The Spanish left will do as they please
The Spanish left will do as they please
A response to ‘The Spanish left can’t afford Catalonian independence’
The following article is a response to ‘The Spanish left can’t afford Catalonian independence’, Pimlico Journal, Vol. III (December 2023).
There is a phrase that has circulated in EU circles over the last three decades, originally attributed to a European Commissioner of either French or German origin: ‘You Spaniards only complain about a law when it has already been passed’. It seems that the Spanish Right never caught wind of this comment. But there is one man in Spain, with a background in Brussels, who has understood this quote and all that it entails: Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez.
The demonstrations of last November against the multi-party left-wing government were unprecedented in recent Spanish history. They were, however, pretty much dead-on-arrival. The current government knew they only had to wait for a few weeks until the galvanised protestors had cooled themselves off.
The Socialists had the tacit approval of the European Union, as well as other leftist groups and regionalist and pro-independence parties. The Spanish conservatives — Partido Popular (PP) — were mostly uninvolved in the protests. They knew that they couldn’t get those few extra votes to form a majority, and nor did they feel compelled to do something about it.
It thus fell to Spain’s insurgent right-wing populist party, VOX, to lead the protests, until the people protesting every evening outside the Socialist Party’s headquarters for weeks on end grew weary of police violence, tear gas, and undercover agents. Their affiliated union, Solidaridad, could only call for a general strike — on a Friday.
A few months on, it’s now clear to all that the Spanish Left has a solid grasp on power, and can govern (mostly) on their own terms. An independence referendum will come sooner or later, whether right-wing Spaniards like it or not — the same way an amnesty for convicted Catalan separatist politicians will be granted within the next few months.
To question the failure of the November demonstrations would now be silly. But because it may not be clear to all how such massive demonstrations could have amounted to nothing, the following will serve as an autopsy of the protests and the reasons for their failure.
Spain and its institutions
In brief, the spark that lit the fuse was an agreement reached between the Socialist Party (PSOE) — the second largest party after the last general elections, the largest being the centre-right Partido Popular (PP) — and the two main Catalan separatist parties, former Catalan president Carlos Puigdemont’s more centrist Junts, and the more left-wing Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC). The latter demanded an amnesty for separatist politicians who were convicted for their involvement in the illegal independence referendum of 2017, as well as a debt cancellation for the heavily indebted regional government of Catalonia. A few of these separatist politicians have served jail time; others fled the country, and have remained abroad to this day. If the Sánchez government were to commit to both an amnesty and a referendum — as they are currently planning — they’d be acting in a manner that many would consider unlawful and treasonous. Sánchez’s coalition also contains a number of other separatist or regionalist parties — EH Bildu and PNV (Basque), BNG (Galician), and CCa (Canary Islands) — as well as the far-left Sumar, an electoral alliance that includes Podemos and the Communist Party of Spain. The support of all these parties put together just barely allows Sánchez to govern.1
The demonstrations were primarily a response to the Socialist Party’s lack of scruples in trying to form a government. However, immigration, job insecurity, inflation, and numerous other factors relating to general government mismanagement also helped fuel the protests.
Although the protests were in good faith and defined by a general lack of violence, they were doomed from the start, as shown by the tepid response of mainstream institutions to the agreement reached by the government and the Catalan separatist parties. For instance, consider the following joint statement from four of the biggest judges associations in Spain:
Following the document signed by PSOE and Junts, we, the judges associations signing this document, show our rejection to the references to ‘lawfare or the judicialisation of politics’ and their consequences. The text of the agreement reached [between both parties] contains explicit references to the possibility of creating parliamentary investigation commissions for determining the presence of situations of judicialisation of politics, with the consequences that, in those cases, would give way to criminal liability and legislative amendments.
In practice, that would mean submitting to parliamentary review the legal processes and judicial decisions with an obvious intent of interference with judicial independence, breaking the separation of powers.
The judges must only be subject to the rule of law, as it is expressed in the article 117.1 of the Constitution.
These expressions, as they denote a lack of transparency on the inner workings of the judicial branch, are unacceptable. The judicial branch of Spain is independent. It doesn’t act under the pressure of political machinations and holds a system with judicial guarantees which separates the potential risk mentioned in the document.
