Spanish shame!

So, as we wake up to another brightly dull day where rain is threatening even if it is not actually falling, what have we achieved in Catalonia after the referendum?

Most importantly, a clear indication of the signal failure of Rajoy and his authoritarian government.  They pledged to stop the referendum and it took place.  They used every trick in the book short of sending in the army and it failed to stop 42% of the electorate turning out for what Rajoy called an “illegal” vote.  Given the obstacles put in the way of voting, the fact that over two million people in Catalonia turned out to vote is a triumph of the people over an uncaring repressive central authority.

The actions of the Spanish National Police that have left at least 844 people injured, two seriously, will haunt the popular imagination for years to come.  When you see pictures of armoured baton-wielding policemen laying into young and old alike; women being pulled by the hair along the streets; people thrown down stairs; voters being kicked and thumped, the adjectives to describe such scenes that come to mind are not those used by our ridiculous President of “firmness and serenity”.

Rajoy must resign at once. 

He won’t of course because he and his corrupt party feel themselves to be above the law and indeed they create their own reality.  Rajoy spoke to the nation and explained that, “there had been no referendum today”.  Rajoy is a master of Political Photoshop where uncomfortable reality can be rejigged through his own weasel words into something more in keeping with his distorted world view.

I have just been informed that an older man who had heart failure in the disturbances caused by the Spanish National Police has now died.  While he was being given resuscitation the voters who had formed a protective ring around those giving assistance were attacked by an armoured police officer who smashed his way into the cordon and people fell on the injured man.  All of this was captured on film and it joins a series of unacceptable views of violence.  Perhaps more significantly, I can find nothing on television to suggest that this story (found on Twitter) is actually correct.  The violence towards the man has been captured on film and I have seen it, but the death is perhaps one of those rumours that we are going to have to get used to during the next few days and weeks as what is a volatile political situation feeds on the truth and half truth that has the potential to rip Spain apart.

If you have not seen what violence Rajoy and his PP government encouraged against peaceful voters then check the link below, and then write to your MP demanding that they condemn the behaviour of a WESTERN EUROPEAN NATION, a member of the EU and UNO, against its own citizens!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/oct/01/catalan-referendum-hundreds-injured-as-police-attack-protesters-video?CMP=share_btn_link

A Rant!

The Trouble with present day Spain is that there is not enough politics.

That statement may appear on the surface to be a little strange.  We are governed by one of the most corrupt political parties in Western Europe; the number of officials, associates, patrons and general moneyed riff-raff connected to PP that have been, are being or are going to be tried is astonishing.  The Prime Minister has just given evidence in a corruption scandal involving the finance of his party (in which all previous treasurers have been indicted); a previous PP associate and head of a bankrupt bank has just committed suicide; a previous head of the PP government of Valencia has died before she could be investigated thoroughly - well, you get the idea.  Each day brings new scandals and precisely nothing of moment is done about them.

The present government is a minority one.  We have over the past couple of years plodded our weary way through a few elections where the left has thrown away its advantage and allowed the corrupt PP with the help of the sluttish C’s and the abstention of the so-called socialist party PSOE to form a government which has done precisely nothing to remedy the corruption which is rife in the system - how can they when they are precisely the ones who would suffer if anything substantial could be done.

A clear example of the compromised system that we have is clearly illustrated by the Prime Minister giving his evidence.  He was dragged into the Gürtel Case

(you can find out more about this astonishing case here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCrtel_case ) much against the wishes of the governing party as you can imagine.  However, the Prime Minister did agree to give evidence, but we soon discovered that he was not going to give evidence in quite the same way as other witnesses.

You have to imagine the scene: the body of the courtroom in front of the judges is taken up with seats for the accused and a section for the press.  As there are so many accused they leave no room for virtually anyone else.  Each witness sits at a little desk with a microphone, directly in front of the judges.  Behind them are the motley faces of those thieves accused of stealing over a billion euros from the public purse, and of illegally financing PP and its various elections.  They make a gruesome backdrop of grafters, most of whom are personally known to the Prime Minister.  It does not however make a particularly Prime Ministerial setting (though one that I think is totally accurate for the debased reputation of our glorious leader) and there is also an aspect of guilt by association (!) in such a setting.

So, Rajoy did not come openly to court.  He arrived as part of a cavalcade in a car with tinted windows and entered the court via the judges’ entrance that gave him direct access without having to confront the protesters who had been waiting for this moment to hurl accusations against him.

Inside the court, things were different for him.  There were no accused in the massed seats in court.  They were all empty.  He was not asked to take the place where all other witnesses gave their evidence.  Instead he was given a little desk in line with the seating of the three judges!  His background was empty of any bad associates with whom his party has done ‘business’ for years.  Talk about a set up.

But because of the lack of real politics in Spain, the ruling PP is able to get away with things like this.  It is essential to stress that although PP has the largest party in parliament, it does not have an overall majority.  It can be voted down.  It should, in my view, be voted down.  But, politics does not seem to extend any further for most political parties than their own party concerns.  The idea that they have been elected by actual people to serve the country in parliament seems more like a joke in poor taste than a crushing accusation.

Politics in the art of the possible, and I know that there always have to be unsavoury compromises to get things done.  But in Spain at the moment, there is a lot of frenetic activity and lots and lots of high words and angry exchanges but still, THINGS DO NOT GET DONE.  That is an accusation that lies squarely at the feet of the politicians who seem unable to do politics.

I know that the election of 45 as POTUS shows that no matter how appalling your behaviour and outrageous your statements and low your morals, you can be elected to high position.  Brexit has shown that completely unscrupulous scaremongering and out and out lies can get you cabinet positions and the love and care of the gutter press.  Truth, morality, honesty, and ethics - all seem to be olde-worlde relics of a yesteryear that didn’t exist.  I know that a world of ‘alternative facts’ makes for dizzying reassessment of what is possible, but still, politics is supposed to take account of ‘events, dear boy, events’ and those include ways of thinking and ways of behaving.

Although it is glaringly clear to me that our government is irremediably corrupt and is totally unable and unwilling to reform itself and must therefore be removed, I am also aware that something like 30% of the voting population would be prepared to vote for PP if an election was called tomorrow!  It is difficult to imagine a worse few years of unrelentingly bad publicity for PP as the ones that I have watched.  Secret accounts, kick-backs, black money, illegal funding of buildings, campaigns, accounts in tax havens, lies, duplicity, sedition, collusion - you name it, and somewhere in PP you can find it!  And 30% will still vote for them!

The right wing C’s party (the political sluts of Spanish politics) generally supports PP, while making pathetic mewling noises about how independent they are and what they are achieving for the country!  They complicate things.  In my view a vote for the C’s is a vote for PP, and generally speaking they vote with them.  Their cowardly approach is to ask for commissions of investigation rather than vote against the government and bring it down.

PSOE (the so-called socialist party) has undergone its own self immolation with a widely divisive leadership election where the previous leader who lost a lot of seats in a previous election resigned, and then found a certain amount of backbone and suddenly appeared as a candidate for the new leadership which he, amazingly won.  However, they are far more concerned with abstention rather than voting against the government because they have a very real fear about what might happen in any general election that they force!

I think our present situation could have been avoided a couple of three elections ago by parties working together, but ineptitude, political ineptitude made that impossible and so we have had years of the same corrupt government that daily has to become even more corrupt to keep itself in power.

I also know that there is nothing to be gained by saying ‘if we had’ in politics because, that verb tense shows that the past is gone.  We have to deal in the present and, in my view, the political parties, especially on the left, are not doing enough to provide the country with a viable alternative to what we already have.

To say nothing of what is happening here in Catalonia.

 

In October we will have a referendum about independence.  Our government has said that if there is a majority for independence (no matter how many people vote) then the government of Catalonia will start the process of disengaging with Spain within 48 hours of the vote.

The Spanish government has declared the vote illegal.  A previous vote (overwhelmingly in favour of independence) saw the President of Catalonia charged and convicted in a court of law for holding a democratic election.  He has been barred from public office and has been fined.  PP has said that it will do everything that it can to stop the vote.  The Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal and the Catalan government has responded by saying that they will disregard the rulings, which prohibit the vote.

Again, I ask, where are the politics?  Where was the renegotiation of the relationship between the Spanish central government and the region of Catalonia?  Where were the mollifying words about rethinking the relationship of the two entities?  Where was the suggestion that a referendum could be held some time in the future after a process of rethinking the present positions?  Nowhere is the answer.  PP went straight for denial and rejection.  Everything the Madrid PP government does makes new independentists each day.

In my heart I would like to see a Spain united and strong, with an association of regions with a dynamic relationship with central government.  But PP has in the past and seems bent in the future of being absolutist and obstructionist.  They seem to be actively seeking confrontation - to do what?  Send in the tanks?  Disenfranchise the whole of the Catalan government?  Impose direct rule?

Spain, and more particularly Catalonia, is my home.  I am concerned about how this country within a country sees its future.  My status is already under real threat from the idiocy that is Brexit, my position could become even more problematical after the October vote - or before, depending on how far and how stupidly a myopic central government feels that it can act.

