!) as she assures the congregation that ‘When the country is finally ruled by The Just, then we shall have peace’.

Another clip shows her in full flow asking the crowd for the blessing of Feijóo.

A little rich perhaps, but after all, as Donald Trump himself would tell you, every vote counts.

 

The Motion of Confidence

The Moción de Censura – the peculiar vote of no confidence brought by Vox – was debated and voted down (to no one’s surprise) this week. Vox had brought it (their second) with the presumed hope of being able to criticise the Government at great length, as the rules insist. For the other leading parties, the tactic brought consequences. The PP (the future senior partner in a right-wing PP/Vox government) would be abstaining and suck their teeth looking faintly embarrassed, while hoping that some of the less star-struck Voxxers would perhaps consider returning to the PP fold. Due to parliamentary rules, Feijóo couldn’t speak for the PP (he isn’t a deputy), so the task fell to their acerbic (or ‘forthright’, depending on one’s point of view) spokesperson Cuca Gamarra.

The PSOE appears pleased, as it showed up the silliness of the Vox proposal – to say nothing of its candidate for president (a man practically in his nineties). Pedro Sánchez also felt that the debate would underline the two different approaches to politics in Spain, link the PP to Vox, as well as unifying the governing coalition in a common cause.

Yolanda Díaz (who will be announcing her candidacy with Sumar for the December general elections on April 2), defended the government from the Podemos/IU benches.

The show began on Tuesday with Santiago Abascal, with his usual exaggerations and fibs.

A very tired looking Tamames, for his part, neither offered a program during his lengthy opening remarks (beyond a proposal to call for fresh elections) nor answered any of the many criticisms brought against him by the other speakers.

Guy Hedgecoe, writing in The Irish Times on Sunday, described the whole sorry tale as a ‘…motion, engineered by the far-right Vox party, likely to end up being just a bizarre footnote in Spanish history...’. Indeed, even some of the Vox deputies appear embarrassed.

Last Thursday, elDiario.es had obtained a copy of the thirty-one page opening speech from Ramón Tamames (he’d sent it out to some of his friends) which they promptly printed in full. He had already admitted in an interview earlier this month with El País that he didn’t agree with some of the Vox doctrine. While Vox has described Sánchez as a criminal and a sociopath (sic), Tamames admitted last week that he holds the prime minister in quite high esteem.

The reaction from the far-right was the usual: it’s not a scoop, they said, but a leak made on purpose by the eccentric Tamames, who used to be (back in the 1950s) a member of the then-illegal Partido Comunista de España. He passed it to elDiario.es – a ‘communist, podemite, far-left daily’ – simply to further to vex Vox says Federico Jiménez Losantos, a long-time broadcaster along the line of Glenn Beck. The larger question was raised – had Santiago Abascal made a terrible miscalculation by choosing Tamames as his Champion?

We all hoped so.

The debate lasted through Tuesday and into Wednesday, including some good speeches from Gabriel Rufían (ERC) and Aitor Esteban (PNV) before the final vote.

 

A few bon mots to take away:

Sánchez to Abascal: “Pase lo que pase, el dictador nunca volverá a su mausoleo”

Sánchez to Tamames: “No creo que esta haya sido la mejor idea que ha tenido en su vida”

Yolanda Díaz to Abascal: “Solo se han dirigido a las mujeres para reprocharnos la baja fecundidad”

Patxi López on the program of the PP: “Está tan clara, que está en blanca”

Women's Rights

Women’s rights is a subject which should be treated by a woman…

But, hey ho.

March 8th is a key date for women, it’s International Women’s Day and also, as 8-M, the big day in the Spanish calendar for women to take to the streets and remind us all of their value (and their numbers).

However, it’s all a question of Power. We men must hold the keys, whether with the help of a male God (and his Pope) or a male Caesar. We are after all, stronger and better fitted to hold command, and anyway, don’t we treat the women well?

This is the background to our (male) right to treat women as we wish. To oppress them at our will. We invent endless laws about their bodies, their possessions, their clothes, their sex and even their minds.

