Another talking politics post

It's strange how the same thing has more or less value depending on your own thoughts and when you have them.

I was listening to some high up politician from Navarre (an area of Spain) on the wireless. She was going on about how her right of centre party had done well because it had picked up more votes in the last election. I won't extrapolate on her model by pointing out that her party came second. Instead I'll pick up on her complaint about a Catalan party that probably holds the key to the formation of the next Spanish Government. The party in question are Catalan separatists, they want some form of autonomy, nationhood even, for their region.

So the Navarre woman says her party's votes give them legitimacy. She argues that Cataluña is an integral part of Spain. By her own reasoning the people who live in Cataluña are Spanish and, in Cataluña this separatist party got sufficient votes, enough to make them potential kingmakers. But, for the woman from Navarre, the party that won most votes, and is looking to form a government, shouldn't talk to this separatist party because their votes are less valid than some other votes. She didn't try to suggest that the winning party's votes were bad votes, worth less than votes for her party, but she did argue that the separatist votes were worse; tainted votes, less valuable votes, wrong votes. I listen to this and wonder why the journalist interviewing her doesn't point out this massive contradiction, this illogical behaviour.

I hear, time and time again, politicians pointing out that certain things can't be talked about because they are unconstitutional. If the law says that Spain is indivisible there can be no conversation about it being divisible. That would be illegal. But, worldwide, lots of things that used to be legal are now illegal and lots of things that were legal are now illegal - pit bulls without muzzles being one example and Elton John and David Furnish being another. Changing laws, changing constitutions, happens all the time.

In 1933 a Republican (left wing) government in Spain introduced a law of "Vagos y Maleantes" the Law of Layabouts and Thieves. Basically this law said that if you were a ne'r do well you could expect trouble - trouble if you were gypsy or gay or workshy or uppity about working conditions or lived in a dodgy council estate and sold scrap. Over the years this law became associated with the Dictatorship, with Franco, but it was there before him and, with a changed name and all sorts of modifications it was still there in 1995 - twenty years after Franco drew his last and descended into the fiery pit. That law was dropped in 1995 because, somehow, people became to believe it was wrong and bad and made no sense. For 62 years though it was law. It was right. Now it's wrong. Just like the Constitution is right and the Basques and Catalans are wrong.

Good votes, bad votes, legal things, illegal things, fixed positions, immovable barriers. I've heard that humankind is on a collision course with disaster. I wonder how that happened?

About Catalonia and not about my adventures at all

I presume that you have seen images of the disturbances at Barcelona's el Prat airport or the pictures of Barcelona on fire. As you may imagine it has been big, big news here and it continues to be so. 

I presume you know that it started when the Spanish courts handed out long, long prison sentences to the leaders of the Catalan independence drive at the time of the illegal referendum a couple of years ago. Following the ruling I suspect that Spanish judges spend a lot of time reading law books but have very little idea of what's happening amongst ordinary people. The legal arguments the judges made were absolutely sound, the ruling was coherent but it took little account of the context in which it was being issued. When the Catalan politicians made their choices they knew they were acting illegally and they knew they could end up in prison. Nonetheless, if the judges had chosen to pitch the decision at a different level there may have been much less of a backlash. Instead it would have been pictures of the paroled prisoners hugging their families and heading off for a nice meal. And the ill informed foreign press might not be harping on about political prisoners and suggesting that there is no separation of powers in Spain.

Watching the live feed last night, with the video tinged orange for the burning tyres, cars and rubbish bins and with the subtitles saying that as well as petrol bombs the crowd had been throwing acid at the police lines it struck me that some of the crusties at the front looked like they were there for the fun of it rather than because they had strong political views. Not all of them though. There are obviously lots and lots of ordinary people who live in Catalonia who are genuinely angry and who feel that they need to voice that rage.

I'm not with the Catalans. I think they have handled their campaign badly. Mind you the politicians in Madrid have been equally torpid. The last President of Spain, Mariano Rajoy, will, in my opinion, go down in history as the man who started the loss of Catalonia to Spain.

