“They have gathered 30,000 signatures but have forgotten what they are for.” Besides being purely mischievous, there is also a shade of truth behind this headline from satirical website El Mundo Today. Over the last month, Spain has seen a swelling of civic outrage at its dysfunctional political system, expressed through the 15-M, or Democracia Real Ya, protest movement, whose members have occupied squares around the country. Those sleeping-bag protests are now ending and the most symbolic one of all, that in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, has voted to pack up and move on. Now, still bristling with outrage, 15-M is organising neighbourhood assemblies and one-off demonstrations, such as … [Read more...] about What will follow the Spanish Spring?
Archives for June 2011
Two, four, six, eight, let’s hope they don’t emigrate
In light of the worrying rise of the xenophobic Plataforma per Catalunya in the recent local elections, and the dabbling in similarly anti-immigrant rhetoric by some Popular Party (PP) candidates in the same region and elsewhere, it is useful to read some hard facts about the impact from the strong pulse of migration to Spain in the first decade of this century. The report Inmigración y Estado de bienestar en España (Immigration and the welfare state in Spain), which can be found here,was published last month by La Caixa’s social foundation, and busily sets about laying to rest a whole series of misconceptions about the impact of immigration on the economy while highlighting a growing … [Read more...] about Two, four, six, eight, let’s hope they don’t emigrate
Thrifty newcomer may be just the ticket in profligate Portugal
Pedro Passos Coelho, Portugal’s prime minister-elect, does not like wasting money. Both in his professional career and personal life, he has been described as thrifty, frugal, even tight-fisted. He currently lives in a standard apartment block in the none-too-fashionable Lisbon district of Amadora, but if he moves into the prime minister’s residence near the São Bento Palace his stinginess may come in handy in solving Portugal’s debt and deficit crisis. That, at least, appears to be what many Portuguese were thinking when they handed victory to Passos Coelho’s centre-right Social Democrats (PSD) in last Sunday’s general election, coupled with a desire to get rid of the Socialist … [Read more...] about Thrifty newcomer may be just the ticket in profligate Portugal
Franco and the red pen
One of the upshots of the recent furore surrounding the recently published Diccionario Biográfico Español has been how it has highlighted the decrepit and ideologically questionable nature of the Spanish Royal Academy of History (RAH). Of its 36 members, 15 are over 80 years old, only three are women and among its many right-leaning experts, several are seemingly pro-Franco. The most obvious example is Luis Suárez, the historian who wrote the now-notorious dictionary entry on Francisco Franco, painting the dictator in a flattering light. Clearly, the RAH has a problem in terms of its personnel, which makes providing objective and serious accounts of Spanish history difficult, if not … [Read more...] about Franco and the red pen
Spain’s conflicting memories refuse to fade
The now infamous entry in Spain’s recently published biographical dictionary describes General Francisco Franco as a courageous figure who set up an “authoritarian, but not totalitarian” regime. Written by 86-year-old historian Luis Suárez, the entry paints Western Europe’s longest-serving dictator in a favourable light, extolling his military prowess. This account of Franco’s reign differs sharply from that outlined by British historian Paul Preston in his latest book, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination during the Civil War and After. In fact, Professor Suárez makes no mention of Francoist atrocities at all. The furore sparked by Suárez’s dictionary entry is … [Read more...] about Spain’s conflicting memories refuse to fade
How police brutality helped Spain’s 15-M protests
In recent days, music fans and political activists in Spain have been remembering Gil Scott-Heron, the singer-songwriter who died last Friday. The ongoing sit-ins and protests that started across Spain in the lead-up to May’s local elections have seen inevitable links being drawn between Scott-Heron’s anthem The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and the 15-M/Democracia Real Ya movement. But the day after Scott-Heron’s death, when the TV showed images of Catalonia’s mossos d’esquadra local police force brutally charging into a crowd of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators in Barcelona, it seemed more fitting to think of another seventies cultural touchstone: Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork … [Read more...] about How police brutality helped Spain’s 15-M protests
The Spanish holocaust
Even to this day, when asked about the slaughter and repression carried about by General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and in the years that followed, the standard reply from many Spaniards is that atrocities were committed on both sides. But in this relentlessly harrowing read, British historian Paul Preston provides, page after page, factual, documentary accounts of the systematic policy introduced by Franco early on in the war to rid the country of the red menace and to install a reign of terror among the few that might still contemplate resistance. This was accomplished through disappearances, and in many cases, the murders of entire families, along with theft of young … [Read more...] about The Spanish holocaust