How Much Is A Kilo Of Votes Worth?

Depends who’s buying. I’ve written before about the side effects of the Spanish electoral system for some of the smaller parties, but the results of this year’s election leave things very clear. I came across the diagrams below from El País via a post on El Siglo de las Luces. The first one shows how many parliamentary seats each party would have if the assignation of seats was done on a national scale rather than by province. The number of seats they should have got is the first figure, the second is the number actually obtained. CiU's figure is already out of date, they lost a seat to the PP yesterday because of the overseas vote.


So under a more proportional system both the PSOE and the PP would lose several seats, the Basque nationalists of the PNV would also lose a couple and Nafarroa Bai would disappear from the parliament. On the other hand, Izquierda Unida would have 14 representatives instead of just 2, and the new party UPD would go up from 1 to 4. Conclusion, the principal beneficiaries of the system are the big national parties, and the main losers are the smaller national parties. This dispels the myth that parties like IU are underrepresented because the regional nationalist parties do well out of the electoral system. The second diagram shows how many votes were needed per seat won for each party:


So at the moment Izquierda Unida needs almost half a million votes to get a single representative in the Spanish parliament, whilst at the other end of the scale the PNV needs just 50,000. In this election, the PSOE needed slightly fewer votes than the PP for each seat gained, but once you allow for the extra seat the PP got yesterday then the difference is very small.

Spot The Loser!

Sounds like an easy question doesn’t it, the loser in this photograph taken on election night has to be the one with the beard? Well, maybe he is not the only loser shown in this image because yesterday’s news that Mariano Rajoy intends to carry as leader of the Partido Popular (PP) creates a serious problem for the lady who was smiling so happily behind him on the other side of the window. Esperanza Aguirre didn’t appear on the balcony as Mariano Rajoy gave what many thought was his farewell address to the PP supporters in the street below. The feeling that this was his last election was widespread, and some of the PP’s allies in the media had already started talking about the need for change at the top of the party.

Well yesterday saw the meeting of the PP’s national executive, and Rajoy took everyone by surprise by announcing his intention to stay on and fight the next general election. A national congress will be held in June and Rajoy will present himself for re-election. The challenge is clear for Aguirre or anyone else with ambitions to lead the party; they will have to take on Rajoy in a public contest. This creates a potentially unprecedented situation for the PP, which doesn’t generally encourage public dispute or debate. Elections for candidates are not very common either, Rajoy was chosen by Aznar; not by the party in general. The PP always reminds me of the Soviet Communist Party in the way in which it works, as all signs of public dissent are frowned upon. So we are told by El Mundo that the “message of renovation and continuity transmitted by the PP leader….has had wide support amongst the leaders of his party.” Furthermore, tractor production will be increased by 8000% in the next five years and I am only making some of this up.

Unfortunately for Aguirre, this is probably her last chance. If Zapatero serves his full term she will be 60 at the time of the next election, move on another four years after that and she is unlikely to be seen as the fresh face the party needs to change its fortunes. The other possible candidates can bide their time. Alberto Ruiz Gallardón has little choice in that because there is simply no possibility he will win the party’s backing now. Another possible candidate for the succession, Valencia’s Francisco Camps, is young enough to wait for his moment too. The only other name that had been mentioned was that of Rodrigo Rato whose political ambitions were shattered when Aznar chose Rajoy over him. Rato, despite being very busy earning truckloads of money, is still a potential player for a party in need of a candidate capable of attracting votes.

Rajoy’s argument is that Aznar had three bites at the cherry before he finally won a national election. The difference, though, is that Aznar began with a party in opposition whereas Rajoy became PP leader when they had an absolute majority. Had he wanted to go he would have been allowed to leave with dignity, given that the defeat he suffered was not overwhelming. Moreover, the PP’s inability to do self-criticism (they are Stalinists rather than Maoists) means that they cannot find anything wrong with what they have done; so why change the leader? His decision to stay almost certainly counts with the blessing of both Aznar and Manuel Fraga, and is a direct challenge to those who made his life difficult during the last parliament by publicly exhibiting their ambition to replace him. Rajoy has declared that he wants to renovate his team, which should mean that both Angel Acebes and Eduardo Zaplana are shifted aside. Even so, it hardly looks like a fresh start and it seems hard to imagine a third Rajoy candidacy generating much public enthusiasm. Things have to go badly for Zapatero for the PP to return to power this way.

