A Deep Sigh of Relief, Although Nobody Won

The General Election brought a strange and frustrating result from the voters: in short, no one won. Briefly, the PP got the most seats, but even with the support of Vox, it wasn’t enough. If anyone could be said to have triumphed, perhaps, it was those who didn’t want a far-right presence in the government.

The PP won 136 seats (176 needed to win). They increased their vote handsomely from 89 deputies in 2019. Their potential partner – Vox – fell from last time’s 52 to just 33 seats – giving a combination for the right-wing of 169.

Not. Quite. There.

Maybe, says Feijóo, the PSOE will abstain, and let us govern.

What, without Vox, you mean? With just 136 seats out of 350?

The PSOE also increased its number of parliamentarians, if only by two. Their numbers now stand at 122. Their natural ally – they’re joined at the hip – is Sumar, bringing them a further 31.

Looked at one way, PSOE/Sumar is 153.

Also. Not. Enough.

Thus, one must rely on the ‘independents’. Again. That’s to say, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, PNV, BNG, CCa and UPN.

The percentage of votes on Sunday was 70.4%. Of the sum of votes, the PP took 33% and the PSOE took 31.7% (the large disparity in deputies – 136 versus 122 – is down to the peculiar system used to adjudicate seats).

So now what?

Will the various regional minnows try to charge too high a price to allow Pedro Sánchez to return as president? Will there be fresh elections this autumn? Will Pedro Sánchez unaccountably allow Alberto Núñez Feijóo to be president with a minority government? Will the army take over (just kidding)?

The key to Pedro Sánchez returning to power is the necessary support (or at least, abstention) of Junts Per Catalunya, the party of exiled Carles Puigdemont now led by Míriam Nogueras. How expensive is that going to be? The most likely answer to that question is: another referendum for Catalonian independence. 

One final detail will be published on Friday - the Spaniards living abroad who voted. Will this change things? Possibly. 

The count-down begins, with the King inviting the parliamentary spokespeople to forward a candidate for president on August 21st, with the investiture in early September. Maybe.

No one wants another election, but what else is there? Maybe someone will blink first.

At the tepid victory party of the Partido Popular in their headquarters in Madrid, some voices were heard calling ‘Ayuso, Ayuso, Ayuso…’. How long can Feijóo last with the conservative’s secret and unstoppable weapon waiting impatiently in the aisles?  

Meanwhile, the Presidency of the Council of the European Union remains in Pedro Sánchez’ safe hands (no doubt, for the duration).  

 

Foreign Residents Bring Wealth to Spain Too

 

Tourism is doing well again – with around 12% of Spain’s GDP coming from that business. It provides jobs, and income and perhaps some pride for Spaniards in the many cultural, culinary and geographical offers this wonderful country can boast.

Mind you, most of them are here for the sun-burn, the evening boozing and the odd summer romance.

And the endless selfies which are then uploaded to Facebook.

It’s not that we particularly like tourists: the queues, the jibber-jabber, the crowded restaurant, the full parking-lot, the foreigner in the supermarket who is not wearing a tee-shirt and the other one being sick in the municipal gardens – it’s the knowledge that they’re spending lavishly and, better still, that they’ll be gone in a week or two.

Not that all of them spend wisely – some don’t even use our hotels, preferring to doss down with friends or family. Others come along in their camper-vans or maybe rent an apartment from a family who doesn’t even own a hotel.

Contrast this with Residential Tourism – with no promotion, no agency, no ministry, no budget and no wealthy hoteliers to defend it. This form of tourism (of course, it’s not tourism at all, it’s really homesteading) also has a high – if largely unknown – value for Spain. They buy an ice cream or a bottle of lotion or a china ornament. We buy a house and a car and white goods, and we shovel money into the outstretched hands of the lawyers, insurance agents, gestores, doctors and (above all) barmen – all year long.

A couple of years ago, there wasn’t much tourism, thanks to the dreadful pandemic. Maybe next time, it’ll be something as simple as a cheaper offer elsewhere, or a war, or a cholera outbreak, or new visa-requirements, or because Vox won the elections in Spain…

But you know something? We Residential Tourists will remain here and steadily grow in numbers, bringing Spain a massive and reliable income each year.

