If Vox was a bear, would it shit in the woods?

Hey, have you heard the big news? It seems that Spain now has an extreme right. Big surprise, huh? Sure. About the same as writing a headline that says “Scientists discover that bears now shit in the woods”.

Yet this week, certain international commentators have seized on the results of Sunday’s Andalusian regional elections, in which far-right party Vox appeared to come from nowhere to take 11% of votes and 12 seats, to paint a picture of a country that had succumbed to Europe’s terrible extreme-right virus after somehow avoiding it till now. Why? - they lament.

But the commentators are wrong now, as they've been wrong up till now. The truth is that the far right has always been present in Spain. In fact, the real story is not those 11% of votes for Vox, but rather that the other two right-wing parties, the Partido Popular (PP) and Ciudadanos (Cs), who attracted 47% of the vote between them, are treating the emergence of the ultra party Vox so routinely that they are now rubbing their hands with glee and getting ready to form a happy three-way right-wing government – in which the key to power will be held by a political group which is vehemently anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-Catalan, anti-women and so centralist that it wants to abolish the very regional parliament it has just been elected to. Never mind all this, say the PP and Cs leaders, what's more important is that "the people want change". Vale. Change, they shall get.

So the real "why?", the real question mark, hangs over the nature of the Spanish right as a whole. And the response to this starts from the obvious difference between the post-1945 history of the rest of western Europe, and that of Spain: unlike almost all its close neighbours, Spain was governed by a fascist autocracy until the late 1970s. In other words, the far right was in power. For forty years it was ruled by a dictatorship that had taken control through the most violent means possible - a military coup that mutated into a three year civil war - and slaughtered its civilian opponents wholesale as well as prohibiting all opposing ideas. By the 1970s, though looking for a way to modernise, this regime was also thoroughly entrenched in society, and following Franco’s death, the price of its voluntary acceptance of a new democratic constitution was on the one hand, a "law of amnesia" so that the many crimes committed under fascism wouldn’t be investigated, and on the other, a fairly complete continuity of people and institutions (military, justice, public bodies, big business, culture etc). So the fascists were able to substantially maintain their places of power in society, but they just had to stop being fascists. Or at least, say they had stopped. Wink, wink, say no more.

It is this that is the special dynamic of the far right in Spain’s recent politics. It is this that has confused people: when fascist parties were sprouting all across Europe, why could no evidence of significant support for any extreme right party be found in Spain? Simply because in Spain, the PP, the Spanish party of the right, of the old establishment, was actually founded by the fascists themselves, and the huge number of people who have maintained their faith in Francoist ideals to a greater or lesser degree have also been maintained inside the PP loop. All they had to do was stick to the rules.

I would venture that those rules could be described as follows: rule number one, if you want to become part of the official political structures, you do have to more or less pay lip service to the constitutional regime constructed in 1978. But rule number two would be: if you're still a fascist at heart, and yearn for the old days (people that many Spanish media label as "nostalgics" instead of calling them what they are, open fascists), or you're more modern but have still been strongly socialised into the unreal right-wing vision of a homogeneous, traditionalist, centralised Spain - then no problem, you may not be political candidate material, but you'll still be able to remain very much in the circles of power – you might be able to do well in business, in law, in the police or military, in the media and cultural establishments, and so on. You’ll have friends (and if that sounds like a recipe for corruption, well, bingo. Welcome to the PP).

And there's also a rule number three - the most important of all in the long run: the constitutional structures of the democratic regime are so frozen solid and difficult to change, that as long as the right follows rules 1 and 2, its continued control of the country's institutions can be practically guaranteed.

So what has happened lately? In Spain, the limits and failings of the transition to democracy have gradually become more and more evident. Rather than diminishing over time they have grown. The emergence of the Catalan independence movement was in a large part a result of the failure of those frozen constitutional institutions to cope with Catalan aspirations for greater autonomy within the system. In turn, the response to the Catalan situation was also partly due to the underlying, unspoken Spanish acceptance of the old Francoist rules: so, the Spanish government refused to discuss the issue politically, then eventually when things got out of its control, it turned to state violence, and politicisation of the courts. And that has further damaged those institutions. And so it’s hardly surprising that the old rules of decorum about keeping the far right under wraps have broken down. Why bother hiding one’s support for violent repression of opponents when the government itself did it so openly on October 1st last year? When the king then backed it up in a televised speech two days later?