So where, to come back to my starting point, are Politics?  And why aren’t they being used for what they should be used for: to provide a government of the people, for the people, by the people.

Are the politicians listening?

Have they ever thought of trying politics?

 

There was a two-and-a-half hour meeting between the laughable (yet viciously contemptible) President of Spain, leader of the corrupt and corrupting PP group in parliament and the leader of the opposition and general secretary of the so-called socialist party PSOE.  The President does not have an overall majority in Parliament, but is able to govern because of the supine attitude of PSOE who (incredibly) abstained during the last vote of confidence against the government, and the active support of C’s the right wing sluts of Spanish politics.

God knows there is more than enough for these two ‘leaders’ to talk about ranging from the rampant corruption that marks the way that politics is lived in this country to the crucifyingly high youth unemployment rate; the rising numbers of the poor and dispossessed to the rising cost of living.  And much, much more.  But the pressing problem at the moment (leaving aside their own real failings and those of their parties) is Catalonia.

 

On the first of October of this year the government of Catalonia has said that it is going to hold a referendum asking the simple question of the population of if they are in favour of forming and independent republic of Catalonia.  If the vote is positive, the government has said that it will start the formal process of withdrawing from Spain within days of the vote.

This is not the first vote that Catalonia has had.  There was a previous vote where the overwhelming majority of those who voted, voted for independence.  The qualifications in that last sentence are important.

The PP government in Madrid said that such a vote was illegal.  The question was referred to various courts including the Constitutional and High and all of them ruled that the vote was both illegal and invalid.  The government did not allow government buildings to be used to facilitate the vote; voter registration lists were denied to the organizers; various threats were made about the participation of any civil servants; there was a propaganda war against the government of Catalonia.

The vote was held and I voted.  The result was dismissed by the same government that had done all it could to make the holding of the vote difficult.  Considering the difficulties and the opposition, the turnout was remarkable.

The government in Madrid prosecuted the president of Catalonia for holding a democratic vote and he had to go to court.  He was found guilty and was banned from taking part in public political life for two years.  The Spanish government was a laughing stock for being seen as such an active opponent of democracy.

We have had the same sort of build up by the Spanish government for the next vote.  Legal arguments have been made and various courts have pronounced on the essential illegality of holding a democratic vote.  Our joke president of Spain has said that the only legal vote would be one in which the whole country of Spain takes part.  So, for example, the recent vote about Scottish independence, according to the rules of the Spanish government, would have been open to the voters of the entire United Kingdom England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - and not restricted to Scotland!  Absurd and ridiculous.

There has been some bellicose talk, with one minister in the past referring to the use of tanks!  But surely, even at this late stage, politicians could try politics to work out their problems?

I am constantly amazed by how little politicians in this country actually use politics to try and diffuse situations.  Their first loyalties are to party and not to country, and their nauseating repetition of platitudes fails to hide the paucity of ideas to take Spain forward.

 

Our television screens give us a daily diet of graphic depictions of corruption largely unchecked by what passes for Justice here.  The politicisation (in the worst sense of the word) of daily life of the rich and the powerful means that they evade the consequences of their actions.  Ministers refuse to resign in spite of votes in parliament and reams of evidence against them; proven criminals walk free from prisons; liars and thieves pay eye-wateringly large sums of money IN CASH to get out of prison; some convicted liars and thieves have yet to be put away.  But, speak in the ‘wrong way’ about the Roman Church, or the police, or the royal family, or make jokes in poor taste about ETA and you will find that ‘justice’ in this country can be swift and exemplary.  We have laws that ensure that if an individual films say, police brutality, then the person taking the film will be prosecuted before the offenders!

This is a country where a government grant is given to the Franco Foundation (sic.) but the same government is proud that it has not given a penny to fund the work of scientists who are trying to discover the DNA and therefore the identity of those who were murdered during the Civil War and thrown into common graves. 

 

Recently, a 92-year-old woman was able to bury the remains of her murdered father after an Argentinian organization funded the DNA work.  In her moving responses on television she expressed her gratitude that she was finally able to give her father the burial respect that he deserved, but she pointedly said that she gave no thanks at all to the Spanish PP government as they had done nothing at all to help.

Catalonia has banned bull fighting in the region and refused it regional finance; the Spanish PP government has tried to get bull fighting listed as of national historic importance and part of the patrimony of mankind and, where it is in power, it has financed it.  You go to the Plaza de España in Barcelona and the historic bullring there has been converted into a shopping centre. 

 

That just about sum up the attitude of many Catalans to the central government.

