Poor sailing for Spain

Fritz (Ricardo Olivera)

Why is Spain in such a mess?

• Catalonia, with almost 1/6 of the population and the highest GDP in Spain, is threatening to secede;
• Nationwide, unemployment is surpassed in the Eurozone only by Greece;
• Social services including health, education, and aid to caregivers of dependent relatives are being slashed, generating enormous "tides" of protest almost every day;
• Thousands of families are homeless due to evictions for nonpayment of mortgages while the banks are stuck with millions of empty new homes:
• The bankers that set up those unpayable mortgages and drove their banks to ruin claim and usually get multimillion euro bonuses;
• Corruption scandals among the political elite are multiplying, but few are punished and nobody ever resigns;
• The government is not only refusing to investigate Franco era crimes (despite UN and World Court demands), it is also reviving Franco era repressive legislation;
• The Catholic Church continues to use its state subsidies to return Spain to the middle ages.

And all this occurring just as Spain is supposedly celebrating, or at least commemorating, 35 years of what here is called democracy, since the approval in 1978 of the Constitution that was supposed to bring post-Franco Spain into the the modern world. And there, in that Constitution and the way it was hammered out, and how it has been interpreted in the years since, lie the keys to almost all of Spain's current dilemmas. With the added complication of something completely unforeseen in 1978: the loss of fiscal autonomy to the European Central Bank + associates (especially the Bundesbank), dictating deficit, tax and public spending rules that make it more difficult to solve any of those problems.

The most divisive issues in Spain were not really resolved in the 1978 Constitution, but simply covered over in deliberately ambiguous language to achieve the broadest consensus. These divisive issues were mainly:

1. Representative government —If the people were to be sovereign, who were "the people" and how direct could be their participation in government? Powerful forces wanted to maintain the institutions set up by Franco, including the supremacy of the military hierarchy and of the recently restored monarchy. With so many rival political parties — including Franco's arch enemies, the Communist Party and newly reorganized and re-invigorated Socialist Party, plus all the new regional parties that were springing up, all facing the die-hard Franco-heirs in Alianza Popular — how could the government remain stable and avoid a resumption of civil war, perhaps by other means? The expedient decided upon was an electoral system skewing votes so that one or another party's electoral advantage would be multiplied to give it enough parliamentary seats that it could not easily be overturned.
2. Territorial and ethnic divisions —Large regions remained attached to languages and traditions that had been suppressed by Franco, the largest being the Galicians (gallegos or galegos), the Basques and Catalan-speakers (including not only those of Catalonia but those speaking related dialects in Valencia and Baleares). Was Spain one nation, or a union of nations with distinct laws, though gathered under a federal state? The pseudo-solution was regional "autonomy," understood differently by the different parties and subject to future determination by the courts.
3. Monarchy or Republic? The ad-hoc solution (after much fierce debate) was a sort of republican monarchy, where the king reigns but does not rule. This was a major symbolic concession by the Left, standard-bearer of the Spanish Republic, but considered acceptable because of the apparently peaceable and pro-democratic posture of Juan Carlos — who owed his investiture to Franco.
4. Church and State: Franco had defined his government and the country as "National Catholic" meaning that, for him, Fascism and Catholicism were two faces of the same reality, and a "Concordat" with the Vatican assured state funding of the Church. The Left representatives wanted to cut that funding entirely. The compromise was that "all" creeds would be recognized, the country was declared officially laic (id est, with no official religion), but the state continued to exempt the Catholic Church from taxes (even on commercial property) and to pay the salaries of teachers of religion in the public schools and of priests in military.

The pseudo-democratic procedure cobbled together to solve the first of these issues has left most Spaniards feeling that they are not represented by any party — especially because although the parties make promises to compete for votes, they don't feel obliged to fulfill those promises once elected and exercise such discipline within their ranks that no dissidence is allowed.

The ambiguity on the second point allowed pressure from the centralizing, conservative Partido Popular, through its influence on the courts, to overturn a reform of Catalonia's governing statutes (involving the relative emphasis on the national language, castellano — what we call "Spanish" — and Catalan and other issues of self-determination), taken in Catalonia as unpardonable meddling (intromisión), especially since a very similar statute was approved in neighboring Valencia (which also speaks a variety of Catalan, but was governed by the conservatives whereas Catalonia had at the time a coalition leftist government).

The other problems listed above stem mainly from the rigidity and inconclusiveness on the territorial and democratic procedure issues. There are too many courts (Audiencia Nacional, Tribunal Supremo, Tribunal Constitutional all top-ranked in the justice system, and all the regional courts) with different criteria and stacked with judges placed there by political pressure or, in some notorious cases, removed when they take justice issues too seriously: Baltasar Garzón is the best known, but there have been others. This makes it very difficult to prosecute corruption cases against politicians who have their party's support. And has for similar reasons made it almost impossible to control the banks and financial markets — since the people supposed to do the controlling are part of the problem.

As for the Church — well, we'll save that for later. (Though I've already discussed the issue in earlier notes, for example Claiming the soul of Spain (2008/02/10).  If you're curious about other thoughts I've had on these themes, just click the link "Spain" below and the blog notes will pop up.

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Bulls

Forges, El País, 29 July 2010

Good, thoughtful piece by Colm Tóibín (link below) about the commotion around Catalonia's banning of what we call "bullfights"—though aficionados don't think of them as "fights" but as festival.