So it was a disturbing time for us when women got the vote. United, that was half the electorate right there – and the women, banded together, would no longer allow any nonsense. Throw in equal education, full working opportunities (when will women receive the same wages as men?), and equal numbers in the boardroom and the government, and we find a world where the apparently weaker, smaller half of it has the same (well, it’s getting there) rights as the menfolk.

Most of these advances are down to the women themselves, because, undivided, they can move mountains. Sometimes, they get help. From Pedro Sánchez: "This Government puts feminism and equality at the centre of all political action".

The 8-M is the time when Spanish women take to the streets, to demonstrate for their rights and to remind the more conservative males of their strength. But what happens if they can be split in some way – into two different groups, as happened in the latest demonstrations earlier this month? Specifically, the Unidas Podemos - backed Confluencia 8-M (here) and the Movimiento Feminista de Madrid – a group found favourable in the eyes of the PP.  

The rights of minority groups such as the prostitutes and the transsexuals have muddied the waters; purposely so, perhaps.

One right-wing news-site says that more than half of Spanish women don’t identify with the feminist movement. The notorious Ana Rosa Quintana from Tele5 being one of them.

Now, isn’t that a good thing for a conservative to hear?

 

Spain's Ferrovial to Move its Headquarters to Amsterdam

‘Last night’, says the Argentinian founder of Jazztel Martin Varsavsky, ‘I was at a business-dinner in Madrid. There were twelve of us. The other eleven were all defending Franco, while I was saying that it wasn’t just a terrible dictatorship, but that Franco kept Spain for almost four decades in the prehistory of economic, social and political advancement’.

Can you imagine the subject at a similar dinner setting in Berlin?

These are the economic elites –especially those of Madrid– whose fortune did not arise from free competition or the entrepreneurial spirit. A good part of the moneyed families got rich through their proximity to power: with monopolies, awards and contracts from the Administration. Contracts from the very same “public titty” that they go on to criticize so furiously later on.

That’s to say, contracts with taxpayer money: those same taxes that they will later try to avoid paying.

Curiously, it’s a leftie who coins the phrase: ‘a true patriot is one who pays his taxes’. And here’s Pedro Sánchez in a similar vein: ‘We seek to compete on quality not on precariousness. To do so we need fair taxation: those who have the most must pay more’.

Which brings us to Rafael de Pino, the founder of Ferrovial back in 1950 (a Nationalist engineer who married well), and more to the point, to his son Rafael del Pino Calvo Sotelo, holder of the third largest fortune in Spain.

The news is that one of the largest Spanish multinationals, Ferrovial, has decided to leave Spain. Or to be more precise, to move its registered office to the Netherlands. Ferrovial doesn't have a construction or service business there, or anything like that. Therefore, it is not known exactly why they are leaving. The group chaired by Rafael del Pino has been very unclear in explaining the reasons that has led his company to flee Spain.

One conservative source in Spain blames the commies: “The pressure against banks and energy companies; the ‘tax on the rich’ - in reality a punishment for successful professionals; the government’s fiscal and labour policy; the constant increases in the minimum wage; the instability generated by Podemos’ attempts to impose an interventionist framework similar to that of Latin American populism; and the demonisation of the creation of profits, wherever they come from and whatever their context, have not contributed to generating an attractive climate for companies”.

To say that over there in Amsterdam one will have more access to obtain financing sounds like an excuse. Ferrovial can seek financial resources anywhere in the European Union, as so many companies do, without moving their headquarters. We read that the company is known for constructing public buildings, or railways (it started out in the fifties as Renfe’s builder of choice).  The beneficial tax-system enjoyed in the Netherlands is soon coming to a close, so why move? The Spanish one, by the way varies from an average Corporate Tax of 17% for companies with over 5,000 employees, down to as little as 3.59% on profits.

One reason for the relocation could be that the Americans hold around 30% of Ferrovial shares, and considering the Biden Plan to repair the US public infrastructure, the Netherlands and Wall Street have a close working relationship.

…

Del Pino had been promising the PP leader Núñez Feijóo only last month that he would be working for ‘a better and more prosperous Spain’. Conversely, following the surprise announcement, Feijóo has been criticising Pedro Sánchez for his indignant reaction to the news of the Ferrovial move, calling Sánchez a ‘hooligan’ and that he should ease his level of tension against Spanish Business. Over on the other side, Ione Belarra, president of Unidas Podemos, has unkindly called Ferrovial ‘a pirate company’ and says that all the public money spent on it ‘should be returned to the Spanish taxpayers’.

