Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- Pamplona 1: If you're brave/bold/reckless/crazy enough to want to run with the bulls next week, here's some timely advice for you.
- Pamplona 2: Of course, not everyone in Spain is in favour of the bullfighting tradition. Protests are normal these days, I can't help noticing that the bare chest is not on a male.
- Bullfighting: I see Pontevedra - with its reduction from 4 annual corridas to just 2 - is well on trend . . . In 2008, there were 810 bullfights in Spain, against only 369 in 2018.
- More here on Spain's qualifications as a country to move to if unhappy with your own.
- And what might happen to you, if you do.
- Fox hunting seems to be back on the political scene. The author of the 1st article below believes this stems more from the never-ending British class war, than from a concern for the welfare of foxes. Probably right.
- So . . . Who killed the Spitzenkandidat system? Politico Europe thinks there are 10 candidates for this honour, including 'The German Language'. See the 2nd article below, if you can stay awake.
- As for the (widely-never-heard-of) nominee for Commission President, Politico has this to say about an 'inconvenient truth' about her.
- A few years ago, what I thought was a beauty contest on the steps a fine building in Salamanca turned out to be the group foto for an end-of-term high school dinner. I thought of this when reading that, in the UK, there's now huge pressure on 16 year old girls/women to spend a small fortune on what used to be a purely American tradition of the end of term Prom. As one newspaper reports this morning: The cost of proms is soaring, with parents shelling out the price of a holiday to give their children a night to remember - as much as £700 for a dress, £40 on shoes, and another £40 on a bag. Hair comes in at about £50, and false eyelashes cost about £35. Parents might also be required to pay for a manicure and pedicure (£49), nail extensions (£30), spray tan (£30), waxing (£41), flower corsage (£31) and the share of a stretch limousine (£55). That’s a grand total of £1,101. Yet, this is just the entry level. Many prom-goers have a trial of their beauty treatments two weeks before the event, so their parents pay twice over. It all leaves me feeling rather relieved that my two daughters were not victims of this madness. Nor me and their mother.
- Can you believe? . . . . Black and skintight cycling shorts are worn as a badge of honour by Mamils - middle-aged men in Lycra. Now, the most body-conscious and fashionable influencers, style editors and supermodels are flaunting them under sharp blazers and with heels. And Burberry’s will happily flog you a pair for £240. Of course you will believe it. Anything to do with the fashion industry is credible. However incredible it is.
- Truly imbecilic.
- Do people like this have equivalents in countries other than the USA?
- Word of the Day: Fiesta, a versatile word.
- Life in Spain: I'm giving a curry lunch to 12 Gallegos today, members of the Porcos Bravos. I expect between 5 and 20 people to arrive, sometime between 2pm and 4pm
The hunting ban was never driven by animal welfare, only hatred of conservatism: Tim Bonner, chief executive at the Countryside Alliance
Perhaps there was a time when the hunting debate was actually about foxes, but there can be few alive who remember it. The first Bill to ban hunting was moved in 1949 and for the next 55 years the ludicrous discussion of how (not whether) foxes are killed sucked up over 700 hours of parliamentary debate.
The Labour manifesto of 1983 may have been ‘the longest suicide note in history’, but one commitment from it remained after New Labour had jettisoned the rest by 1997 – a free vote on hunting with dogs. The two huge successive Labour majorities of 1997 and 2001 finally saw hunting run to ground and by using the Parliament Acts to bypass the Lords (for only the 4th time in 55 years) the Hunting Act was passed.
The idea that all this political capital was spent in pursuit of unproven marginal benefits to animal welfare is clearly absurd. What the hunting debate has always been about is politics pure and simple; the politics of class, the politics of progressives, and the politics of modernity. The iconography of hunting (rather than the reality of it) has become the perfect foil for every argument between and within political factions. The Labour MPs who so obsessively pursued the ban were blatant about their motivation. Dennis Skinner did it “for the miners”, whilst Peter Bradley famously wrote in these pages “now that hunting has been banned, we ought at last to own up to it: the struggle over the Bill was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom, it was class war”.
It was this overt prejudice and a burning feeling of injustice, aligned with the commitment of hunting people to their hounds, their hunts and their communities, that has driven a remarkable campaign since the ban came into force in February 2005. Far from giving up and going to play golf, as the mainly urban MPs who voted the legislation through clearly expected, hunts have proved more resilient than could ever have been predicted and have tested the law to its limits. Hunts still ride and walk out from Cornwall to Cumbria and retain a totemic presence across the countryside.
Meanwhile, instead of removing hunting from the political agenda the ban continues to be central to our political debate. The first item in Labour’s Environment Policy published last year is to ban hunting even more than it is banned now. In the Conservative Party, the issue has become wrapped up in the post 2017 election debate about direction, future policy and young voters and has forced itself onto the front pages during the leadership election. It is the easiest form of political short-hand to link hunting to modernity and reform. It is also the worst because it shows those who promote it to be both unprincipled and ignorant.
