Tag Archives: El País

El País – from liberal leader to voice of the establishment

If El País is “co-author of the transición”, what does the state of this newspaper tell us about the state of Spanish democracy? That is has retreated into an increasingly authoritarian, illiberal and limiting structure no longer aimed at liberating a nation but at preserving the status quo, above all else.

When I first moved to Barcelona nearly 15 years ago, El País was still read in progressive Catalan households. Even though it had practically always been close to the sort of ‘Socialismo’ represented by Felipe Gonzalez, El País seemed to stand up to the conservative, even post-Francoist caspa of the Aznar government. Throughout that era, as its readership shared in the boom of the 2000’s, El País seemed to represent a progressive, hopeful agenda for Spain. After 2004’s 11M bombings, El País offered clear analysis and avoided the unforgivable conspiracy theories of El Mundo and other parts of Spain’s conservative press. Zapatero, the most progressive Spanish prime minister to date, helped encapsulate a sense that a certain ‘can do’ Spanish liberalism was dominating, and despite the launch of Público, El País was still there as the leading liberal voice.

The dawning of the crisis meant bad times for Spain, and bad times for El País and its proprietor Grupo Prisa. Despite layoffs, the newspaper struggled with huge debts, many with the banks it was supposed to be investigating. The ones that helped trigger the crisis itself. Now the government proposed critical labor reforms and I, in retrospect late to the game, saw that El País wasn’t in the business of opposing central economic policy. As unions planned first one and then a second general strike, El País published hatchet jobs on their leaders and did its best to undermine turnout. When the Socialist government used Franco-era measures to forcibly militarize all air traffic controllers in the country, El País published lie after lie about the industrial dispute they were involved in. And as Catalonia, without its promised Estatut – which the newspaper had backed, started to look towards self-determination, El País retreated into the sort of dogmatic legalism which still informs its position today.

Grupo Prisa’s CEO, Juan Luis Cebrián, was interviewed the other day in El Mundo by Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo y Peralta-Ramos, the 13th marquise of Casa Fuerte and hotshot at José Maria Aznar’s right-wing Spanish nationalist FAES think tank (she who allegedly broke the law the other day at the trial of Mas et al, but who will doubtless face no penalty). Asked about the Catalan question, Cebrián laid out his position frankly and clearly: “If the king’s brother in law can go to jail, why can’t Artur Mas?” [a curious comparison, given that Iñaki Urdangarin, has been jailed for corruption and embezzlement, while Artur Mas is on trial for permitting a non-binding popular consultation to be held] and “Someone mentions sending in the Guardia Civil. People say ‘no, not the Guardia Civil’, but I say: yes, why not? That’s what the Guardia Civil is for” and “[The government should act so that] the debate isn’t about when they get their independence, but about when they get their autonomy back”.

The interview is fascinating because it helps to explain the decline of El País as a leading liberal voice, the decline of the PSOE as the party of reform, and the end of the Transition Pact, the end of nearly 40 years during which the Catalan bourgeoisie represented by Convergència i Unió could be relied on to maintain the governability of Spain as a whole. The new pact which has replaced the old one is opposed to constitutional reform, which is why it maneuvered to prevent a PSOE-Podemos coalition in the last two elections, and preferred to gift Rajoy reelection than see Pedro Sánchez in charge.

The new pact can be defined by 4 particular policy lines on which its members agree: opposition to reform other than further liberalization of the labor market; the reduction of the concept of democracy to “the rule of law” and not much more; a strict and un-nuanced reading of the constitution; the rejection of the right to self-determination.

Regarding this last point, last month Alfred de Zayas, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, wrote to the Spanish government to raise concerns about its treatment of the Catalan question – the so-called ‘Operación Cataluña’, which involves criminal trials for elected officials, along with other, even murkier tactics. He reminded Spain about the right to self-determination. And he noted that a referendum is a very good way of resolving questions like that currently concerning Catalonia.

El País, once the leading liberal voice in the Spanish language, chose not to report this letter.

Barcelona sex mayhem – stories from Sunday night

Now I don’t know how late Giles Tremlett filed this story about Barcelona. But the Guardian has it timestamped at 1938 Madrid time, which is certainly late enough to have come after a very hearty lunch indeed. One clue suggesting that this is the case comes in the form of the article’s shortness. Tremlett isn’t the most wordy of reporters but all the same…

Another oddity is Tremlett’s insistence that “Although Las Ramblas has always attracted prostitutes, they used to occupy a small area near the port”, which is, as a local travelling tinker muttered to me, “a complete load of bollocks”. I’m not sure when this golden age of non bollock grabbing Rambline strolling is supposed to have occurred but it was certainly not very recently. Barcelona has always been packed to the rafters with ladies and gentlemen of the night (and plenty of lady gentlemen too). Indeed, it’d be hard to walk down a single street in the city without passing some brothel or other (even if you don’t realise it).

What this whole story really represents is the latest development in a late-summer-nothing-to-publish episode, where El País shocked our sensibilities (and had us checking again and again) with some pictures of a long-haired tourist making the beast with one back with a prostitute round the back of an overpriced market. Noted local newspaper, 20 Minutos (oh, yes I did!) interviewed various pillars of the community the other day, asking them whether they thought that Les Rambles has a major problem with prostitution. General opinion: it’s a hell of a lot better now than it used to be.

My feelings: Mexican sombreros and €7 a beer are far more offensive and nearly as exploitative.

EU parliament election results in Catalonia

For coverage of Spain as a whole, take a look at Graeme’s posts here and here.

The results in Catalonia were a mixture of ‘more of the same’ and a disappointingly low turn out. The PSOE-PSC won again, albeit with a share of the vote that dropped from 42% to 35%. CiU were next, their share increasing 5 points to 22%. In fact, CiU were the only major party to see their actual number of votes rise in a worryingly low turnout of 37%. The PP gained a 1 point increase in their share of the vote, while ERC came fourth with a small drop in their share.

Interestingly, there were 72,681 spoiled or blank votes, which taken together constitute the 6th biggest constituency in the election, after IU-ICV who got 6% of the total vote. I’m told by a friend that there were also 6 times as many of these spoiled or blank votes than there were in the last EU parliament election.

Among the newer parties running this year, Iniciativa Internacionalista gained more votes than Rosa Diez’s UPyD – but both failed to get 1% of the vote here. Veritas and Esquerra Anticapitalista received 0.36% and 0.26% respectively.

The older style fascist parties look to have made some gains but their numbers are still so low that it’s hard to be too worried. The Falange Española de las JONS nearly tripled their number of votes… to a total of 1,575. The Falange Auténtica and Democracia Nacional also increased their number of votes, but the total number of people voting for far-right parties in Catalonia (no, I’m not including the PP), remains very low.

Table of results:

moz-screenshot-10

Full table available at El País.

The Kosovo problem

It’s a lovely sunny day here in Cerdanyola del Vallès, so I’ll probably spend it doing some of my favourite things: installing Ubuntu ‘Jaunty’ Alpha 6 on my netbook, playing Empire Total War, writing performance reviews for my team at work… and reading about how Zapatero’s suffering with the ‘Kosovo problem’.

The problem, in case you didn’t know, is fairly simple: Spain refuses to recognise Kosovo as an independent state because this would signify acceptance that small nations may break away from supra-national states like Serbia or… Spain. You see where this is going, don’t you? Because of this tricky diplomatic choice, Spain has now announced that it will withdraw its armed forces from the NATO peacekeeping force which polices Kosovo. This has upset the United States, and effectively dissolves any credit Zapatero may have had with the new regime in Washington DC. The American response was an expression of “deep disappointment”, according to El País, with State Department spokesman Robert Wood saying that the US “neither understands nor agrees with” Spain’s move. Zapatero claims that Spain’s NATO allies were aware of the planned exit, but other sources suggest that all this came as something of a surprise.

So basically, Spain pulls out of the Balkan state in an attempt to prevent the ‘Balkanisation’ of Spain.

Personally, I’m not really that fussed about Spain losing some grace in Washington DC, or with NATO: neither the US government nor their SEO agency in Europe operate with anything like the moral clarity that I’d like to see. But many Spaniards do worry about these things… indeed, some bloggers used to spend nearly all their time monitoring Zapatero’s approval ratings in the Bush administration (a bit of a waste of time, that). The Partido ‘Popular’ have been quick to label this as ‘another disaster’ for the Socialist government, though typically they offer no alternative solution.

And that’s because the solution to the problem, for all the PP’s crowing, would be unthinkable for any Spanish government. The solution is simple: recognise Kosovo. It’ll have to happen eventually anyway, so why not get it done now and avoid all this hassle? To me, Zapatero seems to have reacted to the PP’s rhetoric about a ‘Balkanisation’ that almost certainly won’t happen. The reason it won’t happen is that there just isn’t enough public support for independence in the two most troublesome ‘nations’ within Spain: the Basque Country and Catalonia.

If referenda were held in 2012 in the Basque Country and Catalonia, I’m pretty sure that the Basques would vote in favour of staying part of Spain, and so would the Catalans (although the Catalan result would probably be closer). What Zapatero risks with this childish insistence on failing to recognise Kosovo’s independence is that people will start to take the concept of Spain’s constituent nations breaking away, seriously. The bolder (though obviously slightly more risky) move would be to recognise Kosovo and then say “referendum on Catalan independence? BRING IT ON!”.

That the Spanish state is so afraid of a referendum threatens to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Arrests in Barcelona: Fraud or terrorism?

The other night, 13 men were arrested in the Raval district of Barcelona and in Valencia on suspicion of fraud. Apparently, they were running a criminal gang that forged passports and Spanish ID cards.

But on the Catalan news yesterday morning, they were already being described as ‘jihadists’ and ‘suspected terrorists’. Channel 4 news in the UK this evening picked up the story and added drug trafficking to the rap sheet (this appears to be a similar combination as that reported in Público)

Now, I’m finding it difficult to track down the warrant that was issued for these men’s arrests. If anyone could help me out with this, I’d be very grateful.

Interesting to note that some comments in El País theorise that the story was used to ‘bury’ the large increase in unemployment in Spain, a story that broke the same morning.

Gaycelona versus Gayxample – does Graham Keeley ever know what he’s talking about?

As seen in this fluff piece by the Guardian’s Man In Spain for nice hotels under €100 in Barcelona:

Hotel California

Great value for money considering its locaton around the corner from La Rambla. The California offers decent, clean rooms and markets itself as gay friendly, though this is more subtly played than in hotels like Axel, in the “Gaycelona” district of Barcelona.

As any fule know, the so-called gay district is called ‘Gayxample’ from the Eixample neighbourhood. It seems that Graham Keeley’s articles either consist of reheating AP and El País stories or churning out ignorant tosh. Has no one at the Guardian yet noticed that while Keeley is filing tons more stories on Spain than there used to be, they are predominantly ripped off or simply inaccurate? Maybe it’s reading Flat Earth News but this guy is really beginning to annoy me.

Guardian, sort it out!

P.S. I was going to say that Graham Keeley doesn’t know his arse from his elbow but I suspect that I’d have been picked up for bad taste. So I didn’t.

Could this finally be the shaming Losantos deserves?

Shock-jock from the Catholic radio network La Cope, Federico Jiménez Losantos, is being sued by Madrid mayor Alberto Ruíz-Gallardón over accusations the radio personality made concerning the mayor’s attitude to the victims of the 11-M bombings in Madrid. Apparently (and I have to trust El País on this, as I never listen to El Cope), Losantos repeated various accusations against Gallardón, especially that he “didn’t want to know who killed 200 people in his city”.

