Tag Archives: El Mundo

Justifying political violence in Spain and Catalonia

Two cases in the couple of weeks have resurrected the spectre of political violence in Spain. At least, they have if you’re a right-winger. Firstly, the man responsible for destroying the PSC – Pere Navarro – was insulted and ‘punched’ while attending a mystic ritual in Terrassa’s main temple. He and his party, along with the rest of the Spanish right, immediately leapt on the incident as a sign of the ‘atmosfera de crispació’ – ‘increasing social tension caused by the pro-referendum sentiment in Catalonia’ (paraphrased). Navarro himself did the rounds the next day, telling anyone who would listen that he was ‘convinced’ that the attack had something to do with the independence movement. No evidence for this link, of course, except that the woman who attacked Navarro called him “un grandíssim fill de puta”. (Turns out she was someone who had argued with Navarro for years about Terrassa’s town hall’s Catalan flag being dirty – she denies hitting Navarro).

This week the PP’s cacique in León, Isabel Carrasco was shot dead in the street, in what some English commentators referred to as an ‘assassination’ [false friend? or does any murder of a politician automatically equal assassination? I think the motive has to be political rather than personal]. This time, the right blamed the killing on the ‘atmosfera de crispación’ in Spain, whereby politicians are regularly jeered and insulted and in which anti-austerity protests have targeted politicians’ homes (‘escraches’ – a form of protest I thoroughly support). El Mundo’s editorial to this effect was published even though everyone already knew that the murder was almost certainly the result of a personal vendetta. The two suspected murderers are both also members of the PP.

Now politicians and newspapers trying to take advantage of farce or tragedy is nothing new. In fact, it’s practically chapter 1 in the politics playbook (Spain edition). In this case, however, conservative forces have responded in identical ways to two significantly different incidents. And they way they have responded tells us a lot about the way they think. There is a determination on the side of the Spanish right that any political movement which acts in opposition to its central policies is inherently a destabilising factor which is capable of violence. Multiple parties here talk about ‘tensions’ and ‘division’ in society (never along class lines, of course: always along political or ethnic lines) – as a sort of intentional self-fulfilling prophecy.

There’s a subtext to all this talk of potential and actual violence in the Catalan and Spanish political scene, and it’s not aimed at the left. When El Mundo effectively says that a murder is the natural result of anti-austerity protests, it is not just trying to win political points. There is a subtle implication behind Navarro’s words and El Mundo’s editorial. The implication is that ‘in the current climate’, political violence is inevitable. Inevitable and therefore, to be expected. Expected and therefore, to a certain degree, justified.

Latest allegations in the Bárcenas case: Rajoy stays put

The most recent allegations made in the PP corruption case, first over last weekend in El Mundo and today in court, have been explosive. Luís Bárcenas, having denied that he wrote the alleged ‘B accounting’ books of the PP, today admitted that they were his work. He deposited digital copies of – apparently – all the documents related to the case with the judge. He went on to claim that Rajoy and party secretary Maria Dolores de Cospedal did receive cash payments from his slush fund in  2008, 2009 and 2010, totalling €90,000.

Rajoy, in a dodgy press conference tactic, took a question from the friendly ABC newspaper instead of from El Mundo, and read a prepared statement. He won’t resign. Of course he won’t. And nobody was expecting that he would. But the PSOE has again called for his immediate resignation. They’re also trying to get enough cross-party support for a censure motion against Rajoy in parliament. I can’t see how this would achieve anything but a symbolic defeat because the PP has an absolute majority.

If Rajoy has one political instinct, it is to ignore everything and carry on regardless. While often seen as burying his head in the sand, El Jueves had a better metaphor for the man today.

