Tag Archives: madrid

Could the PP’s luck be changing?

Politics, PP, Spain, , , ,

Some days you wake up to a glimmer of good news in the murk of crisis-hit Spain.

The investigating judge on the Bárcenas case sent police into the PP’s headquarters on calle Genova in Madrid last night. It looks as though the bill for renovating the party HQ a few years ago matches an amount in Barcenas’s ‘double accounting’, which would strongly suggest that the PP paid for this major construction project in cash. Cash it received in illegal and undocumented donations.

Now, I’ve lived here long enough to learn that a glimmer of hope can often turn into an oncoming train in the blink of an eye. But I’m also integrated enough to be able to take whatever pleasure I can from small moments such as this.

We’re doing Christmas at home this year for the first time ever. I plan to do some non-political stuff over at the other place. Unless the king abdicates, I might not be back on here until the new year. Bon nadal, merry Christmas and Nadolig llawen to all!

Who are the fascists? #viacatalana

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , , , ,

So who are the fascists? The hundreds of thousands of citizens who turned out today to peacefully call for Catalan independence, or the Falange and Democracia Nacional supporters who interrupted an event in Madrid?

This is, at least partly, the fruit of the PP’s campaign against social coherence in Catalonia. A mendacious call for unity while sowing division is the PP’s strategy, backed up by their mates in C’s.

PP attacks judge after 25S case thrown out

coup, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , ,

The Spanish PP has directed a vicious attack against a judge. Again. The judge ruled no criminal offences had been committed by the organisers of the 25S protests in Madrid. A PP spokesman described him as “posh anarchist”, “indecent”, “intolerable”, “unacceptable” and “dreadful”. He also warned that the judge would be personally responsible for any ‘incident’ that happens to any MP.

I say again: a spokesman for the ruling party in Spain, hurling insults at a judge. This is not the sort of thing that should happen in a democracy. But in Spain, justice is cheap and when it goes against you, you insult and threaten the judge. All the more so, it seems, if you’re the government.

Meanwhile, the senior government official in the Comunidad de Madrid has called for the right to protest to be curtailed. It seems that she doesn’t approve of ‘misuse of public space’. She has been campaigning for this since the mid 2000s when thousands of Spaniards were regularly bused in by the PP to protest against the PSOE government. Oh, sorry… no, she hasn’t.

Oh and plus: finance minister Luís de Guindos was in London yesterday, looking for vultures investors to come to Spain and pick over what’s left of the country invest in (…what?). His talk was interrupted by protestors chanting ‘Spain for sale!’. But the worst came when he insisted that Spain wouldn’t need a bailout. The audience laughed in his face.

I’m off to San Francisco this weekend. A 6am flight tomorrow. Have a great weekend, everybody.

28N: Catalan Elections 2010 – Who to vote for?

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

UPDATED: View the election results

There’s one week to go until this year’s elections to the Catalan parliament. And that means that the competing parties are ramping up their campaigns, desperate to convince wary voters that they offer Catalonia the best chance of recovery and stability. Fools! Don’t they know that’s my job?!

In case you have the right to vote in these elections (I don’t), and aren’t sure who to vote for, allow me to go over the main candidates.

Artur Mas – CiU (Convergència i Unió)

Mas is a scumbag. He clearly believes that he is entitled to the presidency, dei gratia. His campaign has been heavy on frivolity and light on policy. CiU’s posters include: his face, considerably more jowly than before, a really irritating smiley face, and a slogan and weird little round logo lifted directly from Obama’s ‘change you can believe in’ campaign. It’s like they couldn’t decide which elements to go for, so they just threw everything in. CiU is a shamelessly self-interested political party that seeks to ‘defend’ the bourgeois of Sarriá and Sant Cugat by screwing the rest of us over. It will form a coalition with anyone (not that this is unusual) and I think it’s likely that Mas will pursue a Cameronite campaign of painful, unnecessary cuts to public spending. Civil servants, be afraid. Or just join CiU now and hand them 30% of your salary. Don’t worry: they don’t mind if you pilfer public funds to make up any shortfall. Oh, and Mas says he wants to be president ‘for 12 years’. Catalans, be very afraid.

José Montilla – PSC (Partit Socialista de Catalunya)

If there’s one thing that pisses me off about the Tripartit government we’ve had here for the last 4 years, it’s José Montilla. I don’t doubt that he’s a shrewd back room negotiator (his announcement that he only wants one more term in office confirms this). The thing is that Montilla is a deeply uninspiring, confidence-sapping grey technocrat of a politician. The PSC has run a generally austere campaign, except for this video of a young woman experiencing orgasmic bliss at the moment of democratic involvement – a video which would be rendered much more unsettling if, instead of a cute Catalan chick, it featured the old man from downstairs. This election represents an opportunity for voters to register their displeasure with a Tripartit government that, in one form or another, has run Catalonia for 8 years. And this is the problem: there’s much to dislike about the PSC (they’re fickle, fascist-appeasing, directionless, Madrid-controlled morons, for example), but the Tripartit itself has not actually been as bad as CiU would have you believe. With different people, it could have been a great government. Montilla’s little trick probably won’t get him returned as president, though.

Joan Puigcercós – ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya)

I get the impression that Puigcercós would be happy to remain a party leader rather than a national leader, as long as he remains in work. He’s not as left-wing as he should be, even though like me he studied politics and philosophy, and like me, failed to get a degree. I’m good at computers, he’s good at flags. Actually, Puigcercós strikes me as a fairly honest man, but a bit of a small-time loser. He’d make quite a good school teacher (except for the lack of a degree). ERC’s main policy is Catalan independence. If (and that’s a very big “if”) ERC manages to retain anything like its current position as Catalonia’s third party, Puigcercós would pact with whoever offered him the best deal. A nationalist coalition with CiU would probably be based on some sort of referendum for Catalan independence. Another Tripartit probably wouldn’t.

Alicia Sánchez-Camacho – PPC (Partit Popular de Catalunya)

Known in this house as “that fucking woman”, Sánchez-Camacho has presided over a Catalan PP that has plumbed the depths of right-wing hostility over the last few months. She’s a talentless monster. The PPC has progressed from highly racist electoral material in the mayoral election in Badalona, to producing a computer game where users ‘bombed’ immigrants and Catalan independentists for points. Graeme from South of Watford reckons that the PP are using Catalonia as a testing ground for newer, nastier tactics. He’s probably right. I’d be surprised if they do much better than the 10% they normally get – though low attendance WILL HELP THEM. So go out and vote, otherwise we’ll end up with her in bed with Artur Mas. So to speak.

Joan Herrera – ICV-EUiA (Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds – Esquerra Unida i Alternativa)

Red of cheek and earnest of word, Herrera is one of a handful of Catalan politicians I find it difficult to hate. The eco-socialists of Iniciativa aren’t exactly a powerful force, but they represent a broadly good political perspective: Marxism and environmentalism. In Cerdanyola del Vallès, they formed a town hall coalition with the PP, but they’ve also managed to turn CdV into a really pleasant town. Herrera gained some political capital by arguing that all Catalan MPs should declare their wealth and interests at the beginning and end of each parliament. He then revealed the slightly depressing, though all together pleasing, state of his finances. ERC and, to a degree, Ciutadans, followed suit. The PP, CiU and PSC (fat pigs, the lot of them) all said it was ‘silly’. Now, Montilla has said they’ll back any law that enforces this. I take this as evidence that Iniciativa’s left-wing policies speak to a youth vote that, apart from ‘free orgasms for voes’, the PSC is finding it difficult to engage with. Vote for this party.