But I didn't set out to take sides. I have a staunch Valencian nationalist pal who is very happy to tell me about the wrongs done to his people by the Castilians in 1714. Biased balderdash plucked randomly from history to support his completely blind acceptance of the arguments on one side. His discourse just brings home to me how pigheaded the whole Catalan thing is. On the other hand I've heard the "Madrid" side talk equal rubbish and I've never heard anything that hasn't been straight condemnation of the "Catalans" without any suggestions other than playing hard-ball. The sovereignty of Spain is non negotiable they say - they worry about Basques and Galicians. I have no real knowledge of the processes involved but it seems to me that Czechoslovakia handled its internal disputes better than say Yugoslavia or Sudan. At least the first involved fewer bullets and fewer dead.

But that wasn't the point I set out to make. The point is how do you get out of this mess? Watch the Hong Kong Chinese attack a bank and you know that sorting it out involves the central government starting by withdrawing the extradition bill. For the French Yellow Vests the starting point is about taxes and wages. In Ecuador the root is the austerity measures and the mistreatment of the indigenous population. But in Catalonia you tell me. One side says - we want independence. The other side says - you can't have it. Where does that go? Neither side can back down on the basic premise. There is no common ground. There's nothing to talk about. I like strawberry ice cream. I don't. There's no negotiation about other flavours - we're only talking strawberry.

Some Spanish politicians are demanding direct rule of Catalonia from Madrid again. How long for? Do they seriously think that the Catalans are going to put up with that for long. Last time the direct rule and the calling of new elections went hand in hand but try one without the other and watch the bonfires. Send in the army? Consider that you're an ordinary sort of Catalan (and remember that no poll has ever given the separatists the majority) - happy to be Spanish and happy to be Catalan - and suddenly you have a Leopard tank parked in your street. Radicalised or what? The Catalan president has no idea what to do except to spout independence claptrap. He sends the Mossos d'Esquadra (the regional police force) to keep the rioters in check but he has been openly supportive of the mob. After mounting pressure he did finally offer the lightest criticism of the violence but this man is a bigot and not a negotiator. And on the other side there is no unity. If a "Spanish" politician suggests talking to the Catalans they are an independence apologist threatening the sovereignty of Spain. That's something that would quite likely play badly at the ballot box so it's not a good option. Complete deadlock.

The country I came from is in chaos. The country I moved to in chaos. Is it me?

What Freddie and Montserrat sang

Barcelona was the first place I ever saw in Spain. I thought it was brilliant. I've been back several times since. I like it less now than I did at the beginning. Two or three visits ago we got a lot of "You're inferior because you're not Catalan". We had several instances where people wouldn't speak to us in Castellano Spanish and on just one occasion we couldn't get a menu in a restaurant in Spanish or in English - Catalan or nothing. Obviously enough we left. I think it was the visit after that where the town looked so scruffy and it smelled like one giant lavatory.

So what about this time? I'd expected quite a lot of signs of the Independence debate but it wasn't particularly obvious and the publicity for the elections on the 21st were very standard. Otherwise, well it's a decent sized city so it's busy, it has a lot of traffic, it has a lot of bikes and wizzy forms of transport. There were thousands and thousands of us tourists. The prices were a shock of course, they always are whenever we leave home. There was also an element of being tricked all the time. We weren't really tricked because we knew what was happening but the set price meal without drinks meant that the drinks were going to be overpriced. A non alcohol beer in Pinoso costs 1.50€ and we were charged 4.50€ several times when the drink went with a meal. We breakfasted somewhere where there were set price offers. None of the menus showed the price of a coffee so I guessed that the croissant and coffee offer was probably a cheaper way of getting a second coffee than simply asking for another drink. Based on the loud complaints from a group of US women on another table I guess I was right. An odd thing was the table service. On no occasion did we ever get our orders at the same time. Both Maggie and I were on the receiving end of twenty minute waits after the other one had been served. It didn't seem to depend on the style either - Maggie's late salad was in a  pretty traditional place whilst I had to wait ages for a smart version of sausage egg and chips in some trendy tapas place owned by a Michelin starred chef.