Of course, as long as the right was in power – as it was in the 2017 crisis – then the right wing parties themselves still had to pay lip service to the norms of polite constitutional society, even while heads were being bashed by police and peaceful leaders charged with violent rebellion. The PP had to pretend to be responsible, and Cs as its right wing ally, also. But when the Socialist PSOE, despite its own ideological confusion, managed rather surprisingly to expel the PP from power after a massive corruption case ruling, the gloves came fully off.

Since then both PP and Cs have been competing openly for the hard right vote, with rhetoric that is strongly pro-Spanish nationalism, anti Catalan and Basque, anti immigration: we hear that Spanish imperial genocide was in reality a civilising influence, that Catalans are people who want to destroy Spain, that Basques are potential terrorists, and that immigrants are not people you want living next door to you. Perhaps without even giving that much consideration to the presence of an exclusively far-right party, the mainstream right parties were occupying and giving credibility to the political patch of turf away, away out to the right.

On the other hand, the Socialist party had been affected inversely by its change of role: having itself previously fanned the flames of anti-Catalanism when this suited its electoral needs in opposition, it now found itself constrained in its rhetoric by its government role, and in particular, because it needed Catalan independence parliamentary support to stay in power.

From there it is easy to see what happened to allow Vox to pick up 11% of the vote in the Andalusian elections. The huge number of Andalusian voters who had long since bought the basic lines of the Spanish nationalist thesis on Catalonia were presented with three parties all essentially trying to make the same anti Catalan argument: PP, Cs and Vox. A proportion of them looked at Vox, and said, why bother with the imitators when you can have the real thing? And so Vox comes into a parliament occupying the balance of power with a platform that is anti-Catalan, anti-LGBTi, anti-immigrant, sexist, radically centralist and pro-Spanish nationalist. Voters who had given the Socialist party its Andalusian majorities in past years were confused or just not motivated and stayed home (turnout was only 57%, 6% down on last election).

And the interesting thing is that in the days ahead you will likely be able to see the extent to which this vision of the Spanish far right makes sense. How? Because in most countries, when a far right party with vile policies has entered parliament, there has been a clear and general adherence to the policy of creating a “sanitary cordon” around it – refusing to make deals with it and thus to dignify its policies with credibility. In Andalusia, the defeated Socialist leader Susana Díaz has called for such a cordon. But the role of the electoral dice has produced a situation where the only way the two established parties of the right can form a government, is though the support of the 12 Vox MPs. And they’re going to do it. No thoughts of creating, for example, a German style “grand coalition” between the major left and right wing parties (PSOE and PP) to keep out the fascists. No. The PP and Cs recognize Vox as one of their own kind. And they shall govern together. And bears have always shat in the woods.

Goddamn you all to hell

Durant només un segón, tinc al cap l’idea d’anar al kiosc de la Plaça Sant Jaume a comprar el diari.

Desprès, torno a la realitat. El kiosc ja no hi és. Del diari tampoc queda gran cosa. I pel que fa a Sant Jaume, ja he vist planols on només s’identifica com Bike Tour Meeting Point.

Em marejo. M'aturo. Deixo passar les multituds, i m’agenollo, d’estil Charlton Heston a la platja:

“You finally did it! You destroyed it! Goddamn you all to hell!”

John Carlin: on Spanish madness and breeding resentment

John Carlin is against Catalan independence, but he paints a picture - mostly through the views of his UK media contacts - of a Spanish establishment that has gone completely off the rails in its persecution of the Catalan independence movement. The respected UK journalist and long-time commentator on Spain spoke to Radio Euskadi (in Spanish) on 4th April, answering Dani Álvarez's questions about how people abroad, in the UK especially, are seeing the Spain/Catalonia crisis. Here's a translation to English of that radio interview.

