A SECOND
SPANISH TRANSITION?: That is the question: And there's a couple of
views on this from the other side of the pond at the end of this
post.
A SPANISH
VIGNETTE: A couple of years ago, a winning lottery ticket worth €4.7m
was left on the counter of a kiosk. If the owner doesn't turn up
soon, this will go to the doubly lucky outlet owner. So far, 317 claimants have guessed at the distinguishing feature of the
ticket only knowable by the buyer. But none has got it right.
There'll presumably be more of these brazen liars before the seller
gets his paws on the winnings. I wonder how many there'd be in a
society of higher ethics. Or if false claimants were prosecuted.
THE SPANISH
AGES OF MAN/WOMEN: A couple of Galician women were killed by a (speeding?)
motorist a few days ago, when they were crossing a road at night.
They were close friends, aged 68 and 69. I know the Spanish have
the greatest longevity in Europe but were they really 'middle aged'
as the local press put it. I certainly hope so.
FINALLY .
. . . ROMEO & JULIET: I switched on the TV last night to find
myself watching a 2013 version of this Shakespeare soap
opera. Happily for me, I'd hit upon scenes involving Lesley Manville
as the nurse, and Paul Giamatti as the friar. For these were the best
performances of the film. Naturally, I went to the reviews on IMDB, to find these ranged from 1 to 10. Utter crap or brilliant. Reading
them all and half-watching the film, I veered towards the top half.
Yes, it disobeyed the basic rule that Romeo shouldn't be prettier
than Juliet and some of the acting was below par. And then there was
the modernised Shakespearean English! But other things – such as
the scenery, some of the acting and the cinematography – were damn good. And the final
scene had me in tears. But, then, what doesn't these days? The take I
enjoyed most was this one, taking the purists to task for their
hatred of the film:- I love Shakespeare and R&J is probably my
favourite. There is some bad about the film but also some very
good. This particular version is rewritten in "loose"
Shakespeare. It's still poetic and melodramatic but the words are
easier to understand. I would NEVER fault anyone for trying to bring
literary classics to modern teens. So if this does
it for them then that's fine by me. And some of the key scenes are
mostly intact. This version is still quite [American
for 'very'] enjoyable.
Incidentally, it was disappointing to see how many intelligent
commentators don't know when to use its and it's. Most
of them, in fact.
SPANISH POLITICS: A SEA CHANGE?
The
Washington Post
Can Spain
weather its post-election political transition?
ON AN optimistic
reading, Spain’s contemporary history is impressive, even
inspiring. After four decades of the stifling Franco dictatorship,
Spain made a peaceful transition to democracy in the late 1970s,
emerging as a reliable bulwark of both the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and the European Union. After the Great Recession of
2008, Spain weathered a debt crisis, adopted economic reforms and now
ranks among the fastest-growing economies in an admittedly sluggish
Europe: The International Monetary Fund projects Spain will grow
about 3 percent in 2015 and another 2.5 percent in 2016.
Yet as the results of
Spain’s national elections Sunday show, the Spanish people are not
inclined, just now, to see things in a positive light. Looking
backward at their political development since Francisco Franco, they
see not the consolidation of healthy democracy but the entrenchment
of a political duopoly in which decreasingly distinguishable
conservatives and socialists take turns enjoying the perks of office.
Looking ahead at their economic potential, they see not enough growth
to make up for the past half-decade’s worth of losses in purchasing
power. Spain remains mired in debt, yet accompanying deflation makes
the debt burden harder to bear, thus defeating the purpose of the
fiscal discipline Europe’s paymaster, Germany, demands.
So the voters denied a
parliamentary majority to the right-of-center Popular Party of Prime
Minister Mariano Rajoy and to the opposition Socialist Workers’
Party, awarding sizable blocs to two new parties, the ultra-left
Podemos and centrist, anti-corruption Ciudadanos. The political
possibilities range from a minority government led by Mr. Rajoy,
whose party finished first with 29 percent of the popular vote,
to a multiparty left-wing coalition like the one that just took power
in neighboring Portugal. The former would be unable to do much of
anything; the latter might take Spain in dangerous directions, if
Podemos’s ideological flirtation with the leftists of Venezuela and
Greece is any indication.
Unlike for many other
European countries, parliamentary coalition bargaining is a new
experience for post-Franco Spain. Some instability was foreseeable,
almost inevitable, given the impact of Europe’s multiple crises on
traditional political elites everywhere in Europe. Spain’s
short-term difficulty could yet lead to opportunity, if its leaders
respond constructively, with broader and deeper reforms, to the cry
of their people — whose concerns include not only the economy but
also the established parties’ corruption and insular thinking.
Flexibility and support from Germany, as well as the United States,
would help, too, as Spain’s hard-won democratic institutions cope
with what might be the most difficult, and most fateful, political
transition since the dictator died in 1975.