Perhaps one day somebody will notice.      

Gay Bashing

Here’s a tricky one – a piece on homosexuals: the LGBTQIA+ (I had to look up the complicated acronym on Google, and got the answer, refreshed with a jolly graphic of rainbow flags and confetti). As usual, the opposite doesn’t enjoy the same service. See, I had also looked up: ‘Manly fellow drinks a beer and cleans his Harley while scratching his balls’ and found it wasn’t bedecked by the American search engine with a frolic of whistles and belles.

Those who belong to or sympathise with the Gay movement must eternally be aware of the hatred, disdain and the politics of those who wish them ill, broadly increasing as one heads towards the right end of the political spectrum, and culminating in a headline regarding Vox, which is ‘concerned about the "alarming increase" of homosexuals and transsexuals in Spain’. This from a group which, it would be safe to say, is not partial to the gay lifestyle at all. They are in little doubt: the Government must be putting something funny in our tap water.  

It is said, mind you, that those who are most vocal in their anti-gay rhetoric are sometimes the same ones who would stay in the closet, or who get caught in some deeply embarrassing and melodramatic, er, misunderstanding – like the Hungarian far-right and anti-gay MEP József Szájer who had to abruptly leave a homosexual orgy back in 2020 through a window, naked, as the police came through the front door.

Life goes on. Those of us who think of ourselves as ‘normal’ might look down on the antics of our gay friends, but there’s probably a bit of jealousy mixed in as well: the jolly mixture of theatre, camp and adventures (contrasted with the insults, vexations and sometime violence received).

They say that it’s one in ten of us, about the same as the number of left-handers (who used to be known as sinister). Perhaps we just need some patience; but meanwhile, the silent majority rules.

Encouraged by Vox (and the Republicans, the Iranians, Meloni’s Italy, the Opus Dei, apparently the Ugandans and a number of other totalitarian governments and organisations), the messages and comments of LGBTIfóbia in the social media have increased in the last few years, at the same time as the democratic governments have been working hard to remove the traditional opprobrium (particularly in a macho society like Spain) against the gays.

One isolated news-item – a mixture of a student rag and an ill-judged attack on the gays during Gay Pride Day (June 28th) has a leaflet over at the university students’ residence in Málaga calling for a small reward of twenty euros to be paid for anyone reported as suffering from the homosexual epidemic in a ‘Gay Hunting Month’ (this in English). Serious or just some silly prank? I don’t know, but it’s not quite the same as being beaten up for holding hands with one’s boyfriend.

 

The Man with a Cape

 

Dah da da Dahh.. Have you ever been to a bullfight?

It’s the season for the toros right now, with the Pamplona ‘running of the bulls’ coming up in July. I was there one year – I would have been around 25 – and ended up drinking all night with some locals, and then early the next morning, armed only with rolled-up newspapers, we were chased through the streets by a dozen angry bulls.

I’m never doing that again.

Bullfights are part of the culture here. They are something quintessentially Spanish and, what with anything to do with tradition, flags, the municipal band playing pasodobles, the crowds waving their white handkerchiefs and shouting ¡Olé! every moment there’s a good-looking pass, the matador being taken out of the Puerta Grande on the shoulders of the fans…

…it’s really no wonder that the far-right movement here has taken la corrida as their own, although, in reality, it has support from various sectors of society and besides, is protected as a ‘cultural patrimony’.

We foreigners erroneously call it ‘a sport’, but it’s a cultural event really. Sort of.

Let’s just leave that for a moment and drop by one of Spain’s most beautiful and enlightened regions, to see what’s happening in the levante.

Right now, as the Partido Popular cosies up with Vox thanks to the vagaries of the conservative voters, in Valencia everyone (well, of the right wing persuasion anyway) was shaking hands and slapping each other on the back as the deal was struck for the region’s Generalitat, or parliament, for the next four years. The PP leader is the new president and the Vox leader, for some reasons to do with his past, was kicked upstairs to become a candidate for the General Elections next month. His second-in-command thus takes over from him as regional vice-president and, why not, secretary for culture.

