The Plot against Iglesias

Last week we saw that the National Court had material to show from various police agencies (known under the general heading of ‘la policía patriótica’) that the previous government had spied on fifty-five deputies of the left-wing Podemos group and affiliates – including the party leaders (as were back in 2015 and 2016) Pablo Iglesias, Irene Montero, Joan Baldoví and Yolanda Díaz. The Minister of the Interior from the Rajoy government and Opus Dei supernumerary Jorge Fernández Díaz is already notorious for its actions against its rivals (when not honouring Nuestra Señora María Santísima del Amor – a plaster saint from a Málaga church – with the Medalla de Oro al Mérito Policial back in 2014).

The question must be – have things changed?

Yolanda Díaz on Twitter: ‘The PP has never accepted the rules of democracy. They spied on us massively to prevent changes in Spain. They didn't get it. Such serious news should push us to continue democratizing institutions. The PP must respond to Spanish society’.

Pablo Iglesias says ‘The dirty war has been enormously successful. I had to leave politics while our party, although it remains alive, has far less electoral strength now than it did eight years ago’.

Joan Baldoví (Compromís) thinks that this is: ‘One of the most serious things that has happened in our democracy’.

Juan Carlos Monedero (co-founder of Podemos) claims in a TV interview that: "Worse things have been done to Podemos than were ever done to the Catalán independentistas".

Journalist Javier Durán on Twitter: ‘The PP has used the Ministry of the Interior and the Police to spy on political rivals. - The Guardia Civil has confirmed the party's meddling in several elections, including the last ones in which it came to government’.

From the beginning, it was a ‘dirty war against Podemos’, with the creation of the fake-news that Pablo Iglesias was financed by Venezuela and Iran through the Operación Pisa (‘Pablo Iglesias Sociedad Anónima’), as promoted in January 2016 by El Confidencial, OKDiario and other far-from-impartial sources. Then, as the Chief Inspector José Ángel Fuentes Gago said a few months later (after flying to New York to investigate another fake claim against Iglesias), ‘If it helps us prevent Podemos from getting into the Government, then so much the better for everyone’. One title chosen at random from OKDiario claims ‘The confession of the Narcodictudura Chavista (i.e., Venezuela) spy chief to Judge García-Castellón, that Maduro's assistant gave $600,000 to Juan Carlos Monedero at the Meliá Hotel in Caracas’.

Venezuela in those days was as frightening to a conservative Spaniard as Cuba was (and remains today) to a conservative American.

How extensive were the police inquiries? A report says that ‘fifty-seven detachments, from special units to simple patrol cars, were involved in consulting restricted databases to find out the background, travel and accommodation of Pablo Iglesias and other party members’. Some 6,900 improper searches were made in the Ministry of Interior’s sensitive files in 2016 and 2017 by the national police says another source.

Following a complaint by Iglesias and others, we read that ‘Judge Santiago Pedraz agrees to investigate the dirty war of the PP Government against Podemos. The magistrate admits the party's complaint against Mariano Rajoy’s secretary of state for security together with the operational chief of the Police appointed by the PP and other commanders of the Corps for "alleged prospective investigations" and without judicial control’.

Ctxt, a Podemos supporting news-site, says that ‘…The determination of the PP and Rajoy to remain in power explains this dirty and illegal spying operation. It is probably the most serious affront to Parliament since the failed 1981 coup against Congress by Antonio Tejero. In both cases the goal was to subvert the popular will expressed at the polls…’

Like Podemos or not – one still needs to be seen to be abiding by the rules. 

More Migrants Means More Support for Authoritarian Parties

 

Let’s talk about immigration. Not in the sense that some people might prefer to use this word over the out-of-fashion ‘expat’, but rather focus on those poor folk who make their way here in leaky cayucos from the coast of Africa, with an outboard motor and a larcenous captain wearing a life-saver.

Many drowning in the attempt.

People dream of moving to Spain. They come from Latin America (speaking Spanish and usually practicing Catholics). They come from the Orient to open a bazaar and make life cheaper, if more confusing, for the rest of us. They come from Africa, and work in the fields and the greenhouses, doing the jobs that no one else will do. Rate them for the Spanish as easy, middling and difficult (unless they’re good at football).

I don’t know where you stand on this subject – after all, there are one thousand five hundred million people living in Africa, and on a bad day, they might all decide to move to Spain, whether because there are no jobs there, or because of climate change, or civil war or rampant disease, or just a strong desire to see the Alhambra once in this lifetime (and anyway, granddaddy still has a key). And no, of course there’s not enough room for all of them – but there’s certainly room for some of them.

There aren’t many solutions to this – let’s call it a threat – and one of them, as proposed by the spokesperson for the Partido Popular last week, certainly isn’t the answer.

He says: send the Spanish navy to patrol the Mauritanian coast.

And then what – if they don’t stop (or politely wait until dark), then sink them with a judiciously placed artillery shell?

Admiral Teodoro López Calderón gave his answer to Pablo Casado back in 2020 on this very point: “If any Spanish warship encounters a boat in a situation where the lives of those on it are in danger, its obligation of all kinds, legal, moral... is to rescue them. And that's what would be done".   