 El Jueves - Rajoy no dimite

But stepping back from the excitement of what seem to be such clear grounds for Rajoy’s resignation, we’re faced with two problems. The first is the source of all this information: Luís Bárcenas. The problem with him is that he’s clearly – evidently – a very dishonest man. So why should we trust him now when half of what he denied previously he now admits? The same goes for El Mundo and its crusading editor, Pedro J. Ramírez. El Mundo has a decent reputation for exposing some big corruption cases. But Pedro J.R. is a PP sectarian who loathes Rajoy. He also pushed bizarre conspiracy theories about the 11M bombings for years, and backed them up with some alleged documentary evidence.

So should we trust Bárcenas and El Mundo this time? Well, the question is whether we trust the documentary evidence that Bárcenas has apparently submitted to the court today. He now says it is a full secondary accounting system which he maintained (why? self preservation?) as he handed over millions of Euros in unregistered donations to party officials over 20 years. Trusting this evidence is key. So why do I?

Well, because two PP officials have already admitted to receiving these ‘extra payments’. Eugenio Nasarre and Pío García Escudero both made this admission in May. To now say that the documents that Bárcenas has produced are false would suggest a conspiracy at a much higher level, including various PP officials in an incredibly elaborate anti-Rajoy plot. No, the more believable version is that Bárcenas, realising he has no protection whatsoever from the party he gave so many years to, has  decided to sink them all.

And this leads us to the second problem. Assuming we do trust the ledger books, what other corroborating evidence is there? It will be easy for Rajoy, Cospedal et al to insist that whatever the court says, the documents are false. They could string this case out for decades. So we need some evidence other than the ledgers and it’s still not clear that Bárcenas has this. The PP has talked about releasing tax statements for all its MPs to prove their immaculate record. This, naturally, is insulting. If they want us to believe that their tax records prove that they didn’t get envelopes full of cash, they’re sorely mistaken.

So this is where we are: what seems to be clear incrimination for the head of Spain’s government, and no solution in sight. We can only hope that Bárcenas has something else hidden under his blanket.

El Mundo’s corruption allegations – a November surprise

A few days ago, the pro-PP Spanish newspaper El Mundo published a story indicating that Artur Mas and Jordi Pujol were under suspicion of having secret Swiss bank accounts filled with money gained through corrupt practices linked to the Palau criminal case. The newspaper presented a police memo which suggested that these suspicions were already under court investigation.

In the days that have followed, Mas and Pujol have opened legal proceedings against the journalists behind the story and they’ve repeatedly denied the accusations. At the same time, they’ve asked the Spanish ministry of justice to explain how an apparently secret police report could have been leaked, and to identify who’s responsible. The judge investigating the Palau corruption case also made clear that he hadn’t been given any such police report. The following day, El Mundo accused the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s police force, of helping to destroy evidence linked to the case. The seo uk agency are also opening legal proceedings against the newspaper.

Yesterday, the ministry of justice informed the Catalan newspaper ARA that it couldn’t find the original police report but that it seemed to be at least partly based on several different unofficial reports that it has found. Meanwhile, the same ministry informed the EFE agency that it thought the rest of the info on the mysterious police report could well be sourced from internet rumours, and not from any formal investigation. The rumours, not hard to find online, contain several names linked with the Catalan government. Many of the other names implicated are of senior PP officials in various central or autonomous governments. El Mundo did not publish any of these names in its story.

El Mundo has a mixed record when it comes to political revelations. In the past it helped uncover corruption scandals and government involvement with the GAL terrorist group. More recently, it spent months insisting that ETA was involved in the 11M Madrid bombings, despite a lack of evidence. Historically, El Mundo’s targets for these exposés have been either politically neutral civil servants or political opponents of the PP.

Right now, it’s not clear how this story will develop. Is it possible that Mas and Pujol have actually received funds from corrupt public contract deals? Of course it is. But the absence of an actual police report on which the story depends, and irregularities in the info presented by El Mundo suggest that there is at least a chance that this might not join the ranks of El Mundo’s illustrious investigations. Some police sources apparently blame central government HQ for the leaks.