In my view the Spanish government seems set for a showdown with Catalonia, which is going to achieve nothing - except to harden attitudes on both sides.

I would give Catalonia a referendum.  Not immediately, but I would commit to holding one in the near future.  I would then work with the Catalan government to restructure the relationship between the Generalitat and Madrid.  Having drawn up a new map for the relationship between the two, then I would hold a referendum using the new relationship to urge voters to go with a united Spain.

There are many foreigners in Catalonia.  Not only those from other countries of the EU and the rest of the world, but also those specifically  including important sources of immigration from Morocco, China and Russia.  There are many from the ex-colonies of Spain and Portugal in South America.  To many those Spanish citizens from outside Catalonia (and there are many in this region) are also foreign.  I am sure that a renewed relationship, a more equitable relationship could be sold easily to unconvinced Catalans and a majority of ‘foreigners’ who are uneasy about the position of an independent republic of Catalonia.

But the government of PP shows no sign of reasonableness, shows no sign of being able to listen sympathetically to justified complaints.  As is not unusual with sides entrenched in positions because of years of intransigence, it looks as though, as usual, lack of political nous will ensure disaster.

And that brings me to Brexit.

But this post has been depressing enough without that!

Tomorrow I will be more cheerful.  Honestly!

People behaving badly

Even though I knew that it was going to happen, I am still sick to my stomach that the leader of a systemically corrupt party that blatantly parades its criminality has been re-elected to continue its grasping misgovernment of Spain for another four years. 

It is in place, not because it won a majority of the votes in the country, but rather because of an unholy alliance between its worthless self and the New Right in form of the laughingly termed Citizens’ Party, the Cs.  Even this combination of the right was insufficient to give it a majority and so it has relied on the Socialists to implode and give it a numerical majority in the parliamentary vote by abstaining.

I should point out that there were 15 members of the ‘socialist’ party of PSOE who had enough self-respect to ignore the questionable shenanigans which led to the resignation of the leader and his replacement with some sort of committee which then negotiated some sort of shameful submission via strategic abstention which has created this worthless minority government.

This is a holiday period when the eating of horsechestnuts, the drinking of sweet white wine and the consumption of pine nut encrusted cakes is obligatory.  The happiness of a convivial family occasion was soured by the shameful spectacle of a group of ‘left-wing’ elected representatives signally failing to do their duty or even to be true to the basic tenets of their political affiliation.

 There is nothing worse than listening to a group of politicians who are clearly far more interested in their own political survival than anything to do with the well being of the country that they have been elected to serve. 

It is painfully clear, and has become even more so as the months have passed and the left failed to make the alliances that would have secured a progressive government, that the ‘socialists’ are far more worried about a government that might reveal the depths of their own incompetence and corruption, or even worse, might force an election in which even more of their number might find themselves without a cosy place in parliament, than any concern they might have about the quality of government they were allowing to form itself after their abnegation of responsibility.  (You have to say that last sentence all in one breath and through gritted teeth!)

PSOE cannot afford to have an election before the four years of this government’s allotted span has been passed and they might have had time to lick their wounds and present a more wholesome picture of themselves towards a doubting electorate.  If they ‘try and hold the government to account’ all PP have to do is threaten an election, and PSOE will scuttle back into supine acquiescence to the Conservative government’s will, terrified of the consequences of their past actions being put to a frankly cynical electorate.

I have absolutely no confidence that PSOE will push forward a reforming parliament and every confidence that they will continue to show the moral cowardice that has resulted in a minority PP regime, again.

As far as I am concerned, the real and moral opposition to the sick triple alliance of PP, Cs and PSOE (with 15 honourable exceptions) is Podemos.  And I further hope that they will take the initiative and show up the paucity of political will that characterises PSOE.  It will also be an opportunity for Cs to put up or shut up after all their talk of transparency and fighting corruption.

I have set the bar so low with the present government that they will have to do very little indeed to gain some grudging approbation from me: allow all the court cases which have seen swathes of PP in court to answer charges; allow the court case against the Infanta and her grasping husband; let all the other PP corruption cases work their way unfettered through the courts; expel corrupt PP politicians and allow past PP politicians to be charged with the crimes with which they have been accused; remove the totally unfair exemptions for certain people from the rigour of the justice system; bring in new transparency laws – that will do for starters.  I might add that getting rid of a seditious minister should be something of a priority, but this government doesn’t think so.  Which, of course, doesn’t really bode well for what they are going to do now and in the future.