Madrid 9 November 2023
Signed by:
—Asociación Profesional de la Magistratura (APM)
—Asociación Judicial Francisco de Vitoria
—Juezas y Jueces por la Democracia
—Foro Judicial Independiente
A call to arms this was not; nor, in fact, was it a call for any action whatsoever. Other organisations and associations have used identical language to describe the government’s behaviour: handwaving over the government getting on their lawn, and mainly showing themselves to be concerned with avoiding accusations of interference in politics. Not one of these statements would dare to use the sort of language that would incite a legal battle against the government for their actions, above all because they don’t feel like they have any obligation to do so.
The Spanish civil service today comprises a rigid super-structure in which all members of society partake, in their particular area of expertise, directly or indirectly. No group goes beyond their own limits, as there is no need to. Change was not going to come from here.
The Spanish Right’s wrong ways
The Spanish centre-right’s efforts to counter the separatist cause have, in some ways, been even worse than non-existent. The Spanish populist right has been rather more aggressive in its approach, but hardly much more effective.
A decade ago, as the pro-independence movement grew in Catalonia, an uncoordinated citizen boycott against Catalan products and pro-independence businesses took place. In 2017, this remarkable boycott was finally acknowledged by the centre-right government: the government signed into law a large tax exemption delivered to Catalan businesses to compensate them for their drop in sales during the boycott, thus effectively voiding the entire movement.
Recent years have been marked by a general lack of action. The right-wing parties have failed to make a concerted effort to close the many Catalan government delegations that have been opened up around the world. They have also failed to push for the swift extradition of the separatist politicians charged with ‘high treason’, rather than pursuing the hurdled judicial process which has dragged on for more than half a decade.
VOX, though more belligerent than Partido Popular, has remained ineffective, both in the judicial and the legislative spheres. The president of VOX, Santiago Abascal — one of the major figures of the protests — was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. He vividly describes the political situation in Spain, and the leverage that the Left has over the rest of the country. However, he lacks any clear messaging, other than to fight on and ‘defend the country’.
To ‘adopt permanent protest’ is something that right-wing voters simply cannot do. They have their own jobs and responsibilities which they have to attend to — in contrast to many of their left-wing counterparts who, in a sense, actually depend on ‘permanent protest’ to retain their jobs and lifestyle.
When discussing Spain’s historical and cultural legacy, Abascal went out of his way to highlight the Spanish Empire’s apparent enthusiasm for miscegenation in Latin America, arguing that this was one of Spain’s positive historical legacies:
Tucker Carlson: Spain did end human sacrifice in the Americas. That seems like something we are celebrating [laughs]...
Santiago Abascal: Well it should be celebrated by Hugo Chávez, and everyone who today, each in their own way, represent the best justification of what Spain did. The historian Venancio Carro, said that the faces of the Indians today are a living document and our greatest justification. Spain has never been a racist country. Spain worked for racial mixing and evangelisation.
This is a good example of a deliberate lack of historical perspective which could be easily used against his own camp. Territories of the Spanish Empire were in fact subject to racial laws (sistema de castas) so elaborate that they would make a nineteenth-century aristocrat blush for his lack of imagination. These laws were in place for hundreds of years, and were only abolished after the Spanish-speaking colonies became independent. And regardless of whether this system was good or bad, which (perhaps) may be up for debate, its legacy — much like the legacy of Franco — is currently strongly repudiated by many of its descendants. It is a prickly subject, and there was no real need to talk about it.
As for the protestors themselves, a general aimlessness set in as the days passed. The main objective of the protests as a form of reaction over action slowly settled. Many went to the church services in the parish next to the Socialist Party’s headquarters as a metaphorical ‘Hail Mary’ attempt to achieve change.
Their lack of self-awareness and eccentricity was reflected in some of the flags proudly carried by the protestors. The Cross of Burgundy could be seen hoisted by a few nostalgics of the Spanish Empire and some followers of Carlism. Carlism is a ‘Legitimist’ political movement founded upon the belief that the legitimate King of Spain is a male descendant of Infante Carlos, Count of Molina (1788-1855) — rather than his niece, Isabella I of Spain (1830-1904), who only inherited the Spanish throne due to her father’s abolition of Salic Law (which prohibited a woman from inheriting the throne) in 1830, and from whom the current Spanish monarch, Felipe VI, is descended. Much like the Legitimist movement in France, the Carlist movement has historically been strongly affiliated with ‘traditionalism’ and has stood in opposition to liberalising tendencies in Spain. But while this somewhat esoteric dynastic dispute may have been of great importance to the Spanish Right in the past, today it is of little obvious relevance. Unsurprisingly, the modern movement can barely muster a few thousand supporters.
Of course, aside from the Carlist eccentrics, there were many Franco-era Spanish national flags. But there were also many contemporary Spanish national flags, which served as a paradoxical contraposition, as the former regime was willingly succeeded by the latter. Indeed, the very career bureaucrats who worked and maintained the Francoist Regime in its later years were the same ones who helped dismantle it and shape the country into its current form. The first and second democratically-elected Prime Ministers after Franco’s death in 1975 — Adolfo Suárez and Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo — and their respective cabinet members — were among the most talented and hard-working officials in Franco’s civil service. And yet they were also the men who willingly enacted the ‘modernising’ policies that would shape Spain into what it is today — most notably, joining NATO (in 1982) and the EU (in 1986), a decisive break from the past, in which Spain existed as a semi-pariah state within the Western world.
Carrying these flags hardly served any good purpose. They may remind some older people of better days; they will remind leftists of a frightening past. But it should be clear to all — even if only subconsciously — that such ideologies as ‘Carlism’ and ‘Francoism’ are out of place and out of time.
More optimistically, among the crowds of wacky ‘Carlists’ and vaguely sinister ‘Francoists’, there were still some protestors whom understood the need to shed worn skin; to develop something new. They bore holes on the flags where the coat of arms of Spain is supposed to stand on the Spanish national flag — much like the anti-Warsaw Pact demonstrations of the second half of the twentieth century.
The future of a nation
Again, it is one thing to protest when a law is about to pass. Indeed, it is a good thing to do so, with certainty and conviction, if you are correct. But when you didn’t get the memo that the entire process had been building up for a decade, and the builders were hired decades ago, then you’ve gotten lost in the woods. It is quite easy to see from this how the protesters inadvertently supported the interests of people that they despise.
It is also counter-productive to believe that things will change in the future just because a conservative region’s already rock-bottom fertility rates are slightly higher than a left-leaning or an independence-seeking region, or that a sham king cannot remain a figurehead for the decades to come.
The Spanish people have not reached a turning point: not now, nor in the immediate future. The bigger picture shows us a country where the public sector controls half of the nation’s wealth and binds the remaining part; a country suffering from the disastrous large-scale exodus of hundreds of thousands of Spain’s best and brightest over the last decade, who have been traded for an almost equal number of foreigners from Latin America and Africa. These events — regardless of their consequences — signify a steadily managed process with no end in sight. The deluge of the Spanish state can and will continue.
If the Left has an agenda, the Right should bring a calendar for the coming decades, as well as a few old books so as to properly understand from where and when the present monstrosity comes from. Some reevaluation and examination of the past is in order.
The Left will continue to win for the foreseeable future because they actually understand what ‘power’ wants and needs when it talks in English, French, German, Arabic, and Chinese — and indeed, also Catalan, Basque, and Galician. They don’t win because they are better: Prime Minister Sánchez and his allies are truly unimpressive people who would say whatever they can to keep themselves in charge, like Sánchez’s recent speech in Davos, denouncing ‘neoliberal’ ideas, immediately after Milei’s now-famous speech on the same subject.
The Spanish Right, insofar as they can offer an actual alternative, shouldn’t be thinking of the status quo at all. They should think of building their own thing — new and vital, good and truthful — and making it attractive for the people that matter, including way beyond the ballot box. This ‘new thing’ may not even be called ‘Spain’; nor, most likely, will it look much like the country we have known in either past, present, or near future.
121 PSOE + 27 Sumar
= 148 Government (42% of seats), plus the external support of:
(27 Separatists or regionalists + 4 Podemos*)
= 179 (51% of total seats)
versus
137 PP + 33 VOX + UPN 1
= 171 Opposition (49% of total seats)
Out of a total of 350 seats (100%).
* Podemos left Sumar in December 2023, after the election.