Albert Rivera – C’s (Ciutadans – Partit de la Ciutadania)

The thing about Albert Rivera is that he’s obviously a talented chap. I just don’t believe that abandoning the entire system of autonomous communities and withdrawing official support for the Catalan language, while simultaneously indulging a very nebulous neoliberal economic policy is what we need. All too often, C’s supporters are racist scum, too. A low turnout might well favour C’s, the PPC and other fringe groups like the Falange Española de las JONS, España2000 and the Falange Autentica. Those are just examples of other parties. Picked at random.

Other parties and groups

There will be many other parties contesting these elections. They range from the neo-fascist Plataforma per Catalunya (PxC) to the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP), which stands for independence. You are free to vote for these, but it probably won’t have much effect on the election results.

Best result?

Actually, I think that a left-wing coalition would be the best way forward here. However, I really don’t like Montilla. But I like him more than I like Mas. In fact, four more years of Montilla as president would be a fair price to pay for the pleasure of seeing Artur Mas denied the residency AGAIN. So vote for Inicitativa, and hope for some sort of Tripartit. It wouldn’t be perfect but it would probably be the best we can get from these buffoons.

In Support Of The True Fiesta Nacional

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One of Spain’s greatest and oldest cultural traditions is in danger of dying out completely because of EU legislation. The European laws, designed to protect citizens’ ‘liberty’ were introduced without a moment’s thought about the impact they’d have on this crucial feature of Spanish culture. I am, of course, talking about Spain’s true Fiesta Nacional.

Ever since the 1st century BCE, Spaniards have enjoyed the spectacle of gladiators locked in combat, fighting until one (or ideally all) of them dies a heroic death. Indeed, recent evidence proves that a Spaniard was himself the very bravest of Rome’s gladiators – he killed a nasty emperor and temporarily saved the empire from something.

But all this is now under threat – because of a bunch of killjoy lawmakers obsessed by destroying Spanish culture. EU legislators introduced so called ‘human rights legislation’ many years ago, but it is these laws that might now be used to stop us from enjoying one of the great cultural pursuits this country has to offer. And the sad thing is that this could all be prevented if the do-gooders understood that live gladiator fights aren’t really about men killing each other for the enjoyment of a crowd of baying monsters. You see, gladiator fighting is about so much more than that.

For those who haven’t yet had a chance to enjoy the spectacle of a gladiator fight, I’m going to explain a little of what makes it so special. First of all, there’s the amphitheatre it’s held in: these grand stadia have their roots in Roman architecture and are designed so that wherever a viewer sits, they can see the action. Amphitheatres used to litter Spanish cities like discarded sunflower seed shells, but now only a few remain. It’s worth remembering that Barcelona had loads of the places, while Madrid (which didn’t exist when the Romans occupied Spain) had none. Why that’s worth remembering, I’m not sure… but remember it, OK?

Next up is the sense of ceremony that surrounds the whole event. The gladiators are held in a sort of pen just before they’re released into the arena, and when they appear in their beautiful costumes, you can almost believe you’re watching ballet rather than deadly combat. Actually, I’m not sure about that: ballet exists as a way of interpreting violence, passion and the human experience by way of dance. Gladiatorial combat interprets violence by way of goading men to murder each other. But it’s still quite full of movement, I suppose.

The deaths, while certainly not the focus of gladiatorial combat, are really cool! Some of the best gladiators can make a rival’s suffering defence last for up to an hour, drawing the process of killing their opponent (which is not the main focus of the fight at all) into what seems like a true fight between equals. Of course, the truth is that the professional gladiators always win because their competitors, dumb and useless beasts that they are, are often drugged, underfed and tortured prior to the main event. Well, you wouldn’t want the star to die, would you?! Anyway, the death isn’t even the most important bit.

The most important bit is… everything. Of course, everything is geared in a way that it climaxes in the death… but that doesn’t mean it’s just about killing. You can buy an ice cream from the little man who sells them… and if he stands in the way of a good killing, just tell him to get the fuck out of the way. Because the death, while not the most important bit, is a moment so wholly Spanish – so ancient and lovely – that you really shouldn’t miss it. Yes, the death is not the most important part of the gladiator fight. It’s the killing.