They are unprincipled because it is obvious that there was never any case for the prohibition of hunting in the first place and the 14 years since the ban have only served to highlight its pointless- ness. Research suggests that more foxes are being killed by methods which have no welfare advantage over hunting, meanwhile police forces, prosecutors and courts waste millions of pounds of public money responding to allegations against hunts almost exclusively made by a small number of animal rights activists. If the anti-hunting movement had any faith in its own arguments it would have sought to show an improvement in animal welfare since the ban. The fact that it has not even tried tells you all you have to know about the effectiveness of this law.
And ignorant because of the assumption, repeated endlessly but never, ever substantiated, that hunting has an impact on voters and specifically that a commitment to get rid of the ban turns voters away from the Conservative party. Strangely this was not mentioned in 2010 or 2015 when David Cameron won elections against the odds with a commitment for a vote on the Hunting Act in his manifestos, but in 2017 when the party ran possibly the most inept campaign in living memory some are desperate to argue that it was hunting rather than a complete policy vacuum and gross incompetence that saw Theresa May lose her majority. As one Tory MP put it to me: “of course people talked about hunting because there was nothing else in the manifesto apart from beating up pensioners”. And while hunting may have been the subject du jour on Twitter, research has again proved conclusively that social media is totally unreflective of public opinion.
In the week before the 2017 election over two thousand people were asked to identify three issues that would affect their vote at the general election. Just 8 (0.39%) mentioned hunting. When then asked to compare the impact of a range of issues on their vote people ranked hunting well below wind farms, green belt development, mobile phone connectivity, animal welfare and HS2. Only badger culling had marginally less impact on peoples’ votes. Tellingly of just 28 people who ranked hunting above all the other issues only one had voted for a Conservative candidate at the previous election. The findings were absolutely consistent with research carried out before the 2010 and 2015 elections.
So what does that tell us about hunting and voting intention? Well it really takes us back to where we started. This isn’t about foxes, but politics. People do not change their vote because they dislike hunting, they dislike hunting because of how they vote. The extraordinarily powerful image of the red coated foxhunter is simply a cipher for conservative England and the Conservative Party. Indeed it could be said that the Tory party hasn’t got a problem with hunting, hunting has a problem with the Tory party.
2. Who killed the Spitzenkandidat?
No shortage of suspects in drama over how EU should be governed. Maïa de La Baume, Politico Europe
It's a Brussels murder mystery that would flummox even Hercule Poirot: Who killed the Spitzenkandidat?
Accusations are flying over the death of the "lead candidate" system for choosing the president of the European Commission, the EU's most powerful job. It's a crime story that's also a political drama — played out over multiple summits including a day-and-night marathon earlier this week — about how the European Union should be governed.
Making the case particularly fiendish: Some confessions may not be all they seem and some of the most indignant accusers are also prime suspects.
Manfred Weber, the German center-right candidate, has pointed the fingerat an unholy alliance of French President Emmanuel Macron and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
French officials and others suggest Weber look closer to home — at himself and his European People's Party (EPP).
Members of the European Parliament blame leaders of EU member countries, who cast aside the lead candidate system to choose German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday as their surprise nominee for the Commission presidency. But MEPs themselves are also accused of sabotaging a system they claim to hold dear.
In time-honored tradition, POLITICO's in-house detectives — combining the steeliness of Taggart, the empathy of Montalbano, and the method of Maigret — have gathered the suspects to go through the case against each one, before revealing the truth.
The European Parliament: Senior MEPs came up with the system before the 2014 European Parliament election. It was meant to work like this: Pan-European alliances of national parties would each nominate a Spitzenkandidat, or lead candidate, ahead of the election. That person would also be their candidate to be European Commission president. The European Council, made up of national leaders, would then nominate the candidate of the winning party, who would then be confirmed by the Parliament. MEPs argued the system brought more democracy to the choice of Commission chief.
Many national government leaders didn't like the system. They noted that the EU's governing treaties require only that they take "into account" the Parliament election when selecting the nominee for Commission president. And they stressed they have their own democratic legitimacy as elected leaders. Critics of the concept also noted that voters in the EU election still choose from national parties — and the vast majority of voters are completely unaware of the pan-European alliances and their lead candidates. But the system prevailed in 2014, with the EPP's lead candidate Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg appointed Commission president — in part because it was hard to say no to someone who had served for 18 years as a head of government.
This time around, the concept got muddier. Some MEPs insisted it should work as last time — with the candidate of the party that comes first in the election claiming the Commission presidency. But others argued that any Spitzenkandidat who could command a majority of votes in the European Parliament could become Commission president. That left open the possibility that different parties could band together behind one Spitzenkandidat.
In picking Weber, the EPP increased the chances that EU leaders would reject their candidate as unqualified to run the EU executive.
That ambiguity made it even harder to explain an obscure concept to ordinary voters, and set the stage for a bitter post-election battle, with different camps interpreting the system in different ways. Juncker admitted on Friday that the process this time around was "not very transparent."