The New
York Times
Spain’s
Anger Management - Miguel-Anxo Murado, Spanish author and journalist.
Is this the dawn of a
new era in Spanish politics, as some suggest? Judging from the
results of last Sunday’s election, we can safely say that the old
era has, at least, been dealt a severe blow.
The conservative
People’s Party, which just four years ago won a landslide election
victory, has now lost more than three million votes. The case of
Spain’s other major party, the Socialist Party, is perhaps more
telling: It has spent the last four years in opposition, while its
Conservative rivals were implementing unpopular austerity policies,
yet it lost more than a million votes as well.
The two big parties
that have dominated Spanish politics for decades are being punished
not for what they’ve done — or not just for that — but for what
they represent: a way of doing politics that many Spaniards now deem
obsolete, a two-party system that is suddenly seen as the root of
many of the country’s ills and is now being challenged by the
emergence of new parties. The left-wing Podemos, the heir to the
social protests that swept Spain in 2011, took more than 20 percent
of the vote Sunday and is set to redefine mainstream politics,
perhaps not just in Spain.
In fact, Spain’s was
never meant to be a two-party system, and technically it isn’t. The
electoral law is fairly proportional. It is in the allocation of
seats to the different electoral districts that there is an in-built
bias that provides the two bigger parties with extra seats. This is
in part a legacy from the 1970s, the years of transition from
military rule to democracy, when stability was highly prized.
Then there is the
country’s geography. When the Constitution was drawn up, Spain was
still largely a rural country and it made sense to give a strong
voice to the many small provincial capitals, even if that meant
over-representing them in Parliament.
But there is another
factor that is mentioned less often. This dominance of two parties,
one on the right and the other one on the left, reflected something
deeper about Spain, where that right-left divide has always been very
profound.
And it continues to be,
apparently. Even as new parties have appeared in the Spanish
political landscape, the sum of those on one side of the divide and
the other remains little changed. Whether we want to refer this back
to the divisions born during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 depends
on how much we want to dwell on historicist cliché.
But why have Spaniards
now turned on their once favorite parties?
Not for ideological
reasons. Rather, the transformation we are witnessing is moral,
perhaps moralizing. The economic crisis came to many Spaniards as an
epiphany. It wasn’t even the crisis, so much as the high-profile
corruption cases that were uncovered at the same time.
Of course, there had
been scandals before, but the contrast between the pain of so many
families, in a country that, seven years after the financial crisis,
still suffers from unemployment at 21 percent, and the lavish
lifestyles of a few corrupt politicians who were caught red-handed
was like a slap in the face for society as a whole.
And that is when
Podemos, which translates as We Can, took off. Founded as a far-left
party by a group of university professors and led by a charismatic,
ponytailed young leader, Pablo Iglesias — a namesake of the founder
of Spanish socialism in the 19th century — Podemos pointed a finger
not at this or that particular government but at what it termed as
“the regime of 1978” (the year of Spain’s Constitution).
By then, people were so
angry that, initially, even lifelong Conservatives gave their support
to his avowedly left-wing movement. Podemos’s poll ratings
skyrocketed.
That was less than two
years ago. A few things have changed since then. Podemos has
moderated its discourse substantially, especially after the fiasco of
the failed attempt to defy the European Union authorities by a
similarly populist left-wing party in Greece, Syriza, made many
Spaniards fearful of bucking the eurozone economic orthodoxy.
Another relatively new
party, Ciudadanos (Citizens), a kind of center-right Podemos,
anti-corruption but business-friendly, also entered the race in a bid
to prevent Podemos picking up the entire protest vote.
Both new parties did
well in last Sunday’s elections, especially Podemos, which came
close to overtaking the Socialist Party. But the success of what has
come to be known as “new politics” is incomplete. The two-party
system has taken a serious hit but retains over half the electorate,
and it may well bounce back if the vast experiment in anger
management of the election goes awry.
The first test for new
politics couldn’t be more daunting. The election has left a
Parliament so fragmented that it may not be even possible to form a
government. And instability, the usual price of change, is the last
thing Spain can afford just now, while it is still slowly recovering
from the financial crisis and faces the challenge of the independence
movement in Catalonia.
To address this and
other pressing issues, all the parties agree on the need for
constitutional reform. But when it comes to deciding what kind of
reform, they are either vague or only agree to disagree. The
parliamentary majorities needed to change the Constitution will be
far more difficult to muster now, in any case.
The new situation also
offers opportunities. One of the ills of the two-party system was the
absence of a culture of compromise. Easily won parliamentary
majorities made politicians dismissive of pacts. Bipartisanship is as
rare in Spanish politics as a unicorn. Voters themselves tend to
frown upon coalitions, which they regard as betrayals. That will have
to change now, and fast.
Finally . . . My Boxing Day dawn. Not that it's actually Boxing Day here in Spain . .
Finally . . . My Boxing Day dawn. Not that it's actually Boxing Day here in Spain . .
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