The Other Elections

All this talk about general elections means that the really important issues sometimes get forgotten. But voting took place in another election last weekend, and now we know who will represent Spain in this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Eurovision rules prohibit any political content, so the references to Rajoy, Zapatero and Hugo Chavez are going to have to be removed for the main contest. By the time the contest happens people may have forgotten who Rajoy is anyway.





Personally, I'm not convinced that Rodolfo Chikilicuatre has got what it takes to beat Dustin the Turkey in what promises to be the most bizarre Eurovision of all times.

Cheer Up, Might Never Happen!

Izquierda Unida have reacted quickly to their resounding defeat in the elections and have entered into a process of profound internal reflection on the causes.




via Escolar.net

La Mirada Positiva Gets Another Chance

I must admit I was a bit nervous last night about the election results. Even the exit polls showing a clear victory for Zapatero didn’t completely reassure me, and I needed about 15% of the votes to be counted before I started to feel happier. This happiness comes not so much from Zapatero being the winner, the most important thing for me was simply that the Partido Popular lost. Not by as much as I would have liked, but you can’t have everything. In the end it’s been a relatively good election for the opinion pollsters, a margin between the two main parties of around 3.5% fits pretty well with many of the poll predictions during the campaign.

The general verdict of the press and many bloggers has been that Spain is now a two party state, as the vote of smaller parties was squeezed. Certainly the number of parliamentary seats ending up in the hands of the PSOE or the PP is higher than ever, but it’s important to distinguish between what can happen in national elections here, and the very different results you can get when voters elect their regional governments. The PP added around 400,000 votes to their total from 2004, but they still trail the PSOE by almost 1 million. The PP did especially well in their strongholds of Madrid and Valencia, and made limited advances in Andalucia. Apart from their central Spanish heartlands, the have consolidated their control on the Mediterranean coast south of Cataluña – La Costa del Concrete. The PSOE did well in Cataluña, despite the problems they have had there, and is now the biggest single party in the Basque Country. They retained majority control in the simultaneous regional elections held yesterday in Andalucia.

Zapatero is just seven seats short of a parliamentary majority; last time around the deficit was twelve. However, the two principal allies that guaranteed a majority in the last parliament - Izquierda Unida (IU) and Esquerra Republicana (ERC) - can no longer do so in the next. Both suffered a sharp decline in their support as the anti-PP vote went to the PSOE. The most direct route to a majority will lie in an agreement between Zapatero and the conservative Catalan nationalists of Convergencia i Unio, who got less votes than last time but still took 11 seats. It has been more or less an open secret over the last couple of years that Zapatero viewed Convergencia as a potentially more reliable ally than ERC. The problem for the PSOE is that they run the Catalan government in alliance with ERC and IU, and the price that Convergencia might put on a national agreement could be a road map which sees them back in power in Cataluña.

Alternatives exist to a PSOE-Convergencia alliance. The PSOE has relatively good relations with the Basque nationalists of the PNV, and could combine their support with that of the Galician nationalists and IU to construct an alternative, but slender, majority. This is the reality of the new Spain, and for all the talk of the two main parties being dominant the power to make or break a government still lies with the smaller parties. I imagine that Zapatero will not seek a coalition agreement; instead he will try to repeat the experience of the last four years by governing as a minority party with pacts to get support from other parties on key issues.

As for the PP, we have been denied the spectacle of seeing them trying to form alliances with parties who they have spent years denigrating. Despite the potentially entertaining nature of this, it’s just as well they didn’t emerge as the biggest party. They would have reached an (expensive) alliance with parties like Convergencia or even the PNV, who would then happily have turned a blind eye to whatever punishment the PP chose to inflict on the rest of the country. The defeat is not heavy enough to force the PP into the profound period of reform and introspection that they should have undergone four years ago. It’s still depressing to see that the party which fabricated lies on such a grand scale about the Madrid train bombings should do so well in the city where that atrocity took place. Mariano Rajoy will go, but unless Esperanza Aguirre gets very nervous (something that can’t be completely ruled out) he will be allowed to go in a dignified manner, without being pushed out of a window at the PP headquarters or dragged through the streets of Madrid behind a chariot.