As a product of an utterly different culture, I find it hard to get engaged by the ritualistic blood ballet of the corridas. I remember attending three in my whole life. The first, in Caracas, featuring a then (1963) famous Spaniard, "El Cordobés", I barely remember. I didn't understand much of the ritual, and neither did most of the Venezuelans, as far as I could tell. Then, more recently and after reading up on what to watch for, in the Plaza de Toros in Almería, reportedly the only plaza de toros in the country where everybody packs a lunch with wine to share with everybody else at the break between toreadores. And still more recently, in the big Las Ventas plaza in Madrid, to see something different, rejoneadores taunting and ultimately killing the bull from horseback—a stunning equestrian performance.

But unlike Tóibín, I don't think those who do get engaged with it are looking for cruelty to animals. I don't even think the ritual is especially cruel; those bulls lead far better lives than any of the animals we eat. But certainly outmoded, belonging to a more primitive time, when man had to demonstrate his power to overcome brute force of nature. Nowadays Spaniards are more likely to do that (personally or vicariously) in motorcycle and auto races.

Tóibín's article is especially good on Catalan sensibilities and why the Catalan Parlament's ban is stirring so much excitement in the rest of Spain.

Bullfighting ban is sweet revenge for Catalonia | World news | The Guardian

Insult to Catalonia?

The rhetoric around the new estatut of Catalonia has become so heated that you might get the impression that something momentous was underway. And really, something is, but not what you might think from the blizzard of verbiage.

For those who haven't been tuned in: In 2006 Catalonia (Catalunya, in their language, català), one of Spain's 17 "autonomous communities", submitted a proposed reform of its 1979 governing charter (estatut) for approval by the Spanish parliament (las Cortes) and courts, with great fanfare and mobilization of Catalan public opinion. Now, after four years of confused and heated debate, Spain's Constitutional Court has voted to accept most of the clauses but not all of them, and has re-interpreted the most controversial statements in a way that at least some Catalans find deeply offensive.

This wordy and detailed document (several times longer than the U.S. Constitution, for example) included several provisions and rhetorical flourishes which excited opponents to paroxysm, resulting in a major anti-estatut and anti-Catalan campaign orchestrated mainly by the Partido Popular. What they objected to mostly were the declaration that Catalonia is a "nation" (nació), the priority of català over castellano (the main language of Spain) in government dealings and public education, and the arrogation of exclusive rights over certain waterways that also serve neighboring autonomous communities. The Partido Popular's campaign involved a demand for an all-Spanish plebiscite on Catalonia's estatut (something that hadn't be required of any of the other autonomous regions which were also reforming their charters), the collection of signatures against it, and even an attempted boycott by other Spaniards of Catalonian products, especially the bubbly wine known here as cava (essential for New Year's Eve and other celebrations).

This anti-estatut campaign stimulated the Generalitat—the Catalan government, currently a tripartite coalition headed by the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC)—to intensify its opinion-mobilization campaign in favor of the new charter, which was also supported by the main opposition parties in Catalonia. This near-unanimity within the autonomous community can be explained by some of those rhetorical flourishes, inserted to appeal to Catalan nationalists. Some Catalans celebrated their own non-binding plebiscites, a political stunt which drew few voters, almost all of them pro-estatut, proving nothing. More impressively, supporters mobilized virtually the entire press of Catalonia, including "progressive" and "conservative" newspapers, whether printed in castellano or català, to demand "respect" for Catalonia from other Spaniards, namely by approving the estatut. Meanwhile, as the Constitutional Court dithered and debated, the president of the Generalitat challenged the legitimacy of the Court to pronounce on this issue at all—since several judges whose terms had long expired were still sitting on the court (due to a stalemate between the Partido Socialista and Partido Popular, which had to agree on the replacements).

Nobody's happy with the court's final decision, but probably not much will happen. The Generalitat got most of what it wanted, except that they cannot demand that all their citizens speak català in order to get services, and instead of describing themselves as a "nation" they have to settle for being a "nationality". What will happen with the dispute over who controls the waterways is still to be resolved. The present government of the Generalitat may fall in the next elections (the economic crisis is even more important to voters than the handling of the estatut), but even if the right-wing Catalan nationalists return to power, Catalonia is not about to secede. Spain needs its 7 million+ people (almost one-sixth of the total Spanish population) and its industry and commerce, and Catalonia needs Spain, which is its principal market. 

This whole brouhaha has been just one more of the symptoms of the difficult and continuing transition from the centralist and authoritarian government of Francisco Franco to the decentralized and democratic Spain that is still emerging. The original, 1979 charters of autonomy left many issues ambiguous and (of course) failed to anticipate new social and political needs of 30 years later. The revisions of most of those charters have gone fairly smoothly, but the particular histories of Catalonia, the Basque Country, and to some extent Galicia, each with its own language and national aspirations, make negotiations more delicate.

The Spanish system of "autonomous communities" is unique, neither completely centralist nor completely federalist. Areas that will continue to be subject to intense and sometimes acrimonious negotiation include (not just for Catalonia but for all 17 communities): control over rivers that flow through more than one "community"; the content and language of public education; distribution of tax revenue both internally (to provinces and municipalities) and externally (to the central government); access to and regulation of public health facilities (for example, until very recently the community of Navarra refused to accept the legalization of abortion, though this had been made Spanish law by the Cortes), and telecommunications, immigration policy, and so on. But Spain is not "breaking apart" (as the alarmists in the Partido Popular like to claim). It is evolving.

Comunidad autónoma - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Catalonia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia