Still don't believe they've allowed it!

Toni is now suffering his own version of Brexigret, as the horrible realization of the action of the so-called ‘socialist’ (sic.) party of PSOE has, by abstaining, facilitated another four years of the systemically corrupt PP (Conservative) party in Spain.

            Neither Toni nor I believe (for a single, solitary second) that either the Cs or PSOE are going to ‘hold PP to account’ because of their own selfish self-interest.  PP may be a minority government, but they can always threaten another General Election which would almost certainly see a reduction in the seats of both Cs and also PSOE.  And since neither Cs nor PSOE have been noted for their dedication to anything other than the continued existence of their respective parties and their illusions of power, it is hardly likely after their prostitution to PP that they will suddenly find a new belief that they might actually have been elected to consider the wellbeing of the country rather than their worthless selves.

            Cs – the sluts of Spanish politics – have shown themselves equally ready to accept the attentions of the ‘socialists’ in the form of PSOE and to vote with the repressive conservatives of PP.  As long as they have a whiff of power Cs will be rubbing themselves around you!  They have mouthed their support for greater transparency and dealing with corruption; it will be interesting to see how far they press their ‘tricks’ in PP to follow their stated policy which apparently makes them a viable and more wholesome alternative to the

            PSOE have wound themselves in logistical circles to justify their support for a government to which they had previously said, “No is NO!”  If another member of that traitorous party uses some unconvincing variant on the, “it is for the benefit of the Spanish people” mantra one more time, I really will throw up.

            PSOE is also terrified of another election, when the “benefit of the Spanish people” might actually result in even more of those so-called ‘socialists’ being turfed out.  So PP can do whatever the hell they like because all they have to do is threaten another election and the Cs and PSOE will scuttle into line.

I have taken my depression with the political situations in Spain and the UK to justify my drinking a bottle of Cava with my meal: a brut nature by Heretat El Padruell.  As any fule kno, Cava is a product of Catalonia, a region of Spain that I confidently expect to see much further down the road to independence as the prospect of four more years of the odious PP in charge sinks in and the reality of an astonishingly corrupt central government calling the odds hits home!

The sun has been shining.  I have swum my metric mile.  The Cava has gone down a treat.  Tomorrow is another day.

Tick-Tock!

The blustery weather of the morning has settled down to a sunny afternoon with breeze enough to move the topmost branches of the trees.  The actual weather may be settling down, but the political climate in Spain is reaching tornado force!

            



          As was obvious from the start of the ill-fated pact between the PSOE party (roughly Labour) and the new C’s party (right wing nationalist) as they did not have an overall majority between them, they failed to win the vote in parliament yesterday as everyone else (with one abstention) voted against them.  So we are now on for a revote on Friday when, unless something dramatic happens in the next few hours is likely to be a repeat of the last vote and therefore be the start of a new election campaign as the country is asked to vote again.

            The sticking point for PSOE, and what stops them being the government is a combination of old party arrogance; ‘barons’ in PSOE heartlands saying no; vested interests; fear of the break up of Spain, and hatred of Catalonia.

            PSOE could have won the vote on Wednesday if they had pacted with Podemos which is a left wing, recently formed party which is looking for a new way of doing politics in the country.  A country, I might add that, since the glorious death of the dictator Franco has gifted more power than it ought to have to the political parties as a way of ensuring the survival and growth of democracy.  However good the initial idea was, the reality over the past decades has seen the major political parties get too much power and begin to abuse it.

            

Spain has been rocked by corruption scandal after corruption scandal - every day something new and breath taking!

            Although PP (Conservatives) seem to be systemically corrupt with laughable proportions of the party being accused of what looks like clear corruption, the other parties are not immune from dipping their greedy fingers into the public till.  It was this morass of corruption that gave birth to Podemos and the C’s – both in their own ways suggesting a way forward.