It’s been a sad night for Izquierda Unida, reduced from five to two seats, and Gaspar Llamazares has already announced that he will stand down as national coordinator. Nothing further remains to be said about the workings of an electoral system that leaves IU with such poor representation despite still getting almost a million votes. Llamazares is a decent man, who broke from within the stranglehold that the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) tried to maintain over IU. The combination of years of electoral decline together with the pressure of the “useful” anti-PP vote have left IU in this position and I doubt that any other leader would have achieved a different result.

In the end the Spanish electorate resisted with some maturity the purely negative message of the PP, with xenophobia and resentment of regional nationalisms being mixed into the pot along with the most brazen manipulation of terrorism for political gain. That’s encouraging, although I can’t help worrying that 40% of the electorate seems to think that this recipe offers some kind of way forward. I suspect we will get more of the same from the PP, they don’t do self-criticism very well and the message of the dominant hard right faction will be that all they need is a more electable leader. The next few years may yet be every bit as turbulent politically as the last four have been.

Spanish General Election 2008....The Results

These are the results of the Spanish elections with about 95% of the vote counted:

Partido Obrero Socialista Español - 169 seats (43.7% of the vote)
Partido Popular - 153 (40.1%)
Convergencia i Unio - 10 (3%)
Partido Nacionalista Vasco - 6 (1.2%)
Izquierda Unida - 3 (3.8%)
Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya - 3 (1.1%)
Bloque Nacionalista Gallego - 2 (0.8%)
Coalición Canaria- 2 (0.5%)
Unión Progreso y Democracia - 1 (1.2%)
Nafarroa Bai - 1 (0.3%)

The widget on my previous post shows the full results. Both the PSOE and the PP have increased the number of seats they have in the Spanish parliament, the PSOE has won the elections but falls short of an overall majority. It's a bad night for Izquierda Unida and Esquerra Republicana who have both experienced significant drops - meaning the PSOE can no longer reach a parliamentary majority with their support.

The PP has done very well in its strongholds of Madrid and Valencia, and has also gained ground in Andalucia - despite losing the regional elections that were also held there today. Apart from these changes there is little difference over the previous elections in 2004. The only new party in the the Spanish parliament is Unión Progreso y Democracia which has won its only seat in Madrid at the expense of Izquierda Unida.

I've been watching the results on TelemAguirre, the publicly funded channel previously known as TeleMadrid, even they are not capable of manipulating the results and at least one of their panelists has already issued a call for a change of leadership in the PP.

Things To Do On Election Day When You're Not Allowed To Vote

When the going gets tough, the tough go for lunch. I hope to be back in time to blog the results of today's election, but it's a Spanish lunch so it's also possible that I may not even be back in time to blog the results of the next election. In any case, if the widget below (courtesy of soitu.es) works properly you will be able to view the results on that. Even if it doesn't work it looks nice. Meanwhile, the South Poll has thrown up a surprising prediction for the outcome:

PSOE - 24%
PP - 9%
IU - 26%
CiU - 2%
ERC - 21%
PNV - 4%
Others - 2%
Don't Know Don't Care - 7%

Apart from the fact that this only adds up to 95% it needs to be stressed that opinion polling is not a precise science and it is possible that the final results may deviate slightly from this estimation. Still, it's nice to see the PP bumping along on 9%, if only real life could be like life at the South Poll!

The slightly more reliable final poll published yesterday by El Periodico in their Andorran edition was giving the PSOE a 5.3 point advantage over the PP, I should point out that this is significantly higher than the lead shown in the majority of recent polls. 176 seats is the magic number for a majority in the Congreso de Diputados, not a single poll in the campaign has shown either of the major parties doing that well.

Spain Decides

A few images taken in Madrid yesterday showing the choices open to voters in tomorrow's General Election.

From left to right - PSOE, Partido Cervantes, PP

Will Mariano get on the bus? Or did he forget his bonobus?

These people have their own bus, although they don't seem to have many passengers.