I felt very 21st Century when I ordered a non standard taxi using some application on my phone but it was a complete faff and the fare didn't strike me as a particular bargain either. There were lots of interesting businesses and retailing ideas though I can't recall one at the moment. Nice range of fashions as well - lots of clothes that we country folk don't see in the flesh so often - I kept thinking of a programme I'd seen on the telly about Influencers and their Instagram accounts. We saw a place called el Nacional; not knowing what it was we just walked in anyway. It was a sort of enormous restaurant and bar complex. We think it was just one business but one area was a champagne and oyster bar, another was for ice cream, there was a ham and cheese area and so on. Full of lights too. I imagined someone pitching that idea to a jaded bank manager.

We did lots and nothing at all. The big thing was going to the Sagrada Familia - somewhere that both Maggie and I have visited once or twice before  - but not in the past twenty five years! We walked Christmas markets, went on cable cars, went to the beach, did just one exhibition and went to the cinema. It was one of those cinemas that were common in the 1970s where some huge one screen place had been carved into several smaller cinemas with screens not much bigger than modern day tellies. There were so many stairs that I was breathless by the time I got there! The entrance to theatre 5 was weird - it was underneath the screen. Actually that was something I noticed in Barcelona. So many places with stairs - it must be murderous for people with reduced mobility. Stair lifts are all well and good but they must turn going to the toilet into something that requires meticulous planning if you are a wheelchair user.

So good fun, nice to be in an exciting busy place but nice to get back on to the train and listen to the Catalan change to Valenciano as we came home.

Impeccable words

My main armament against the weeds in our garden is a Dutch hoe bought in the UK and transported (minus handle) in my hand luggage. There was an interesting discussion at customs in Stansted as to whether a hoe head was safe to take on board an aeroplane or not. The weeds are unstoppable, it's simply a holding action.

Whilst I weed I often listen to the podcast of a Spanish documentary programme called Documentos. I've learned a lot about Spain, Spanish personalities and Spanish History from Documentos. Over the past few weeks we've had stuff about the cyclist Miguel Induráin, the story of a Spanish comic, the illustrated paper kind, called TBO, the 1922 Flamenco competition held in Granada and something about Ava Gardner in Spain. This week the programme was about Blas de Lezo and his 1741 defence of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia against a British fleet led by Edward Vernon in the War of Jenkins' Ear.

Now, as it happened I'd read a novel about Blas de Lezo who is sometimes referred to as Mediohombre, Half-man, because, by the age of 27, he had lost his left eye, his left leg below the knee, and the use of his right arm. The Spanish title of the book translates as, Half-man: The battle that England hid from the world. You may be able to guess, from the title, whether the author, Alber Vázquez, had any sort of bias in his book.

In the Documentos programme there was passing reference to an earlier battle at Porto Bello now Portobelo in Panama where Vernon, had an easy victory over the Spanish. Apparently it's the place where Francis Drake died in 1596. Francis Drake is always referred to, in Spanish, as El pirata Francis Drake. I'll leave you to work out the translation. I was intrigued and had a quick look at Wikipedia to see what I could find about Drake and Porto Bello. In the process I ended up reading the entries about Blas de Lezo and the defence of, or the attack on, Cartagena de Indias in the Spanish and English versions. Just as an aside the Spanish version mentioned that Rule Britannia was composed as a tribute to Vernon's taking of Porto Bello. The Wikipedia entries about the Blas de Lezo stuff in both languages was similar but different. Here are the opening paragraphs.

Spanish. The siege or Battle of Cartagena de Indias, from the 13th March to the 20th May 1741 was the decisive episode that marked the outcome of the War of the Right to Board (The War of Jenkins' Ear) (1739-1748), one of the armed conflicts which took place between Spain and Great Britain during the 18th Century. It was one of the greatest naval disasters in English history and one of the greatest Spanish naval victories comparable to the victories at the Battle of Lepanto or the English Armada. The defeat caused an enormous number of deaths among the British though the greatest number of deaths, on both sides, was due to Yellow Fever and not to combat

English. The Battle of Cartagena de Indias was an amphibious military engagement between the forces of Britain under Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon and those of Spain under the Viceroy Sebastián de Eslava. It took place at the city of Cartagena de Indias in March 1741, in present-day Colombia. The battle was a significant episode of the War of Jenkins' Ear (Guerra del Asiento) and a large-scale naval campaign. The conflict later subsumed into the greater conflict of the War of the Austrian Succession. The battle resulted in a major defeat for the British Navy and Army. The defeat caused heavy losses for the British. Disease, especially Yellow Fever, rather than deaths from combat, took the greatest toll on the British and Spanish forces.