“The choice is simple: either Podemos and interventionism, or companies and prosperity” says another conservative opinion.

The bottom line, as a bean-counter would say, is that the company stands to save some forty million euros in taxes by its move to Amsterdam.

…

Biting at Rafael del Pino’s heels, the fourth richest man in Spain is Juan Roig, the owner of Mercadona (where the price of the shopping-cart seems to be continually on the rise) with 3,400 million euros kept under the counter next to the shotgun. Standing well in front of Rafael del Pino (3,800 million) and his third position in the wealth list is Nº 2 Sandra Ortega and her dad, Nº 1 Amancio Ortega. The two of them can lay claim between them to 58,900 million euros.

But, you know, is it enough?

News from the Home Front

 Living in your own place is a reasonable goal to have. Many articles in the Spanish news talk about the cost of an apartment by the square metre, the shortage of decent homes on the market or the fall (or rise) in house-sales and maybe the problems with noise, location, neighbours, lack of transport and so on. Other articles – aimed more at the foreign readers – treat of similar things, but differently. We are no longer in the city looking at apartments on the seventh floor, but on the coast or the islands, wondering if there’s a decent school nearby and if some developer is going to come along next year and spoil the view. The local town hall is pleased enough to have us no doubt, but generally prefers tourism over mass foreign settlers and is more concerned about its hoteliers and local souvenir shop-owners than its foreign dog-owners. The foreigners, you see, don’t vote much and they don’t have a lobby.

Picture by Andrej Mashkovtsev

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There is a third kind of property story though – and that’s about those who don’t own the property they live in. They generally can’t afford to own and they may be stuck with a lifetime mortgage or perhaps must put up with landlords who want them out (default, unpaid rents, owner wants to sell the place, or divide it into two, or put up the rent…). More cheerfully, the growing number of foreign renters includes those sensible souls who intend to buy a place… but later.

Vulture Funds – investment houses that operate solely for profit – can be a problem, putting the rents up by a hefty chunk, or failing to keep up the maintenance or even, as happened in Valencia last week, waiting until the 82 year-old-lady went out to buy something at the shop, before rushing in and changing the locks. Other owners might even use anti-okupa companies to remove tenants rather than wait for the slow process of law.

Apartments for rent can be a bit small these days, or maybe there’s just a room for rent, or may just a bunk bed in a room for rent.

Another route is to stay with your parents, or live in a caravan (or even a car), or to go and find an empty home (that could be used for squatting in). There are apparently some 3.4 million empty homes in Spain (mostly owned by the banks and, on paper at least, of value). We worry not so much about these – they are usually unfinished or without services – as about the second homes taken over, on occasion, by professional mafia groups that then pass them on to discriminating squatters with some extra cash. Owners of these may resort to the courts or perhaps the desokupa people. A home with squatters is not the same as a home with tenants who are in arrears. In their case, it might take years to eject them legally.

We could move far from the city and try our luck in an old abandoned village, far from all amenities. The hippy settlers of Fragua in Guadalajara tried this. After ten years of concentrated opposition from the regional government, plus a few of their number thrown into jail for illegal occupation, they have now thrown in the towel. So much, say the hippies, for repopulating the empty regions of Spain.

Hoping to find new places to turn into homes, even slightly peculiar ones, some cities are now allowing those empty or abandoned ground-floor business spaces built and bricked up below the apartment blocks to be turned into homes. Madrid is already allowing this and now Galicia is following suit.

Another issue for home owners and renters alike is mass-tourism. Too many tourists waving their cameras, attracting the pickpockets, the tour guides, tuk tuks, the wally-trolleys and the souvenir-shoppe people. They also attract short-term rentals (as Airbnb) which are far more profitable than regularly leased apartments. In short, the centre of Madrid or Barcelona can be a dreadful place to live ‘as they are turned practically into theme parks’ (it’s true of some resorts as well, such as Mojácar which only took down its Ferrero Rocher Christmas Decorations on Andalucía Day this Wednesday February 28th).

In all, maybe the hippies were on the right path… they just needed shorter hair.