Rosa clearly has documentation, but she forgot to change her address and won't be able to vote for herself in Madrid.

Will the winner be Obama or Gaspar Llamazares?

Or will the vote just be for Gaspi, as Llamazares is known to his friends and the under fives...

Spanish General Election 2008....The Day Of Reflection

I had to abandon a post I had written for this blog yesterday. I wrote a piece which compared the closing days of this campaign to the sombre and tense finale to the last election campaign in 2004. In it I celebrated the awful tedium of having an end to the campaign that was not overshadowed by terrorism or even by the attempts of some to gain political advantage with it. Then came the assassination yesterday of Isaias Carrasco by ETA and in a single moment my post no longer seemed to fit.

Carrasco was killed outside of his home. He was a member of the PSOE and had previously been a councillor for that party in the town where he lived, Mondragón. In the last municipal elections he was number six on the party list and they only achieved four councillors, so he was not currently on the town council. He worked for the company that runs toll roads in the region, and although he was entitled to have a bodyguard he had decided not to; presumably thinking that as a low profile political figure he would not be high on ETA’s list of targets. Sadly, it is precisely that condition that made him an ideal target for an ETA that is currently not in a condition to aspire to more “important”, but better protected, targets.

The election campaign finished with the shooting, and ETA managed with this single act to put itself back at the centre of political attention. There was not much more campaigning to be done, today is the mandatory “day of reflection” before voting takes place tomorrow. The political parties met yesterday afternoon and agreed a joint statement of condemnation. However, the unity of the parties was at best a formal one. I expected the Partido Popular (PP) to at least make a token attempt at extracting some political advantage, and so it turned out. The PP representatives at the meeting turned up with a couple of demands that they knew had no chance of being accepted; a permanent rejection of any negotiations with ETA and the revocation of the parliamentary resolution that permitted the last attempt to seek a negotiated solution. It was a small, but telling, piece of political theatre. A little sign of what they would surely have attempted had the victim been a member of the PP rather than the PSOE.

With political activity prohibited on the day of reflection, the timing of the killing left few options for those whose only desire in such cases is to hold the government responsible for all terrorist actions. The Asociación de Victimas del Terrorismo (AVT) initially called a demonstration for today which would have brought out all the fur coat clad señoras to shout “Zapatero dimisión” at anyone still prepared to listen. Clearly someone reminded the AVT that today is the day of reflection and they cancelled the mobilisation. Instead we got another PP satellite organisation, the Foro de Ermua, calling a small demonstration last night in Madrid’s Plaza de Colon. Take a look at one of the pretty banners someone took with them:


I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but the outlook on terrorism in Spain is not at all hopeful. The pincer movement formed by an intransigent ETA locked into its time warp of “armed struggle”, and an opportunist PP seemingly determined to use terrorism as its main instrument for seeking political revenge leaves little room for optimism. We hear a lot about ETA’s weakness and how they are on their last legs; the targeting of Carrasco is indeed a demonstration of their weakened state. However, it is also a demonstration of just how easy it will be for them to go on killing – the state is not capable of protecting all the potential targets all of the time. The myth that ETA can be defeated by police pressure alone is attractive to many, but I know of no comparable case where it has actually happened. For all the political rhetoric ETA is not about to disappear, and we could be in for a long period of low intensity terrorism. As usual, those who pay the price of this sad situation are not those responsible for it, instead ordinary people like Isaías Carrasco fulfil that role.

As for ETA themselves, I wonder whether it even makes sense to try and understand where they think they are going. They have the option, much as they like to pretend it doesn’t exist, of taking what we might call the “Aralar alternative”. Aralar is a breakaway party from ETA’s political wing Batasuna, and it pursues the objectives of radical Basque nationalism in a legal, open manner. They are able to do so, nobody prevents them from operating. ETA knows that this option exists, but is not ready for life as the smaller nationalist cousin to a dominant Partido Nacionalista Vasco. Take away the threat of the use of armed action and you have a party which loses the possibility to dominate politics in the Basque Country. Some day it has to happen, the only question now is how many more pointless killings there will be on the way.

Basque Socialist Shot Dead

It looks as if ETA may have finally succeeded in entering the election campaign. A former Socialist councillor called Isaías Carrasco has been shot dead a short while ago in the Basque town of Mondragón and it seems that the Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero has already cancelled some of his commitments to return to Madrid. It has just been reported that the main parties have suspended the rest of their electoral campaign.

It looks like ETA have gone for an easy target - someone who is not a significant political figure and who would have no protection - but at a moment which will have maximum impact on the election as all the parties were preparing for their final campaign rallies tonight.

Now we wait to see how the parties react. Mariano Rajoy made a statement earlier in which he went just to the edge of trying to use it to score a political point. I'm sure there are some in his party who would like nothing more than to get their supporters out on the streets of Madrid before Sunday to tell us that it's all Zapatero's fault. Anyway, it seems that all parties have been called to a meeting in Madrid this afternoon.

Victoria Esperanza

It's just been announced on the TV news, "la niña de Rajoy" has a name. Mariano has finally revealed to the world that the little girl he has in his head is called Victoria Esperanza. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, I though "la niña" was his secret weapon for winning the election and it turns out that it's just been a prediction about who will be his successor! Mi gozo en un pozo.

Spanish General Election 2008....The Last Opinion Polls

Publication of opinion polls is not permitted during the last week of the election campaign in Spain. For this reason the last estimations on the outcome of the elections are those of the Sunday prior to election day itself, meaning they are a week out of date by the time voters go to the polling stations. It was perhaps inevitable that someone would eventually find a way round this restriction, and so it turns out with a poll that has been published by El Periodico today. That would be El Periodico de Catalunya would it? Well almost, but not quite. It turns out that El Periodico has an Andorran edition, and Andorra not being part of Spain they are able to print the results of an opinion poll!

What their poll shows today is an advantage of 3.4% in favour of the governing PSOE, nothing too far out of line with the polls published last weekend. More worrying for the PSOE will be the relatively low participation estimate, which the poll puts at 68%. However, the political parties will almost certainly have their own internal polls to give them an idea of what is happening in the final days. This poll in El Periodico was conducted after Monday's final electoral debate and shows no real influence from that debate on voting intentions. Residents of Andorra will be treated to a further tracking poll tomorrow on the elections in their larger neighbour to the south.

Updated: Here is a new phenomenon, I've just seen that the Times has commissioned a poll yesterday on the Spanish elections (it gives Zapatero a lead of 3.8%). This is the first case I can remember of a British newspaper commissioning its own opinion poll on a European election. This poll puts the estimated participation at 74-76% which is good news for the left if it turns out that way. Here is the powerpoint presentation of the results - it's written in Spanglish.

Scary Movie

It's late, you're at home, the children are asleep, and you think you are safe. But you're not.....



via Neto Raton 2.0

Spanish General Election 2008....The Emigrants Who Can Vote

Take a quick look at the image illustrating this post and see if you can guess where it was captured. Don’t bother thinking about Madrid, Barcelona or Sevilla; it’s much further away than any of these cities. It’s actually from Buenos Aires and is an indication of the importance in Spanish elections of those citizens who live overseas.

Not all Spanish emigrants returned home in the years following the death of Franco and restoration of democracy. It is estimated that in Argentina alone there are some 250-300,000 Spaniards eligible to vote, and around 150,000 of these are expected to do so. That’s many more votes than will be cast in Spanish provinces like Soria or Teruel and means that countries like Argentina or Uruguay can be important sources of support for several parties, especially if the elections turn out to be close. There are also significant numbers of Spaniards living and working in other European countries.

The origin of the Spaniards who live in South America is not always uniform and certain parts of the country, notably Galicia, are overrepresented in this community compared to their share of the total population in Spain. I don’t know what happens now, but when former Francoist minister Manuel Fraga was running the regional government of Galicia things worked like this. When an election was close Fraga would generally disappear some time before polling day on an “institutional” visit to Argentina. On this visit he would hand out a bit of largesse to the local Galician community centres, then point out how nice these centres would look if this largesse kept on coming and by the way did they know there was an election coming up? Maybe the system has changed now that Fraga has gone, but I’m sure the philosophy behind it hasn’t.