            PP (amazingly, given all the negative publicity they have had) has the largest number of seats of all the parties, but no overall majority.  Even with their natural allies, the right wing C’s they could not form an overall majority.  So they, through their so-called leader refused the King’s invitation to try and form a government.  There has been a risible offer of some sort of government of national unity with the present leader continuing as president, but that was dismissed by all the other parties.

            PSOE and Podemos would have an overall majority if they pacted, and the leader of PSOE would then become president.  But, the power of vested interests and what looked like pretty inept political footwork on the part of PSOE and Podemos meant that PSOE pacted with the C’s – with all the consequent problems.

            Now that PSOE and the C’s have failed, there needs to be a new approach.

            Podemos (quite rightly in my view) will not pact with the C’s – they have little in common with them and they believe that the C’s are just PP in another guise.  Podemos are still prepared to pact with PSOE and then they will form the government.

            The presenting problem (if not the real one) is that Podemos is a blanket term for a number of politicians who are separatist.  So, for PSOE to become the government, it would have to pact with parties whose avowed intent is to break away from Spain.  This is a difficulty.  Podemos have also offered Catalonia a referendum about independence.  PSOE will have nothing to do with that and say that the whole of Spain would have to vote on any region opting out.

            There are real problems about the present organization of Spain into regions.  Most of which are to do with money.  Catalonia says that for far too long it has paid far too much into the coffers of Spain to bail out other regions and has not had the development money that it deserves for itself.  This seems to me to be a fair point, though as soon as any discussion gets on to the topic then sensible debate is lost in simultaneous shouting!  Then there is the Basque Country!

            So, there are problems about PSOE and Podemos getting together.  But that is why we have politicians.  It is their job to get what should happen to happen.

            The only way PSOE is going to be the government is with Podemos.  So what do they have to do to make that possible?

            The referendum for Catalonia can wait.  If PSOE forms the government (with Podemos) then it could reform the present system for the regions and eventually present Catalonia with a fairer system of finance and representation.  If they did this and then give the region (sorry, country) a referendum then I think that the majority of the population would vote to stay in Spain and in the EU.

            The other objections to Podemos are mirrors and smoke and the reality of power would show just how insubstantial those were.

            If PSOE want power they have to pact, and pact with Podemos.  Simple.  The rest is details worked out by the wonks of both parties who like that sort of thing.  The entire name calling and blustering of the past few days is no more than that; the reality of power is worth compromising for.

            But will they?

            If logic ruled the voters then no one in their right mind would vote for PP.  It has been shown to be systemically corrupt and arrogant about its guilt.  No one resigns in this benighted country, no matter how clear their guilt is.  But logic is not the force you can put your faith in.  30% seems to be the bedrock of PP votes.  30% of this electorate will vote for PP even if they started slaughtering children on live television.  And if they use the key words and phrases like: ‘break up of Spain’, ‘soft on terrorism’, ‘economic strength’, ‘Venezuela’, ‘ETA ‘, ‘Catalonia’, ‘stability’, ‘Cuba’ and the rest of the language of the right then they could actually improve their position.

            The C’s have shown themselves prepared to pact with ‘socialists’ (though of course PSOE are nothing of the sort) and their base voters (and yes, I do mean that to be a pun) might feel that they have been betrayed by the pact that their photogenic leader agreed to in his lust for power.  Perhaps the voters, who saw the C’s as a breath of fresh right wing air, might now return to their previous masters in PP.

            PSOE are in the most difficult position of all.  They have made a pact with right-wingers and it has failed.  So far.  Although the leader of PSOE has tried to appear statesmanlike, without the reality of power it is just posturing.  He has pacted with natural enemies, in the hope that he would be able to get Podemos on board (or at least abstaining) with a raft of policies that he felt that Podemos would have to support.

            Ideally, PSOE would have wanted the C’s and Podemos together with themselves forming a progressive, reforming party with PSOE playing the C’s off against Podemos so that they could get what they liked.  That hasn’t (yet) worked.

            In the next general election who knows what would happen to the PSOE vote.  The leader would have been shown to have failed, and if he doesn’t pact with Podemos, there might well be an unholy alliance of PP and the C’s which might in the next election have sufficient seats to give the present government the extension they want.