Oh and, before you bring it up, no we really don’t see the killing as cruel. I mean, most of these guys are losers and criminals anyway. Sure, they’re doomed to die terrified but imagine how they’d feel if they caught lung cancer from second hand smoke. That’d be a much worse way to go… so you see, they’re really the lucky ones.

Can we really afford to lose this ancient, lovely and cool spectacle? To me, it seems self-evident that gladiatorial combat is above silly modern notions like ‘humanity’ or ‘law’. Clearly, amendments should be made to this legislation to ensure that future generations can enjoy the killing with their own eyes? As has been pointed out, these fights exist: it’s up to the opponents of gladiators killing each other to prove why it’s suddenly wrong.

So, dear reader, I call on you to . Together, we can preserve barbarity in these perplexing times.

So who’s the Nazi and who’s the fascist? This gets confusing

Politics, Spain, UK, , , , , , , , ,

South of Watford has a post today about an incident that I was planning to write about. Apparently, the British fascist party, the BNP, attended a meeting in Madrid on the 21st. Also present at the meeting were the Spanish fascist party, Democracia Nacional and the Italian fascist group Forza Nuova.

The meeting was nearly interrupted by another Spanish far-right group, the Movimiento Patriótico Socialista, 28 of whom were apparently arrested. The BNP issued a statement, claiming the MPS represents a ‘neo-Nazi’ agenda and are ‘aligned to the English Defence League’, a group of militant fascists which the BNP claims to disown entirely.

Now, on first sight, this might be a simple dispute between different factions of the far-right, doing a sort of ‘People’s Front of Judea’ style bit of in-fighting. And that would be very amusing.

I’m not so sure that it’s so simple. There are several problems here: first of all, it’s very difficult indeed to find any information about the MPS. That’s unusual because as any fule know, the very first thing any political group does these days is set up an atrociously badly designed and unusable website full of conflicting political statements. The MPS doesn’t have one and they’ve been around since at least March.

Democracia Nacional claim that the attackers weren’t the MPS but rather came from the Movimiento Social Republicano, a relatively well known neo-Nazi group (at least it is if you’ve ever spent any time browsing through fascist websites). MSR are in turn linked to the Italian fascist group Fimma Tricolore, which was in alliance with the Forza Nuova as recently as 2005.

The EDL themselves have been noisy this year, holding small-scale aggressive ‘protests’ in a few British cities, normally in the name of opposing ‘Radical Islam’. The BNP has said several times that it doesn’t support the bully-boy tactics of the EDL but at the same time various EDL organisers are known members of the BNP.

To me, this ‘split’ in European fascism could be one of two things: it’s either a genuine split caused by a sense of dissatisfaction among the more openly violent factions of the far-right, who have decided to ‘go it alone’ and fight in the streets. Or it’s a cosmetic split, designed to allow the ‘mainstream’ fascist parties to orchestrate street violence and then condemn it, satisfying their two main goals: appearing to be mainstream and beating up Muslims. And they all get press to boot.

Spanish corruption news round-up

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been off work for a few days due to a wicked cold, which has left me thinking that probably the last thing I need to do is spend more time in front of my computer. But all the same, there are a couple of stories developing in Spain which deserve something of a recap.

Firstly, Gürtel. This case of corruption in the Valencian PP has moved on quite a lot since the courts ruled that it was unlawful to ‘archive’ the case. The PP itself has moved from dogged support for anyone and everyone connected with the party to a few pre-emptive and yet also belated amputations. Top of the list is Ricardo Costa, general secretary of the Valencian PP. President of the Comunitat Valenciana Fracisco Camps seems to have had his hand forced by PP head office and has announced that Costa will be out in a few days, all the while noting that he trusts and backs him implicitly. This is the first major head to roll in the PP but it likely won’t be the last. Esperanza Aguirre, president of the Comunidad de Madrid has also forced the exclusion of three regional PP names, Alberto López Viejo, Alfonso Bosch Tejedor and Benjamín Martín Vasco – all linked with the Gürtel case.