This august personage is Vicente Barrera, a retired bullfighter.

Putting, as it were, the vox among the chickens.

As the debate rages in Spain about la tauromaquia – whether it should keep its status or be quietly marched off into the pages of history – we have a senior politician, an ex-bullfighter no less, in charge of culture in Spain’s fourth most populous region which includes the country’s third largest city.  

One wonders if the post of education will go to a priest, and that of health to a faith-healer.

Sumar, the Coming Together of the Left

The far-left, scattered and feuding, are once again under the same roof: Kudos to Yolanda Díaz and her Movimiento Sumar. 

Opinion from El País here, ‘Sumar starts. It had never happened before in the more than 40 years of Spanish democracy that the various territorial, alternative and environmental lefts found the harmony and the political motivation to concur jointly in general elections’. Sixteen parties, including Podemos, are in coalition. 

From 20Minutos here: The Podemos leader Ione Belarra will be fifth on the list for Madrid, whereas both Irene Montero (the ‘Only Yes Means Yes’ current Minister for Equality considered these days to be a liability) and wheelchair-bound Pablo Echenique are out. Podemos politicians will lead the Sumar lists in Ávila, Badajoz, Cáceres, Guadalajara, Palencia, Segovia and Teruel.  

elDiario.es notes that ‘The deal means that the various parties will have their candidates appear in province-lists more or less to the satisfaction of all, while being under the party-brand of Sumar. It is none the less true to say that coalition negotiation is rarely an admirable spectacle. If people knew how the sausage was made, they would not consume it with the same enthusiasm. There are things that it is better not to look closely at… (!)’. 

From El Español (news-letter): ‘The Sumar coalition is born mortally wounded when the hard core of Podemos was sacrificed without ceremonies. Yolanda Díaz will have a hard time smoothing things out in just over a month, but the humiliation of the bruises has no going back’. Their headline: ‘40% of Podemos voters will not vote for Sumar’. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride: Scottish proverb.

Two groups seem angry about the defenestration of Irene Montero. Podemos of course is upset to lose its star (she’s also the wife of Pablo Iglesias, the founder of the party), and then the media and parties to the right: the golden opportunities lost in the coming weeks to attack Sumar through the unpopular ex-minister!

Manipulation in the Media (again)

 It’s not clear if we have learned anything from the postal-vote scandal made nationally famous by Mojácar and Melilla, but which also occurred in several other municipalities.

Apparently, one needs one’s ID card to ask for a postal vote – they’ll give you an envelope and the papeletas from all the different parties. However, when you post your vote with your one chosen papeleta, you don’t need to show any documents, and of course, a friend could post it for you following the modest consideration of a 100€ (or perhaps a little more).

Now maybe in local elections, it’s about the personal advantage; whereas, in the general elections, things are different. Yes, we cynics might want Señor X to win, but we aren’t going to go around buying millions of votes off impoverished or immoral people we may have picked up in a bar.

Not when it’s cheaper to use our friends in the media: Giménez Losantos, Ana Rosa, La Razón, OKDiario, Canal Sur, El Mundo, Alvise Pérez, El Hormiguero and a host of others who are all working hard on helping the citizens decide between right or, uh, wrong.

Like the slogan ‘Comunísmo o libertad’ (Ayuso)

Or maybe ‘Sánchez o España’ (Vox)

Voting in the middle of the summer causes problems – everyone is on their hols; except, and sorry for them, those who have to be present across Spain to manage the polling stations. They’ll be disappointed. For everyone else who might be away, we return to the always trusty postal vote.

Thus, we read that Correos is hiring an extra 5,500 sorters this summer to handle the extra work caused by the sudden election.

As for the dodgy votes scandal – well, they’re asking for fresh elections in Mojácar.

Not that this is at all likely.

Maybe, if they do, then I’ll stand this time.

See, I have a cunning plan.