Incidentally, and this doesn’t just affect the overseas community, they say the requests for postal votes this time are running at about 40% above those of the last election. Which could mean that turnout is going to be high on Sunday; or maybe it just tells us that the number of couch potatoes with an interest in politics has increased in the last four years?

Walking Routes In Tarragona....La Mussara And Montsant

Just in case anyone thinks I went to Tarragona last weekend just to eat calçots I present the case for the defence. Although there are no high mountains in the area, there are still some spectacular walking routes to be done. So in need of a pretext to justify all the eating that came later, we did a circular route from the small village of Vilaplana to the peak of La Mussara. Walking up several hundred metres through some beautiful Mediterranean forest you get to the top where you can relax and have a drink at the refuge whilst admiring the views all the way down to the coast. There is also an abandoned village at the top of La Mussara. The route is not particularly long (around 10km) and nor is it so difficult despite being a significant climb.


Here is the map of the route together with another one that we did last year in the equally striking area of Montsant. Both routes are recommended and as always GPS tracks are available on demand.

View larger map

Spanish General Election 2008....Death By A Thousand Statistics

So the polls give it to Zapatero again in the second debate with Mariano Rajoy. Naturally I checked first with those who would most want Rajoy to be declared the winner, El Mundo and Telemadrid, but even their polls called it for Zapatero. Despite frantic spinning by the PP as soon as the debate finished they have been unable to create the sensation of their candidate being the winner.

Both candidates were better performers than last time, Zapatero because he was a bit less nervous and is naturally more expressive than his opponent. Rajoy because he had memorized his monologues this time rather than just reading them. Despite this, neither is likely to have enthused anyone except their most committed supporters as the debate raged over precisely the same issues as last week’s edition. The only difference this time, apart from the higher level of preparation, was that a bit more time was dedicated (at least in Zapatero’s case) to talking about proposals for the future.

Rajoy was every bit as aggressive as last week, and relied principally on the same three issues which he pressed in the first debate; the economy, immigration and terrorism. The main problem he has with this trio of issues is that he is very vulnerable to counter-attacks on all of them. A disproportionate amount of time was wasted on whether it was true that Rajoy had asked Zapatero about the economy in their first parliamentary session following the last elections. In reality all he did in that question was mention IVA (the Spanish VAT) in a list of issues. What is undeniable is that the economy then dropped out of the political battle until things started deteriorating at the end of last year. For well over three years the PP had nothing at all to say on the issue.

Their silence is not surprising in the sense that the economy was doing very well and because they were obsessed with exploiting terrorism. In reality, the bubble based around construction that has now been burst was precisely the model of economy that the PP boasted about so loudly in the years of Aznar and “España va bien”. If Zapatero is to be criticised for his handling of the economy it is because he has not done anything to change the model the PP bequeathed to him. However, that was not Rajoy’s angle, and he is forced into tremendous selective manipulation of statistics to try and present the case for economic catastrophe. Something is either wrong with me or with the figures he presented, because if the 43% increase in property prices under Zapatero is greater than that which occurred under the PP, then I am at a loss to explain how property prices in my area of Madrid have risen by around 300% in the last 10 years. Most of that rise occurred under the PP.

In case there was any residual doubt after last week’s debate, last night made it clear that social policy for Rajoy is simply a peg on which to hang his xenophobic messages about how immigrants are depriving decent Spaniards of their rights. Again he is vulnerable, because for all the bluster and nasty insinuation, the fact remains that Zapatero’s move to regularise the hundreds of thousands of immigrants the PP preferred to leave in unregulated limbo has been hugely beneficial for the Spanish state and social security system. To his credit, Zapatero has rejected making concessions to the PP on this issue and pointed out just how many Spanish pensions the contributions of immigrants are currently funding. It needs to be said more loudly so that the “they live better than us and what’s more my Polish woman doesn’t clean my flat properly” brigade are given something to think about.

Then there was terrorism, about which I have little more to add to what I wrote yesterday. It still amazes me slightly that the PP think they can argue that the ETA they claim to have left so weak was at the same time supposed to have been capable of the Madrid bombings. Rajoy got himself into a real mess over Iraq trying to claim that Zapatero was in favour of the war, I don’t think he made a deep impression on that point. He didn’t find the knockout blow he needed or even come close to it. Rajoy’s principal problem is that an already unattractive manner becomes doubly so when he ups the aggression level, something which he has always done when debating with Zapatero.