John Carlin: My perception, looking at things over the last few days, the last week, is that in the rest of the world, people who look at Spain have a growing sensation that the Government and the central Spanish state are making idiots of themselves. This doesn’t mean that people are applauding the Catalan leader Puigdemont or are 100% behind him and the separatists, there is the sensation that they are putting on quite a ridiculous performance too. But the most worrying thing for Spain is this perception that after 40 years of making progress on a democratic path, suddenly it has gone backwards and is turning into something more like a banana republic. And this is not very compatible with what we understand as democracy in Western Europe. 

Dani Álvarez: Is this the attitude we have seen in The Times of London and some other media: that they are not necessarily in favour of the views of the independence movement but they have a negative opinion of Rajoy?

Yes, the Times of London is one particular case, it is not, to say the least, a radical or leftish newspaper; The New York Times similarly, and Der Spiegel in Germany. But here in London I speak to people, and I’m not talking about the typical people that would always be in favour of Catalan independence movement or the like; but rather, last week I was in a private gentlemen’s club of the type that have existed for 200 years, talking to a Lord, and he said: “The thing is, the Spanish government has gone stark raving mad. Spain is making itself look stupid.” Two days ago I was at the BBC, they were interviewing me about the death of Winnie Mandela, and while talking to producers, there were asking “What’s happening in Spain? They’ve gone completely crazy”. 

And basically it’s a proposition that is completely disproportionate: thirteen people, who have been formally accused, charged with rebellion, which is understood as something that includes violence, when what everyone can see this is something in which there was not a single death, not a single serious injury, not a single pistol or bomb, not a stone thrown, but what is being asked for is to put these people in jail for 30 years. And this seems to be quite a long way away from the basic concept of democracy. 

John, you are using very strong terms here, even if they are not your terms, they are things that people have said to you. “They are crazy, a banana state, making idiots of themselves”. Is this a widespread opinion, or just anecdotes?

I can only talk about people who have a level of interest in Spain, and that’s a minority... but I am talking about journalists from the Times of London, and the Financial Times, [inaudible], the Labour Party, people who work at the BBC, [inaudible] here in London it is quite general that people think that Spain is making an idiot of itself, and there is a grotesque disproportion between what happened and the sentences that they are asking for. And imposing.

I also wanted to ask you about Manchester City’s Catalan football coach Pep Guardiola, who is being very persistent in his demands for the people who have been imprisoned and for the independence cause, he refused to take off his yellow ribbon, in spite of being warned he could be fined, and he answers all the question put to him about this. What role is Pep Guardiola playing in the spread of what you are talking about?

Well, I’ll say a couple of things. Firstly, we have the fabulous irony, that with the possible exception of Rafa Nadal, there is no-one else in the world who is doing more to promote Spain’s brand in the world than Pep Guardiola. On the other hand, people who have political attitudes like him are quite uncommon in the world of football, and also, he is of course doing more for the cause of the prisoners than anyone else in the world. 

But there was one thing, which left me quite shocked, an article a few days ago in El País, the voice of the Spanish establishment, which compared Guardiola with Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, saying that Guardiola is a Nazi. And there, I’ll say it again – they are making idiots of themselves. All the people I know in the media here - and there are a lot of them - in the Times, Financial Times, and now, it’s been published in the Daily Mail as well, their reaction is one of shock, that what’s supposed to be the biggest and most serious newspaper in Spain makes this sort of comparison. 

And when you see something so out of proportion and so immoral, making this connection between a movement which - you can also say that Catalan independence is absurd – but making a comparison with a regime which dedicated itself to the death and extermination of millions of people, makes not only El País look ridiculous but also the people in the Spanish establishment whose voice it represents.

John, we know that you’ve said many times that you support a negotiated and reasonable solution for Catalonia, but I detect quite a lot of pessimism in your tone and words this morning.