El Mundo most likely planned this story as a sort of late ‘October surprise’. Will it have any effect on the Catalan elections? I doubt it.

More strife for Madrid PP

We returned from Australia on Sunday and have been busy relaxing and working since then. More on the trip at a later date.

Another heart-warming story about how mental Esperanza Aguirre is. It seems that the deputy mayor of Madrid, Manuel Cobo, and one or two other key PP officials in the Comunidad Autonoma have been spied on by a secret unit set up by Aguirre’s security ape, Francisco Granados.

Cobo was allegedly followed for six months by retired Guardia Civil officers who compiled complex dossiers on him and Aguirre’s deputy,Ignacio González.

The deputy mayor filed a lawsuit yesterday, seeking to identify who’s behind the surveillance. Meanwhile, Aguirre’s office is complaining that the allegations are nothing more than a plot to ‘attack and demolish’ Aguirre herself.

Call me biased but I’d be highly surprised if Aguirre (and possibly Aznar’s FAES) weren’t 100% behind this latest incident of shady PP politics. Aguirre’s campaign to be named the next party leader (even if it means splitting the PP in two) will apparently stop at nothing. Or is this just about Caja Madrid?

Oh, and Graeme has a story about El Mundo tricking another PP official into posing for a series of ‘seductive’ photos, and thus drawing criticism from within the party. Caution: highly explicit descriptions.

My nation is strong, your nation is shit

It has been a while since I touched on anything connected to the political/cultural temperature around here. I do have one pet theory that I’ve been chewing over for a few months now. It’s not a particularly original idea so any of you who know the proper cultural studies term for it should let me know. I decided to write this after seeing the hilariously tragic TeleMadrid video over at South of Watford.

I’ll start off by reiterating that I’m not a Catalan nationalist. I oppose nationalism in general as it doesn’t really fit with any of my other beliefs and often seems to be a divisive concept. In this way, I also oppose Spanish, French and British nationalism. At the same time, I do not like the idea of a mono-cultured, mono-linguistic world where people’s cultural differences are erased in the name of ‘peace’. It wouldn’t work and we’d lose a lot of what makes humanity so interesting.

Anyway, my theory is pretty simple. People who come from dominant, mono-cultured, mono-linguistic nation states are generally less sympathetic to the culture and ‘nationality’ of smaller, less dominant regions and countries.

At the same time, the most strident opponents of nationalism are nearly always from countries with very strong and safe nationalisms*. Example: John at Iberian Notes. He’s an intelligent guy who sees absolutely no contradiction in slamming any and all movements which seek to promote Catalan culture, identity or autonomy… while at the same time being an extremely noisy cheerleader for American imperialism. His opposition to nationalism seems to go as far as La Franja (and takes in the Basque Country too). When looking at his own country, he seems completely oblivious of the fact that he strongly supports American nationalism. In the past, he has also expressed strong support for Israel (a highly nationalist society) but condemns Palestinian nationalism as dangerous (or ‘terrorist’). And he’s not alone: these are standard and accepted positions.**

Similarly, domestic opposition to Catalan nationalism is nearly always couched in the language of Spanish nationalism. There can be few arguments less logical than ‘down with Catalan nationalism: one language for all Spaniards’, a political movement which is being actively promoted by some Spanish politicians, El Mundo and various Spanish and ex-pat (i.e. British and American) bloggers.

Actually, it is often the ex-pats who are the most strident opponents of Catalan autonomy and culture. In my experience, people born in other areas of Spain who live and work here (often married to a Catalan), speak the language and generally support at least the status quo, and sometimes even the push for further autonomy. It has always been my German, French and British colleagues who find Catalans to be ‘stupid’, ‘silly’, ‘pathetic’ or ‘dangerous’ for insisting on speaking the language they feel most comfortable with. It is no coincidence that the British, French and German states are the world’s most important historical nation-states.