Then there was the finish! Mariano finished last week with a bizarre tale about his hopes for a little girl growing up safe and secure in Rajoy’s Spain. Nobody in the PP seemed to want to claim responsibility for this idea, so it was even more extraordinary to see him finish last night by telling us that this little girl was “in his head”. In both cases, the clash of styles between the debate and the closing statement could hardly be greater. Unless something quite dramatic happens in the next few days, or the opinion polls have got something seriously wrong, “La niña de Rajoy” may well turn out to be his only political legacy.

Spanish General Election 2008....The Greatest Fraud Of All

With the second electoral debate between Zapatero and Rajoy set for this evening, the latest opinion polls are looking better for the governing PSOE. The advantage they have seems to have settled at around 4% over the Partido Popular (PP), although some polls still put it lower. If this reflects the reality of voting intentions then the elections will leave things pretty much as they are now, with the PSOE needing allies to form a viable majority. The good news for the PSOE is that the indications on turnout in the elections are promising, with estimates of it being around 75%.

There is of course a party who would like voter participation to be considerably less than this, and PP strategist Gabriel Elorriaga was kind enough to spell out explicitly to the British press what he would never have said so openly to the Spanish media. That the PP wants potential voters of the left to stay at home on election day is hardly a surprise, but for them to confirm that they are actively seeking abstention is a sign that they realise the limits of their appeal. It seems that the only message the PP has for those who don’t support their hard right positions is “Please don’t vote”.

The debate tonight is a big one for Mariano Rajoy, his aggressive attacks last week failed to give him anything approaching a knockout blow, and the general perception was that Zapatero did better from the debate despite an uncertain performance. Tonight the tables are turned slightly as the order of intervention will allow Zapatero to have first say in each section and thus give him more opportunity to set the agenda. It’s not necessarily Rajoy’s final chance to score points in the campaign, that could come tomorrow with the announcement of the latest unemployment figures. However, the story of the polls is that the campaign is not currently going the PP’s way.

In the end one of the biggest talking points of last week’s debate was the decision by Rajoy to openly accuse Zapatero of having attacked the victims of terrorism, an accusation which he refused to withdraw. It seems amazing that following the PP’s exploitation of terrorism over the last few years they can still get away with this sort of thing without the political roof falling in on their heads. Their bogus claims to speak in the name of terrorist victims are not new, they have hidden so much of their opposition behind this shield, but it is a depressing illustration of how an important issue can be manipulated to such extremes without apparently affecting the willingness of many people to vote for them.

At least now many victims have had enough and are starting to speak out against the fraudulent way in which the PP has attempted to use their suffering for its own political objectives. The PP only recognises as victims those who support these objectives, such as the leadership of the AVT. Those victims of the Madrid bombings or ETA who refused to accept the conspiracy theories that the PP and their media friends promoted are simply airbrushed out of the photo, and of course denied any funding by those administrations that the PP controls.

Rajoy used as support for his accusation the claim that Zapatero had negotiated politically with ETA, a claim backed up with the blatant lie that no other Spanish government had ever done this before. Irony of ironies, Rajoy’s main advisor in last week’s debate was a certain Pedro Arriola. Now Mr Arriola knows a thing or two about negotiating with ETA, he was a member of the team sent by José Maria Aznar to talk face to face with ETA in Switzerland in 1999. So the question naturally arises, if they didn’t negotiate politically with ETA at this meeting, what were they discussing? Perhaps the weather? Or Athletic Bilbao’s prospects for that season? Some analysts felt that Zapatero could have responded much more strongly on this issue than he did in last week’s encounter. Perhaps tonight he will.

More Election Songs

Great animation in this one - watch out for Espe taking care of Gallardón.





via Escolar.net

Fast Train To Tarragona

It's that time of year again.