            The situation is, to put it mildly, difficult.  No party can really trust what might happen in another general election – but my instinct is that the right will come out better than the left and that we will have another PP led government.  Which will be an absolute disgrace and an insult to decent Spaniards.

            PSOE will have to swallow hard and do the right thing.  They need power to clean up after PP.  Podemos is the only way that they are going to get that power.  QED.

            Do I think that PSOE and Podemos will pact?  My instinct says no.  And that makes me very sad.  Unfortunately I do not have a vote in the general election in this country, but I am prepared to give my time and effort to help Podemos make a difference.

Aftermath

corruption

Still reeling from the onslaught against the Spanish language that my interview yesterday represented, Toni has decided to produce an English translation of what exactly I said. He is dressing up this enterprise in the guise of an exercise in IT which aids his course, but I know it is part of his attempt to expose my astonishing lack of linguistic ability in any language other than English to the wider world! Luckily my self confidence (bordering, some would say, on downright arrogance) was enough, not only to provide me with sufficient reserves of energy to get through the interview, but also was sufficient to encourage my positive enjoyment of the whole experience!

          People will soon be able to judge for themselves as the whole débâcle will be readily available to enjoy and digest!

The interesting times in which we live have now extended to the immediate political situation here in Catalonia. The local government has taken the first steps in declaring Independence from Spain. The whole situation is complicated by the fact that the acting president of Catalonia is tainted by his close association with Puyol (the ex president of Catalonia) who is fighting against the avalanche of overwhelmingly damming evidence which demonstrates that he and his clan have been little more than a “criminal organisation” (as they have already been termed in the press and by some legal authorities) and their criminality is being used by the terminally corrupt national government of PP to deflect attention from their own nefarious doings so that the population at large fears that an Independent Catalonia will be corruption writ large.

          The FACT that there are numerous criminal cases pending which demonstrate with shocking clarity the bare faced rapacity of the ruling PP party has now been shunted into the background of the general population's consciousness and they are concentrated instead on the very real threat of Catalonia breaking away (totally and utterly illegally according to the hands-wet-with-blood government of Spain) and the breathtakingly audacious corruption of notable Catalans. Thus showing clearly and indisputably that Catalonia must be kept securely in the safe hands of irremediably rapacious ignoramuses which form the so-called legal government of Spain. The fact that this group of kleptomaniacs and compulsive liars can even think about presenting themselves as some sort of legitimate force for good just goes to show that any old group of mendacious curs can get away with anything as long as they keep their nerve and keep on lying as proficiently as they have been doing for the whole time that they have been in what they like to term 'government.'

          When I say that I have more respect for the Evil Old Bitch (you know who I mean) than for Bromo, my name for the so-called President of Spain, it just goes to show how much contempt I have for the be-suited cretins who occupy positions of power in the present sad joke that is Spanish government.

          I tend to think that I do more work trying to attribute Machiavellian intelligence to the way that events are presented by the dead heads in PP than they actually deserve. With the build up to the General Election on the 20th December, they are either being deucedly clever or astonishingly stupid in the way that their strategy is developing.

           Having listened to some of the half-brains who seem to speak for this apology for a government with some sort of assumed authority, I can hardly believe that they have a coherent political brain cell to spark to action, yet it is possible to work out a terminally cynical approach to the electorate which speaks of some sort of primal intelligence.

           As an intelligent member of PP is an obvious oxymoron, I have to admit (and indeed we know because of the way that their finances have been laid out to an unbelieving public) that they have enough cash from various crooked sources to buy in the intelligence that they do not possess themselves. And shame on those with Neanderthal Plus brains who have sold themselves to the amoeba-like slime that sits on the PP benches in parliament to further their despicable causes, i.e. themselves.