Writing about anything else on an evening when so sad an act of political and moral cowardice has been slowly acted out on our television would be inappropriate.  But, as there is every likelihood that we will have to live with the consequences for four long years, there will plenty of time to dredge what positive I can from what looks like a truly depressing political situation and to find solace in other more positive aspects of Spanish and Catalan life.

Little and often!

I've worked out that, when I finally get my Spanish “pension” (it really is so small that it doesn't deserve to be allowed to exist without quotation marks) it will be the equivalent of getting a fiver every day for breakfast – perhaps a bit more, but I'm allowing for inflation and Brexit! Which is much better, as I always say, than having to pay a fiver a day before breakfast! And I get it just for being alive!

     I expect that this delight will wear off and I will get back to the more grimy realities of life rather than spending my time rhapsodising about something which is boringly predictable, and for which I have paid throughout my working life. But, I have to come back to the point that pensions are magical when they happen. Magical that is, as long as you have been fortunate enough to gain access to a scheme which gives you a living return. And of course where you are still living to enjoy it.

     However, enough of that (though I cannot guarantee that I will not wax lyrical when I actually feel the putative money in my hot little hands) and on to more serious things.

     The political situation in the UK is depressing to put it mildly. Not only are Conservative stalking the corridors of power under the delusion that they have coherent policies to govern the country, but also an unelected PM is gibbering about education as if she has been caught in a 1950s time loop! In desperation I look towards my adopted country to show signs of sanity.

      Fat chance of that.

     After two inconclusive General Elections, Spain is still umpteen months into trying to form a government. Meanwhile we have a government in functions to continue the outward appearance of competence. Unfortunately this is being attempted by PP, the Conservative Party of Spain which is, to any reasonable viewer, totally and irremediably corrupt. And brazen about it too. I urge you to put “PP” and “corruption” into Google and see what you come up with.

     The sheer number of cases of corruption involving PP is astonishing. Don't get me wrong, other political parties on the left and centre as well as the right are corrupt, but they are nothing compared with the epic corruption shown by the party of 'government'!

     And what of the left, the opposition? In the Way of the Left they are at each other's throats. The major opposition party, PSOE has not gained enough seats in either election to form an alternative government of the left. To be the government they would have to pact with another party or ask for abstentions from other parties when the election of a President occurs.

     In the first election PSOE could have pacted with Podemos (a new party of the left) and they would have had an overall majority. Instead, after the election, Podemos was filled with elation and suggested a pact in which they would become partners in government and stipulated which ministries they wanted all the while waving a positive book of legislation that they wanted to get through in double quick time! PSOE (especially the so/called Barons or leaders of the party) were horrified at what they saw as the presumption of a bunch of Johnny come lately leftie extremists.

Podemos was also in favour of giving Catalonia a referendum on independence and therefore this was an added, and for many in PSOE a clinching reason for retreating from any agreement with what in politics counts as alacrity.

     Instead PSOE pacted with C's, another new party of the right. This 'brilliant' strategy did not give the combined parties an overall majority and the C's were anathema to Podemos and so in the Presidential election in parliament both PP and Podemos voted against. Stalemate. New elections.

     Amazingly, in the new elections, PP (The Putrid Party) after a series of revelations which showed the systemic nature of corruption at all levels in the party, actually gained votes! People, ordinary people, always have the capacity to astonish. C's lost some votes and Podemos gained some but, and this is why we are still without a government, there is still difficulty in forming a government with an overall majority.

     PP (sic!) have the largest number of votes but no overall majority. The C's (the political sluts of Spain) having pacted with PSOE on the left, now switched to the right and voted with PP for the old President. Everybody else voted against and therefore we had no new government.

     The left, i.e. PSOE and Podemos now no longer can combine and form an overall majority, they would need the abstention of the C-s sluts or the active support of other small independence parties.     A big no no for PSOE.

     The situation, as it draws itself out, grows more complicated. Recent elections in Galicia and the Basque Country did not work out well for PSOE and so, over the last few days some senior members of the party have resigned from the executive committee trying to cause the resignation of the current party leader. Other members of PSOE have been murmuring about abstaining during the next presidential vote. Everything seems to suggest that Rajoy and PP will form the next government. The left seems incapable of seeing the big picture, that a continuing government of Rajoy and PP will be an out and out disaster for Spain and they need to bury differences and work something out which keeps Rajoy out too.

 

     I have no confidence that people will see sense. I think that party loyalty is something which is far too important to far too many people, and the fate of the country runs a very unconvincing second best to party|personal gain. It is a depressing realisation, but I think it is all too accurate.

But the sun is shining and I was able to do a little light sunbathing. So, at the moment, not everything is ill in the world!