I suppose we find those from Africa to be more of a threat to us, and this (with a little encouragement from the right-wing) will skewer us towards calling for protection from the nationalists. Whether Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, the AfD or (here in Spain), Vox, Alvise, Hazte Oir, Abogados Cristianos, Manos Limpias and a disturbing number of judges. So far, we have more or less dodged the bullet from these false prophets, but we can be sure that they will keep on banging that particular drum.

Somebody on Facebook says: ‘Let’s hope Le Pen wins. It’s about time Europe closes its borders and solves the migration crisis by moving millions of people out of Europe’. Maybe send them all to Ruanda – one place in Africa being much like another?

An editorial at elDiario.es says: ‘With few issues you can be more irresponsible and more incendiary, in exchange for a handful of votes, than with immigration. And the PP has decided that it does not want to give Vox even half an inch of advantage. Feijóo has launched his closest spokesperson to demand that we send the military to prevent migrants from reaching our shores by boat. Party spokesperson Miguel Tellado wants Navy ships, prepared for war and useless for small boat rescue, to be deployed off the African coast. It is unfeasible at many levels, even the head of the Navy says it, but it doesn't matter: what the PP wants is to match the xenophobic populism of both Vox and Alvise, in the hope of plugging the flight of young votes that are moving to even more radical options’.

The lure of the far-right perceived threat of the ausländer is a popular call. The more they come, the more we become angry or fearful, and the more we support the right-wingers. Whether the immigrants are going to both take our jobs (while going on benefits), move into five-star hotels paid for by our taxes and either disrespect our women, infect us with terrible diseases or perhaps blow us all up, the far-right will make gains. If the dreadful Madame Le Pen lost this time around, there’s always another chance somewhere.

Did You Ever Hear about Lexit?

We have elections in the UK, where no one will talk about Brexit. In France, there’s elections as well – with a likelihood of the far-right getting in (dare we ask: ‘Frexit’?). In the USA, following that dreadful televised debate between Mr Biden and Mr Trump (talk about Jekyll and Hyde) the chances for us all surviving to 2030 appear to be receding by the hour – unless someone pulls the plug on Brandon (Biden’s nickname) and they can find someone a fraction younger for November 5th. You saw – by the way – that the Supreme Court, packed with Trump appointees, just gave the Orange One presidential immunity?

Over here, we are about through with elections for the time being – the Europeans are over, the Basques and – hopefully – Catalonians are sorted (although they may have to try again in October) and the deadlock with the CGPJ (the judges’ citadel) is finally resolved, five years past its ‘best before’ date.

So let us tiptoe down to Castilla y León, a quiet and un-touristy bit of Spain run by the PP and Vox doing what they do best.

There are nine provinces in this unwieldy autonomous region (the largest in Spain): Ávila, Burgos, León, Palencia, Salamanca, Segovia, Soria, Valladolid and Zamora. Before it was gathered into one administrative chunk in 1983, it was understood that León, Salamanca and Zamora were in one region and the other six were in the other (a bit like the Kingdom of Granada being the eastern half of Andalucía: Jaén, Granada, Málaga and Almería). Then (since we are on the subject), there’s the Basque Country with three provinces, which claims Navarre and its capital Pamplona as its fourth province… plus three more currently located in France: the Greater Euskal Herria (they’ll keep the capital in Pamplona while they are about it). And for variety, don’t forget Catalonia…

León was also looking to be a uni-provincial autonomy (like Madrid) in the early eighties, as indeed – apparently – was Segovia (and don’t even ask about Cartagena which has spent the last 150 years trying to remove itself from Murcia – another uni-provincial autonomy). León likes to think that it has three provinces (counties maybe) which are Ponferrada, Astorga y León, while ‘Greater León’ might be as many as seven provinces (the other four being Zamora, Toro, Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo).

As for its larger and not entirely welcome senior partner, Wiki says that ‘Castilla is a historic region of Spain with imprecise borders located in the middle of the country’ (mind you, there’s also a Castilla-La Mancha down the road with Toledo and other fine cities and provinces). And anyway, don’t we speak castellano?

Still, easier to lump all the 14 provinces into two regions: Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha, and how many autonomous regions do we need anyway (there are currently 17 plus Ceuta and Melilla)?

Heading north again, we discover that CyL doesn’t have a recognised capital, but its government offices are in Valladolid.

And so to the issue of the day.

The leoneses want ‘out’. Not just out of Castilla, but preferably out of León as well. That’s right, ‘Lexit’ is a thing. Their plan is two separate entities: León being one, and Castilla y the Other Bits of León We Didn’t Want being the other. Do you think it could fly?

By the way, it’s Llión in Leonés (Leonian as it were).

We wonder why – well, it all goes back to a king in 910 who moved the Asturian court to León (giving the good people of that city presumptive airs). And yes, La Constitución Española allows for changes in the regions (although, they might not have foreseen this particular proposal). A plenary vote in the provincial diputación last week favoured the idea of a three-province Léon, with the PSOE and local party in favour and the PP and Vox voting against (while – for what it’s worth – the other two provinces, Zamora and Salamanca, remain unimpressed by the idea). The mayor of the City of León mostly agrees, but thinks the single province of León should join with Asturias (yet another uni-provincial autonomy).

The government says it would accept an eighteenth region of Spain (if it comes to this), made up of León, Zamora and Salamanca, but notes that there are not enough votes (they would need a two-thirds majority) neither in the three León provinces nor in Valladolid.

Scotland take note!