I don’t think there’s any possibility of a negotiated solution to be seen. What I want is for Catalonia to continue within Spain and for us to return to the situation of peace and serenity and prosperity before all these troubles started. But, that’s not to be seen, and apart from that, the Spanish government has handed over the management of the Catalan issue to the law, to the judges, who have much less room for manoeuvre than in the political arena, and for that reason, the possibility of reaching a civilised, intelligent, pragmatic [agreement], [for something] which could have been resolved years ago easily with a minimum of political capability, I see as very difficult, quite remote, it’s been on the same track for a long time.

And now it seems [with last week’s arrest of Puigdemont] they’re celebrating the law, the defeat of the process, and all that, fantastic – it would be very nice if it could put an end to the process and the independence movement – but what’s happening now is that with the judicial process, they are sowing seeds of resentment, which will sprout, I don’t know if it will be today, tomorrow, in three years or ten years, but resentment is a very potent, dangerous force in the world in general and in the particular politics here, and it’s not going to make pro-independence sentiment disappear, but rather in the medium and long term, it’s more likely to be the opposite.

In English: Roger Torrent's full speech postponing the Catalan Parliament's presidential investiture session, 30/01/2018

Address by Roger Torrent, speaker of the Catalan Parliament, explaining his postponement of the parliamentary session for the investiture of Carles Puigdemont as Catalan president, 30/01/2018. Translated from the Catalan text posted on Twitter by @rogertorrent here.

I come before you after several days in which the Spanish state has shown one of its darkest sides with the decision by the Spanish government to commit a legal fraud and the decision of a Constitutional Court to urgently set conditions on the investiture of Carles Puigdemont that no one had asked for.

The Constitutional Court without any prior request is instructing the Board of the Catalan Parliament how it has to interpret its own regulations. An ad hoc political decision made by the entity that should be the constitutional arbitrator. A compromise decision in order to not discredit the Spanish government's legal fraud.

The Spanish government and the Constitutional Court are trying to infringe the rights of millions of Catalans who went to vote on 21st December. And we will not allow that.

We will not accept it being said that Catalans voted badly, for voting for who they wanted. We will not accept interference with a democratic Parliament which has the right and duty to invest the president who has the most support.

Neither the Spanish vice president nor the Constitutional Court will decide who should be the president of Catalonia. It is up to the democratically elected deputies to do this.

Proposing president Puigdemont as the candidate to be invested as [new] president of Catalonia has been the result of the will expressed by a majority of this chamber. And as long as this will is maintained, I will not propose any other candidate for investiture.

President Carles Puigdemont has all the legitimacy to be a candidate and has all the right. To defend this right I have personally committed myself to guarantee his immunity, along with that of all the deputies, in exercising their political rights in Parliament.

In this regard, I have asked the chamber's legal counsel to present an appeal from this Parliament to the Constitutional Court's resolution.

In response to the request of president Puigdemont to guarantee his right to an investiture debate with guarantees, and to give time for the appeal presented by the president himself, the parliamentary session scheduled for today is postponed, but in no sense is it cancelled.

The session for the investiture of the candidate Carles Puigdemont remains convoked and will be held once an effective investiture debate without interference can be guaranteed. An investiture with real value and that will take effect.

I am committed to generating the most favourable scenario to ensure that the will of people expressed in the elections becomes reality. I urge the Constitutional Court to resolve the appeals as quickly as possible to undo the legal confusion it has created.

I know what my responsibility is and what my commitment is. I have the duty to protect the sovereignty of this Parliament from antidemocratic interference and attacks. I will not give an inch in the defence of the democratic rights of the deputies of parliament, despite the threats.

I will go all the way to defend the rights of president Puigdemont to offer himself to the investiture debate with full guarantees.

All my energies will go to defending the institution, defending the deputies, defending the voters, defending, indeed, the essence of democracy. Because democracy cannot be suspended.

The majority will of the Catalan people cannot be suspended. This Parliament will invest the candidate who has the majority support of the chamber, not one who is decided in an office 600 kilometres away.

This Parliament, democratically voted, chosen by the public, politically represents the people of Catalonia. And that deserves respect. The people of Catalonia deserve respect.