In the end, what it comes down to is the perceived relative strength of one nation against another. If Catalonia were still the great nation it was for about 40 years, they might be the dominant nation-state, mocking the English for not speaking French, or those regionalist losers in Andalucia. They’d probably be just as bad as the British, the French and the Germans are now. And the British, the French and the Germans would no doubt feel the same indignation at being told they should speak another language in the shops on their own street, just to ‘make things easier’.

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*This is not to say that just because someone’s English, she cannot oppose nationalism.

**So, one man’s nation is another man’s region.

On the smudging of the political spectrum

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed when reading opinions from normal American voters (not bloggers – I mean people on forums, Yahoo! Answers and the like) is how confused many of them are when it comes to understanding the political ideas espoused by many of the candidates in the race to become president. For example, the view is often expressed that Hillary Clinton ought not be president because she is a ‘socialist’. Other Democratic candidates are equally dismissed as representing the ‘far-left’ or espousing ‘socialist healthcare’. Several times, I’ve been called a ‘Leninist’, ‘Communist’ or ‘Stalinist’ after questioning the official version of events from Downing Street or the White House. The New York Times, The Guardian and MSNBC News are all regularly referred to as being ‘of the left’, ‘far-left’, ‘socialist’ and even ‘communist’, despite the fact that they are broadly establishment-friendly liberal media outlets. In Spain, Aznar and the FAES-Libertad Digital-El Mundo alliance have regularly referred to the PSOE as ‘the socialists, communists and anarchists’ – language borrowed almost word for word from Franco’s fascist dictatorship.

This phenomenon casts light on two particular points worth looking at. Firstly, that the propaganda of the cold war era still courses through many people’s veins. People still fear socialism in a more primal way than they fear even Islamism or other far-right ideologies. The United States is not at risk of getting a socialist president any time soon, so why is this irrational fear perpetuated? The reason is that the USA represents a spectacularly unequal capitalist society and has all the accompanying problems that might be expected. Rather than noting that socialism might offer a solution to some of these problems (as it clearly does), people are instead encouraged to have a Red Dawn* style view of socialism. The true ‘threat’ of socialism is, of course, an empowered and united labour force.

The second point is that it has become standard practice to label any political opponent who is even slightly to the left of yourself as ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’. Hillary Clinton, on any normal political spectrum, would be regarded as having a centre-right political ideology. But it is not uncommon to hear commentators and citizens alike using the term ‘socialist’ to describe her point of view. And I’m not just talking about Mark Levin or equally perverse ‘shock-jocks’ and fetishists. Mainstream media outlets like Fox News Channel (a channel which, incidentally, spends a lot of time criticising the ‘mainstream media’!) have regularly used terms like ‘socialist healthcare’, ‘socialised education’ and so on as a scare tactic. Actually, public health and education, free at the point of use, are generally accepted now as being good for society, good for business, good for the country. It’s the word ‘social’ which seems to scare people so much. all the while, the right is referred to as merely ‘conservative’.

Spain has had a left of centre government in power for the last four years and despite the PP-FAES-Libertad Digital-El Mundo alliance’s shrill warnings about ‘the end of Spain’, dark terrorist conspiracies and economic collapse, Spain seems to be doing OK. This is the reason why the PP rarely challenges the PSOE on any policy issue except when it touches on concepts of ‘national unity’ and alleged threats to tradition. Rather, they spend their time posturing and holding press conferences, much as they did when they were in power. Despite being from the ‘far left’, the country is doing fine. But I know that this is a story which won’t be told in the United States, where fear of a single word still dominates political discourse.

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*Red Dawn – if you haven’t seen this film, try to download it or something. It’s a fiercely jingoistic anti-Soviet propaganda movie from about 1984 starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, and it recounts the events following a Soviet-Cuban invasion of the United States. I imagine it gave a lot of impressionable teenagers nightmares and a firm hatred of socialism, which was exactly its intention. It’s a pretty terrible film but also quite amusing in parts.