Personal bias

Watching the TV news in Spain on Thursday afternoon. Thinking about the untrammelled stupidity of it all. About the actions of men, and it always seems to be men, like Putin and Sergey Lavrov sending people to kill and be killed. Wondering who is making money from this because behind almost every indecent act someone is making money.

Back at the news the next item was that the Partido Popular (PP) in Castilla y León had done a deal with VOX to form the regional government. It's not on the same scale but it is on the same spectrum of human wickedness. It's the first time that VOX has actually been in a coalition government. It's the first time since the restoration of democracy in Spain, in the period after Franco died, that the far right has actually been in government. It may be the first but it probably won't be the last.

I'm not sure how genned up on Spanish politics you are. I try to keep up but sometimes I despair because, every now and then, there is some event that those in the know know and I don't. Well at least I didn't till I did. There's just been a palace coup in the PP for instance and, until the moment it happened, I thought that everyone in that party loved their leader. Apparently not. All the journalists told me, after it had happened, that it had been on the cards for ages and that everyone had seen it coming. Not me.

Anyway. The basic plot of Spanish politics is easy. There's a traditional left wing and a traditional right wing party, a growing far right party, a fading far left party plus a crumbling centre. Oh, and lots of regional parties.

On the left there's the long established PSOE, Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the Spanish Labour party if you will. They're not that left really but they remember to talk about poor people every now and again. They don't forget Bill Clinton's campaign message "It's the economy, stupid" so they try not to upset the people with the real power too much or too often. Their problem is that they don't have a parliamentary majority. They are propped up by a coalition with Podemos. Podemos are to the left of the PSOE. Podemos are not that keen on kowtowing to the money men so they give their coalition partners a lot of gyp. Even with Podemos the PSOE still don't have a clear majority and they have to prop up each crucial vote with a rag tag collection of parties.

Podemos, as I've said before is further to the left than the the PSOE. For some people there is an equivalence between the nutcase left (Podemos) and the nutcase right (VOX). Podemos, formed in 2014, was born from a popular political uprising that said it didn't trust politicians at all. As soon as they got a few people elected though they stopped talking about radical alternatives and elected a party hierarchy just like everyone else. They also subsumed the remnants of the communist party. As everyone else clamours to show how pro Ukrainian they are this bunch got into bother for saying that sending weapons, going to war, wasn't a good thing. Podemos is losing voter support all the time. The PSOE and Podemos keep having little fallings out because, from time to time, Podemos stands up for something it believes in - like a decent minimum wage or rent controls - whilst the PSOE think this will alienate their more right leaning members and it wants to pick up the remnants of the next bunch, Ciudadanos.

Ciudadanos is a party in the centre. They started well, back in about 2006, but it's all gone wrong and basically, they're a spent force. They had a bit of a power struggle in their ranks a few years ago which did for them as they forgot to stay central. Instead of continuing to broker this concession from the right and that concession from the left they drifted right. Now nobody remembers why they voted for Ciudadanos instead of just continuing to vote PP.

The PP, the Partido Popular. The sensible right, the Conservative Party. They are a post Franco party with roots in a bunch called Alianza Popular but the PP, as such, was born in 1989. Like the PSOE this lot have been in power a couple of times. They're just in the middle of a meltdown at the moment. Their young (ish) leader had a dust-up with a young (ish) woman who heads up the Regional Government in Madrid. Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the Madrid president, is dead popular for doing that Boris thing, the Donald thing, of saying whatever comes into her head. The idea is to make real people think she's a real person too and not a scheming politician. As a result of that internal dispute the leader of the PP is in the throes of resigning and he's about to be replaced by a steady hand on the tiller politician from Galicia. Nothing is decided yet but if it doesn't happen, if he's not the next leader of the PP, then the drinks are on me.

Then there's VOX. They're a bunch of racist, misogynist, radical right wingers who came into being in 2013. They couch their hatred in dodgy logic. They don't say they think black people are worse than white people but they do complain about immigration, not immigration per se, illegal immigration. Those are the people who clamber over border fences and cross the Med in toy boats. You know what colour illegal immigrants are don't you? Or they say they don't think it's fair to centre on the violence against women, after all women menace men too, so what we should centre on is violence in general. VOX are gaining in popularity. This means that the PP is careful not to stray into territory where they may appear to be too liberal so as not to lose the most right wing of their supporters to VOX.

Then there are lots of regional parties. Some are there on a single issue - fair deals for rural areas is big at the moment for instance - but most are well established regional parties particularly from Cataluña or The Basque Country. There are left and right leaning parties in amongst the small parties, there are parties who want independence for their region and groups that have historic links to terrorism. If you're British just think SNP or Plaid Cymru or Sinn Fein with a bit of Caroline Lucas or George Galloway thrown in.

So we've got the political spectrum which goes from issue parties through regional parties on to left, right and centre parties.

The structure is straightforward too. At local level there are the town halls. Spain still very much votes for personalities rather than parties at the municipal level.

Next up is the Regional Parliament - Valencian Community, Andalucia, Basque Country, Cantabria and so on. The Regions are very important in Spanish politics. It's they who take care of the services that affect people all the time, like health and education. The presidents of the regions are often referred to as Barons (most of them, obviously, are still men with grey suits) because just like the bunch that made King John sign the Magna Carta they have a lot of political clout at all levels.

Finally the National Parliament, the Congreso de los Diputados. This is the one that meets in Madrid. Just like in the UK it has two "houses". The difference from the UK is that both the upper and lower houses are elected. The deputies, just like British MPs, but elected in a completely different way via a party led system of proportional representation, are the rank and file, everyday politicians who do as their party leaders tell them. The upper house, the Senate, like the Lords, is used to park politicians and to reward loyal service. There are actually some real politicians in the Senate too who do their bit in keeping the country running.

Perhaps I should have heeded the advice to never talk about politics or religion!