           So, at the moment, we here in Catalonia are waiting for the political parties that make up the majority in our local parliament for independence to come to some sort of agreement about who is going to be president. The last vote for Artur Mas to be president was defeated – and rightly so. But what the immediate future holds is difficult to say. Bromo has stated that he, himself, personally will not allow the break up of Spain – which is a bit like saying that the magma refuses to allow the volcano to blow. He and his party seem to have gone out of their way to antagonise Catalans and then they act with shocked surprise when Catalans respond as if they are ungrateful for their abuse.

          When I first arrived in Catalonia I was all in favour of a united Spain, feeling that the country would be much more powerful and coherent if all the constituent parts of the country were linked together. I still feel that is true, but the present PP government with the dictatorial use of their absolute majority have changed my mind markedly. PP have gone out of their way to make it clear that they despise Catalonia, only valuing the money they can suck from the country. Well, enough is enough.

          PP and PSOE (the equivalent of Conservative and Labour in British terms) have colluded in the creation of a completely unconstitutional so-called king, they are colluding in the suppression of Catalan independence, they are colluding in the suppression of a multi-party democracy and, above all, they are colluding in maintaining the status quo to ensure their own position in the troughs that they have fed from for far too long. A plague, as the Bard rightly said, on both their houses.

           Spain has a democratic system whereby you vote for a 'list' of candidates for each political party. The number of votes given to each party determines the number of candidates 'elected' on each list. Thus, if you are candidate 1 on PP's list you are guaranteed a place in parliament, and so on down the list according to the number of votes cast. In other words the scheming, conniving, corrupt members of a party do not need to worry about a particular constituency to get elected; as long as they are near the top of the 'list' they will succeed. It also follows that individual members of the party owe more allegiance to the party rather than to any constituency made up of voters in a particular location.

          It also means that utterly disgraceful party hacks like Rita from Valencia, who ripped off the people of that region to satisfy her own inflated opinion of what she felt she deserved, are not cast into the otter darkness (with wailing and gnashing of teeth) after her party (PP!) is justly thrown out, but is instead promoted to the Senate, where the overblown apology for honesty can continue to milk the state!

          Whatever you think of Cameron and his exclusive brethren of upper class take-it-all opportunists, they look like honesty personified when compared with their openly rapacious parallels in Spain!

Peregrinating Kate of the Barcelona Poetry Group is going back to California for the winter, but her crown as leader of our group has been gifted to another member who is going to take over the task of ensuring that the meetings continue until the middle of December when we will have a Christmas recess until the middle of January.

           Last night's meeting was on the theme of 'Returning' and I read out the opening page of Rebecca as my contribution to the initial responses. Sandy read a stunning poem which referenced her post traumatic shock syndrome from her time as a military doctor. It's poems like that which make me even more eager to read through her latest book which has accompanying poems by her sister. The publication date is December 1st and that is something to look forward to as I have demanded that her sister in the states send copies to Spain as soon as it is published!

           Kate brought up the idea of producing a book which could be a co-operative effort from members past and present of the poetry group. I have thought about this and so was able to share my ideas about how to make it a practical reality. This is something which can see a publication by the Spring (or more likely early summer) of next year. I hope that I will be allowed to edit the publication and see it through its various stages of production.

          The OU course continues and I am finding out just how little I know about the Renaissance – which I have said before, but each new day merely shows how superficial my previous knowledge was!

          This week sees me making a tentative start on the long three-part essay-like assignment that we have to complete. Other events and meetings are stacking up in the time left for its completion so I will have to exercise a certain amount of discipline about how I spend my time if it is to be done to my satisfaction.

          Another factor claiming time is the work (now delayed by still sitting in a folder on my desk) about the early history of swimming in public pools, which should, in time, link up with the previous work that I have done on Guevara and his paintings. It is getting to the stage where I will need to produce one of those 'fantastic' timetables that I am only forced into drawing up when there is already too little time left to do what I want to do. The notorious one that I drew up for my finals actually proved to me that I didn't have anything like enough time left to revise with anything like the thoroughness that I had intended to use. Still, lots to do – including filling out the absurdly long form for my pension. Though, thinking about it, I was able to use it as part of a poem for my next book!

Now, enough writing indulgence, time to start work.