The German language: Choosing a long German word (admittedly not so long by German standards) to describe something and expecting it to be easily understood and liked across Europe was probably über-optimistic.
European People's Party: The Continent's predominant political alliance, which includes Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and other center-right parties from across Europe, took a big risk by choosing Weber as its lead candidate. The Bavarian is a veteran MEP and leader of the EPP group in the European Parliament. But he has no experience of senior executive public office. For decades, Commission presidents have previously served as heads of national governments or senior ministers. In picking Weber rather than former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, the EPP increased the chances that EU leaders would reject their candidate as unqualified to run the EU executive and choose a non-Spitzenkandidat. (In nominating Weber, the EPP also ignored a tradition that the Commission chief should be able to speak French — a move sure to go down badly with Paris.)
Guy Verhofstadt and Europe's liberals: Verhofstadt, until recently leader of the liberal group in the European Parliament, and the liberal ALDE alliance were enthusiastic backers of the Spitzenkandidat last time around. But as they moved towards a tie-up with Macron — an outspoken critic of the system — Verhofstadt changed tack. The former Belgian PM justified the U-turn by saying he'd hoped transnational lists of candidates would feature in the election, allowing voters to choose a Spitzenkandidat directly. The liberals ended up nominating a Spitzenteam — a slate of candidates for top EU jobs — who were not seen as true "lead candidates" by other parties. Their change of heart meant one of the Parliament's major groups was no longer behind the system.
Emmanuel Macron: As a newcomer on the EU stage who does not belong to either the main center-right or center-left families, Macron made no secret of his disdain for the Spitzenkandidat system. The system offered no obvious advantage to him or his centrist political group. He repeated many of the long-held criticisms of the system, including that the lead candidates were not known to most European voters. For the system to make any sense, Macron argued, the EU should introduce transnational lists of candidates, allowing voters across the bloc to vote for the same parties and leaders.
Macron also made very clear — too clear, to the taste of some Germans — that he did not think Weber was up to the job. In doing so, he weakened the Spitzenkandidat system — although he was willing to accept another lead candidate, current Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans of the Party of European Socialists.
Viktor Orbán: The Hungarian leader, champion of "illiberal democracy," claimed credit for killing two Spitzenkandidaten — Weber and Timmermans. But Orbán is a late convert to the anti-Spitzenkandidat camp. As recently as March, he said he would support Weber "until the end." His U-turn came only after the German, who has long sought to cultivate good relations with Orbán, supported his party's suspension from the EPP. And neither Hungary alone nor the four-strong Visegrad Group of central and eastern European governments was big enough to kill the Spitzenkandidat alone. In the case of Weber, they were helped by Macron, plus socialist and liberal leaders. With Timmermans, they were assisted by...
EPP prime minsters: A group of EPP national leaders, including Ireland's Leo Varadkar, Bulgaria's Boyko Borisov and Croatia's Andrej Plenković rebelled against a compromise plan championed by Merkel, which would have given Timmermans the Commission presidency and made Weber president of the Parliament. That plan would have put two "lead candidates" in top EU positions. But the conservative rebels decided they wanted the EPP to hold onto the Commission presidency above all, even if it meant ditching the Spitzenkandidat system. "The vast majority of the EPP prime ministers don’t believe that we should give up the presidency of the Commission quite so easily, without a fight," Varadkar declared on Sunday. Some leaders from the EPP rebel countries also complained that Weber had struck a deal that secured jobs for himself and Timmermans without telling them, according to diplomats.
Manfred Weber: Weber was the Spitzenkandidat of the party that finished first in the European Parliament election, albeit with fewer seats than last time. But Weber could not persuade other pro-EU parties in the Parliament to rally behind him. If he had been able to demonstrate he commanded a majority, it would have been much harder for EU leaders to reject him. He was also unable to get his parliamentary group to back the deal championed by Merkel, which would have preserved the Spitzenkandidat system by putting Timmermans in the Commission presidency.
EPP MEPs: After an all-night session, some EU leaders were still trying on Monday afternoon to pursue a package that would have made Timmermans Commission president. But then came word from a meeting of EPP MEPs in Strasbourg that they would not vote to confirm any nominee who did not come from their party family. With Weber out of the running, the largest group in Parliament decided that keeping hold of the Commission was more important than the Spitzenkandidat system it had long defended.
All Spitzenkandidaten and MEPs: Weber was not the only lead candidate who couldn't put together a majority in Parliament. Nor could Timmermans, or Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who emerged as the liberals' choice for the Commission. And MEPs from the main pro-EU groups were not willing to make the compromises necessary to establish such a majority. That handed the whip hand to national leaders to pick someone else — resulting in the surprise choice of von der Leyen.
So, who killed the Spitzenkandidat? It's an outcome familiar to fans of Poirot — all of them did.
Footnote: If you didn't like the word Spitzenkandidatat the beginning of this article, you'll surely hate it after reading it 22 times . . .
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