In a slightly odd move, Losantos is trying to call some top PP officials including Comunidad de Madrid premier, Esperanza Aguirre, Eduardo Zaplana and Ángel Acebes to his defence, I assume as character witnesses. These people represent the right-wing of the PP and they recently won something of a power-struggle in the party against Gallardón’s slightly less extreme wing. They’re also well known for strongly disliking Gallardón, despite (or because of?) his popularity among voters in the capital.

So either these people will stand up and defend their mate, Losantos (the same guy who openly claimed that “Zapatero has an enormous, and growing, responsibility for 11-M”), or they will leave him in the lurch and risk his ire on the airwaves. For the PP, one would think that their obvious choice would be to call Losantos and say something along the lines of “Sorry old chap, election’s coming up dontchaknow, can’t have this nonsense… firm friend… you’re best off on your own…” (at least that’s what the Tories would do). But might this not be difficult for the PP leadership? Could it be risky for them to alienate the far-right sector of Spanish society so close to an election? Or… could they use this as an opportunity to finally twist the knife they stuck in Gallardón and show their strength?

Actually, the court proceedings start after the election, but I suspect that journalists will be keen to know just what the PP’s leadership plan to do with Losantos (and if they’re not, they bloody well should be). If they can avoid this serious question in the run-up to the election (and they certainly shouldn’t), what does it say about a party which desperately wants to wrest power from the Socialists? Either they’re with Losantos or they drop him: time to decide.

Spanish national anthem gets some lyrics

For a long time, Spain’s national anthem has been without words. The original set of lyrics, deemed excessively militaristic and overshadowed by General Franco’s fascist dictatorship, were laid to rest more than 30 years ago. Since then, the anthem has been hummed or laahed, which is what drove the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE – no relation to Seb, so far as I know) to launch the contest for new lyrics.

Apparently, the new words have caused some consternation… partly because the first line is ‘Viva España!’, not a phrase which goes down well with a significant proportion of the population.

I’m planning to obtain Spanish nationality sometime soon and I’m now worried that I’ll have to learn the new words. I can’t help but remember the schoolyard version I’ve heard sung by many Spanish and Catalan twenty-somethings:

“Franco, / Franco, / que tiene el culo blanco, / porque su mujer / lo lava con Ariel” – I hope I don’t lose points for singing that version. I’d rather they left it without lyrics – I always thought there was rather more nobility and style to standing still and quiet than to reciting some dull hymn. That said, Els Segadors (Catalonia’s national anthem) is replete with incitement to violent uprising and is actually rather stirring.

Anyway, there’s a video on El País which gauges Madrileño opinion to the new words.

Update: Here are the lyrics in English (nicked from the Guardian, so they may not be 100% kosher)

Long live Spain!
We sing together
With different voices
And only one heart

Long live Spain!
From the green valleys
To the immense sea
A hymn of brotherhood

Love the Fatherland
Which knows how to embrace
Below the blue sky
People in freedom

Glory to the sons
Who have given to history
Justice and greatness
Democracy and peace

By the way, a lot of people seem to come to this page looking for the lyrics to the Barça anthem… so here they are:

Tot el camp, és un clam
som la gent blaugrana, Tant se val d’on venim
si del sud o del nord
ara estem d’acord, ara estem d’acord,
una bandera ens agermana.
Blaugrana al vent, un crit valent
tenim un nom, el sap tothom:
Barça , Barça, Barça!
Jugadors, seguidors, tots units fem força.
Son molt anys plens d’afanys,
son molts gols que hem cridat
i s’ha demostrat, i s’ha demostrat,
que mai ningu no ens podrà torcer
Blau-grana al vent, un crit valent
tenim un nom, el sap tothom
Barça, Barça, Barça!