This morning I was reading the news reports about the pending implementation of article 155 of the Spanish Constitution in Catalonia - the article which allows the Central Government to take over an autonomous community. I read English language versions from the Observer, the Guardian and El País in English. The Spanish language versions were from 20 Minutos, Diario Público, El Confidencial, El Pais and the Spanish edition of the Huffington Post.

It was very much like reading the two Wikipedia entries. The British newspapers talked about the overthrow of a democratically elected leader and the overwhelming majority in favour of independence in the recent referendum. The Spanish newspapers talked about the illegal referendum, support from the EU and the manipulation of democratic processes. The Guardian, for instance, said, in the opening paragraph of an article that Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, announced that he was stripping Catalonia of its autonomy and imposing direct rule from Madrid in an attempt to crush the regional leadership’s move to secede. Stripping and crush are hardly neutral words. Later in the same article the direct quote from Mariano Rajoy is "We are not ending Catalan autonomy but we are relieving of their duties those who have acted outside the law." A slightly different reading of the same statement.

  

Saying nothing

Two or three people have expressed surprise that I haven't written anything about Catalonia. There are a couple of reasons. One is that, in general, this blog is about what happens to us, the things we experience, and, apart from a couple of conversations and listening to the radio or watching the telly, I have no direct experience of what's happening in Catalonia. I also have to admit to having had a couple of disagreeable experiences in Catalonia, because I was a foreigner, and I am probably a touch anti Catalan. That's not a good starting point for a post.

To some tiny degree there is a bit of a reflection of Catalonia in the region in which I live, in Valencia. Valenciano, the local language, and Catalan are similar enough that if I use the Catalan version of Google translate on any items written in Valenciano the translation is at least as good as it is from Spanish to English. Lots of the sources of information I use are turning more and more to Valenciano. I've tried, and I continue to try, to learn Spanish to fit in to my adopted home and I sometimes feel that someone is trying to take that possibility away from me. Going into a restaurant in Barcelona the only menu they were willing offer was in Catalan. The restaurant was saying quite clearly that non Catalans were unwelcome. We took the hint and left. My local town hall producing a magazine or an event programme in Valenciano transmits the same message.

Catalonia was a stronghold for the Republic in the Spanish Civil war and Franco made sure that the Catalans paid for that for the rest of his life. Grandparents who were involved, parents who remembered and today's younger generations of Catalans were shaped by that repression. The feeling in Barcelona that Madrid has it in for them was, and is, a constant in daily life.

Politics in Catalonia for the last several years has been a shifting ground of political parties with the same faces but changing party names. There was an earlier referendum in 2014. That process ran into legal problems, a stand off between the central and local government. As a result of that failed referendum regional elections were held with the clear intention of showing that there was popular support for independence. The politicians who had fomented the referendum lost ground. The only way they were able to form a regional government was to form a coalition. One of the demands of a political group, usually described as anti system, to enter into that coalition was that the old president, Artur Mas should go. His successor was Carles Puigedemont. The main election pledge of the coalition was to hold a referendum and that's what they just did.

There was plenty of opposition to holding the referendum within the various political parties in Catalonia. Several normal procedures were set aside or ignored completely to get to the point where the regional parliament approved the legislation to hold the referendum. Basically the coalition bludgeoned the legislation through. Democracy gave way to expediency. However it was going to be done there was going to be a referendum and that was obvious to anybody.

Spain is basically a federal country. Local regions have lots of devolved powers in things like education, health, transport and lots, lots more. The central government has a hand in everything but it's only in areas like defence and foreign policy where the regions don't have a say. Some regions have more devolved powers than others and Catalonia is one of the regions where nearly everything is under local control. That's why, for instance, there is a separate police force in Catalonia - the Mossos d'Esquadra. The boss of the Mossos has been accused of sedition by the National Court.