Aguirre, suave political operator that she is, seems to be using this corruption case to make another push for control of the party. It remains to be seen how successful she is in this enterprise… but the idea of her leading the national party is slowly becoming a terrifyingly real possibility.

I wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of Trevor by failing to mention the Palau de la Música Catalana case, here in Barcelona. This story, though nowhere near as politically damaging as the Gürtel case, is still serious enough to warrant a proper full-length blog post some time in the future. Essentially, the PMC case is a classic story of misuse of public funds (aka ‘stealing a shit load of cash’). Boss of the Orfeó Catalan, Felix Millet, has more-or-less admitted that more than €3m of Palau funds went missing under his stewardship. He seems to have spent the money on himself (and his business partner Jordi Montull). It seems that among other things, the pair used some of the money to buy a building which they then sold on at a €1.5m profit.

The larger crime in the PMC case is that the bill for refurbishing the Palau a few years back was a massive €22m, even though it actually cost less than half that. So Millet seems to be willing to admit the ‘smaller’ crime in the hope that everyone will just forget about the other €13m that he nicked. Sadly, this could just happen: this case should have been in the courts years ago but for some reason only seems to have made it there now.

The political sides of this story are twofold: firstly, Millet is a big player in Barcelona’s political-cultural axis. The position of head of the Orfeó/Palau is extremely prestigious and Millet also served on the board of FC Barcelona and was a recipient of the Generalitat’s St Jordi cross. All that, and he seems to have donated about €500,000 to the Fundació Trías Fargas, a politico-cultural organisation which is effectively a part of the CDC, which itself is a constituent party in CiU.

The second controversy (and arguably by far the more important one) is that the courts in Barcelona received notice of presumed corruption, lots of €500 notes and various irregularities in the Palau, five years ago. It seems that they’ve done very little to prosecute the case since then, until now. Why? I suppose that would be the corruption.

Joan Laporta: candidate for independence?

Catalonia, Politics, , , , , ,

The president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta, has been ‘invited’ to head up the electoral list of a Catalan separatist party. Reagrupament, a group that split from Esquerra Republicana (essentially on the grounds that the ERC leadership were allegedly losing their direction by participating in a coalition with the Madrid-controlled PSC), asked the Barça chief to be their first candidate in next year’s Generalitat election.

Laporta will end his Barça presidency in June, and until then he appears unlikely to announce any plan for his future career. That career, according to many commentators, will consist of a long-planned Catalanista political thrust, a rumour backed up by Laporta’s presence at the alternative celebrations for the Diada, last September 11th.

If it does happen, it will hardly be a surprise. Laporta has overseen the completion of the Catalanisation process at FC Barcelona, a process which begins with the club’s own constitution. If he does accept the Reagrupament job, he’ll likely prove to be a smooth and cunning opponent in the election. Is it just me, or is there a lot more independentist stuff bubbling on the stove at the moment?

WordPress is dicking me about with images at the moment… but anyway, here’s a nice pic of Laporta looking extremely comfortable with PSOE stooge, Montilla

laporta-montilla-1

Barcelona sex mayhem – stories from Sunday night

Catalonia, Politics, Spain, , , , , ,

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.

Ciudadanos – showing their true colours

Catalonia, Politics, , , , , , ,

I was amused to read today that Albert Rivera, that young chap with the dead eyes, has been ousted [CAT] as leader of the Spanish nationalist party Ciudadanos. “Ciudadanos, Partido de la Ciudadanía” (catchy name, huh?), stormed onto the political scene a couple of years back, using promises of only speaking Spanish and… er… that’s about it… to attract disillusioned falangists and other Madrid-centralists to its smelly cause.

This isn’t the first time that the C’s have had major internal issues, but coupled with the fact that they’re now standing as part of far-right group Libertas in the EU elections, I think it’s time we forgot about this flash in the pan. Hopefully we’ll be able to say the same about UPyD soon!