So, the Catalan government has said that it's going to hold a referendum. The response of the central government is to say "You can't do that." There were some very half hearted attempts at doing what politicians do, which is to talk, but the Catalan elite said they were only willing to talk about the when and how of the referendum. Instead of finding a way to talk all that President Rajoy and his pals did was to sulk in the corner and repeat over and over again that it was illegal, unconstitutional etc., etc. For years as the process dragged along the central government stuck to that line. Basically they did what we in the trade call bugger all. The other major political parties weren't much help either - one day this, the next day that. As the referendum started to take shape the Government response was to ask the courts to decide. The courts said the referendum was illegal because it was unconstitutional. The courts used their powers, to thwart the illegal referendum. Judges don't go out to sort out the problems on the street. They send the police. Anyone with half a brain could see what was going to happen as boat loads of police from all over Spain were shipped in to stop the referendum. Exactly the same as when police are deployed to protect a G8 conference or a World Trade Organisation summit. The protestors push and shove and shout and throw stones or burn cars or whatever and eventually some police officer or some police commander loses it and answers stones with rubber bullets. Policemen are given big sticks and body armour for a reason and wire meshes aren't put onto police vans to make them easier to drive.

Up to a point then we have a conflict between two groups of politicians. But, as the referendum got closer it all became much more personal. Lots of Catalan towns have local administrations that do not support the ruling coalition. The mayors said they would not open up their buildings for the vote. Supporters of the vote harassed the mayors and their families. There was a telephone campaign to persuade people to vote and people who said they were not in favour of the vote were verbally harangued on the phone. It became the usual round of graffiti, slashed tyres, children told about their traitorous parents. All you have to do is to think about the things that people who identify themselves with one tribe or another, from football fans to terrorist organisations, do to other tribes to know what happened, and is happening, in Catalonia. Well except for deaths, I'm not aware of any deaths yet.

The vote itself of course was a complete democratic fiasco. Almost none of the usual controls to ensure that a vote is fair were in place. Votes were not secret and it was unsafe to attempt to vote no. Anyway the "no" voters simply stayed away. For anyone to suggest that over 90% of Catalans support independence is sheer nonsense. Surveys and polls suggest about 45% of Catalans are in favour of independence but something over 70% want a binding referendum. Eventually, of course, the police waded in and afterwards the Catalan government said that hundreds had been injured. We all saw the violence on telly but how many people were injured is moot. If some Guardia Civil whacks you over the head with a big stick that's one thing but if you become exhausted or hurt in the pushing and shoving, the advances and retreats of an angry crowd that's something different. I have read that just four people were hospitalised after the violence. Either way facts and emotions are different things. Police hitting people with sticks is bad. It's bad press too. It suggests a repressed group kept down by bully boys.

But here's the personal bit. In one of the earlier blogs about corruption I suggested that one of the reasons for so much political corruption in Spain is because of the everyday small scale corruption of Spanish society. The bills without VAT, the wages paid cash in hand etc. There is a parallel in the way that you can appeal or complain to the authorities. For instance, we have been overcharged by several hundred euros in our rates bill. I sent in my appeal about seven months ago and nothing has happened. I can't get an answer. I made a suggestion to the local town hall about the junction near our house using the official process. The response? - none whatsoever. Some pals were charged a tax on the profit on the sale of their house despite actually losing money. The tax is illegal but they were told by a solicitor that it was a waste of time taking it to court. Other friends were mis-sold dodgy shares by a bank and had a hell of a job getting anything back. A couple of years after we first arrived here there was a scandal about a pyramid selling scheme based on stamps and that case is, only now, going through the courts. There is a freedom of information act here but when I tried to ask a public radio station for its policy they simply didn't reply and the ombudsman said it was nothing to do with her. When I tried to ask the interior ministry why Guardia Civil don't wear seat belts in their cars I was told that the will of the people was delegated to central government and that it was not my place to ask such a question.

Britons living in Spain often complain about the bureaucracy. One reason is that when you move from one country to another there is an avalanche of things to be done from identity documents to bank accounts. My personal view is that Spanish bureaucracy isn't that different from bureaucracy anywhere. The problem in Spain comes when something doesn't go to plan because there seems to be naff all you can do about it. Not answering is a remarkably effective technique for making a problem go away.

The Catalans want some changes and they didn't get any answers either. In my opinion it's not surprising that they chose a radical approach. When the King spoke on telly the other night he said that there were democratic means open to the Catalans to express their views. I think he's wrong. He seems like a nice enough bloke, for a king, but my guess is that he normally gets answers if he asks a question. Getting redress, getting answers in Spain for ordinary people is often a tortuous process.

As I said at the start of this I'm a little anti Catalan but if I'd been there on Sunday, and the streets had been flooded with booted and suited police, I may well have been angry enough to go out and vote too.

Hands against the wall and drop your trousers

In the 70s, when much of South and Central America were in political turmoil, I read an impressive book about the violation of human rights there. The book was full of torture stories. I was most impressed by the way that ordinary people didn't buckle under but I also pondered where the torturers came from. One Sunday you have a nice civilised country but by Monday morning there are people connecting electric wires to mens' testicles and stubbing out their fag ends on the soles of peoples' feet. What's the selection process, what skills and qualities are on the job description?

At the time when the IRA and UFF and everyone else in Northern Ireland was going at it I heard some bloke, who'd served in the British Army, describing a common technique for obtaining information from prisoners. They put a plastic bucket over their victim's head and then beat the bucket with a mop handle. It made me realise just how easy torture can be and I still, sometimes, think of that as I shop amongst the Addis stuff in the supermarket.

About a month ago a judge, talking in some conference here in Spain, said that he thought ETA (The Basque terrorist organisation) members had been routinely tortured by Spanish Security Forces. Now I have no idea whether he's right but in all probability he is. If I were a Guardia Civil member, who had just seen some mates blown to pieces by a bomb,  I might well become a little over zealous too. The Association of the Victims of Terrorism thought the judge should be sacked. They thought that it was outrageous that he should suggest that the Security Forces were other than on the side of the angels.

A couple of days ago a branch of Local Government in Madrid decided to ban a flag from a big football match final due to take part in the capital on Sunday. The flag is a version of the official Catalan flag with some adaptations. It has a nationlist significance and is a symbol often used by people who want an independent Catlonia. I was apalled, incensed and troubled by the decision in equal measure. The idea of trying to stop an opinion being expressed, in a democracy, by waving a flag seems akin to totalitarianism to me. I know that some Spaniards were of the same opinion but I got the feeling that for many Spaniards the equation was flag waving equals Catalan Separatists, Catalan Separatists bad, Stop them. Four legs good, two legs bad!

During the last twelve months a law has been enacted in Spain that fines or imprisons people for doing things that the Government thinks endangers citizens. It's not as though Spain is short of laws to deal with wrongdoers. You can get into trouble if you go burning and looting. Attacking people is also considered to be a bit beyond the pale. In fact if you can think of some bad thing I 'm pretty sure there is a Spanish law against doing it. There wasn't, though, a law to stop people posting videos to YouTube of police officers beating people with sticks for no obvious reason. The fines for scaling the fence at a nuclear power plant and hanging up a banner were related to trespass and damage to property. Organising a demonstration without a licence wasn't that big a deal either in the punishment afterwards sense. But the new law toughened that up. I forget, and I can't be bothered to look because it makes me seethe, but that banner might now cost 300,000 or 600,000€. Suck on that you Greenpeace types! The result? Someone was arrested in a town close to us when they posted a picture on Facebook of a police car parked in a disabled parking slot. It was considered a slur on the local police. Now I may just have an alternative view about that incident but it's perhaps better that I don't write it down or they may be knocking on my door.

So, suggesting that police officers may have been involved in torture or lazy parking, waving a flag or taking a video could, under certain circumstances, lead to people being sacked, fined or jailed. These things don't go unchallenged of course, the courts overturned the flag waving ban yesterday, but the concensus view  makes me wonder if Spaniards have quite got the hang of this democracy thing.

What seems blatantly obvious to me, that having a different opinion should not, generally, lead to legal action seems to slip by a lot of Spaniards. The judge's opinion that torture happened is confused with siding with the evil that was or is ETA. Supporting the right of anyone to wave a Nationalist flag is confused with supporting that Nationalism and exposing police officers for abusing their role is only a step away from robbing a bank.

Maybe it's just a case of old habits dying hard.