Spanish General Election 2008....Missing In Action

Have you seen these men? The ones in the bottom half of the image above, currently being used by the PSOE to remind their voters of why they came out to vote in 2004. I'm not referring to the one on the right, we know here he is. It's the other two I am asking about; Angel Acebes and Eduardo Zaplana sitting alongside Partido Popular (PP) candidate Mariano Rajoy. Acebes was of course the public face of the PP as they tried to manipulate their way through the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings in 2004. He is still an important figure, general secretary of the party no less. Meanwhile, Zaplana was another loyal party servant, and since the PP lost power has been one of the main movers inside the party to promote the conspiracy theories about the train bombings. He is also still an important figure, and occupies the fourth place on the PP electoral list for Madrid.

The problem is they have gone missing, wherever Mariano Rajoy goes on the election trail Acebes and Zaplana are not to be seen. As the PP has tried to promote a softer, more centrist image, so those in the party leadership most identified with the hardline opposition of the last four years have been carefully kept out of sight. Which is not to exaggerate the shift in the PP's position. This weekend sees the emergence into the campaign of the real leader, José Maria Aznar, and it seems safe to assume that his loyal lieutenants will be allowed out for the big day. This is how El País cartoonist Forges sees the issue:

Aragonés Sues For Peace

Talking of people who have what we might call “issues” with people from other countries or with a different skin colour, it’s been a while since Luis Aragonés has featured in this blog. Aragonés is almost always having a problem with somebody, but recently he made a very public peace with Real Madrid striker Raúl. Now Raúl used to be an untouchable as far as selection for the national squad was concerned, and the decision by Aragonés to drop him has been controversial. “How many European Championships has Raúl won?” was how he reacted when some fans criticised him for leaving the Madrid player out. It didn’t seem to occur to him at the time that he doesn’t have a particularly splendid record in that competition himself.

His decision to drop Raúl was actually one of the few reasonable things “el abuelo” has done, the player had not been performing well for either club or country. However, Aragonés never stops digging when he is in a hole, so reversing any of his decisions becomes virtually impossible; and Raúl has again been looking more like the player of old. Recently Luis has felt increasingly threatened as open speculation began about who would be his successor after the European Championship this summer. Rumours that the name of this successor would be announced before the championship started then provoked him into making a stand. Feeling under attack from all sides, he obviously decided it was time to remove some of the ammunition that his critics have; hence the public peace making with Raúl. Apart from anything else, if Raúl returns to the team and Spain get knocked out in the early rounds at least no one will be able to say it happened because the player wasn’t selected.

Carnival Time For Mariano

You remember a few weeks ago when a group of morons dressed up as the “Hamilton Familly” (sic) whilst others hurled racist abuse at Lewis Hamilton? We were assured that it was all a big joke because the morons in question were just dressed up for Carnival and therefore couldn’t possibly be racists.


Well the man playing the solo in the photograph above has obviously learnt something from this incident, and nobody should assume he meant any harm when he said on Wednesday that “the rights of immigrants mustn’t prejudice the rights of the Spanish”. I mean, come on, he was just having a joke, a bit of a laugh with his costumed friends. If you don’t get it then you obviously have no sense of humour.

Spanish General Election 2008....Is Any Vote A Wasted Vote?

So much attention on the electoral debates tends to hide the fact that there are other parties involved in the Spanish elections. With both major parties separated by a narrow margin in the opinion polls the question of strategic voting, or what is called in Spain the “voto útil”, comes into play. For the most part the potential for vote switching affects those who do not want to see the Partido Popular (PP) return to power. After all, those who do not want the governing PSOE to win tend to be either committed already to the PP, or are voters of one of the regional nationalist parties and are unlikely to consider changing their vote to the PP.

The party whose vote is most under pressure from this phenomenon is Izquierda Unida (IU), the coalition to the left of the PSOE. Voters for the second force on the left are faced with the option of voting with their hearts for a party that will struggle to get above 5-6% of their vote, or to go with the PSOE to try and prevent a PP victory. Already, there are signs that IU’s support in the polls has declined slightly as the PP narrowed the gap with the PSOE.

The electoral system in Spain hits IU or any other minority national party with a double whammy, which brutally reduces their parliamentary representation compared to their proportion of the vote. First of all, in the smaller provinces it is possible to take a significant share of the vote and yet not get any parliamentary members elected. Then, in the main urban centres like Madrid or Barcelona, the number of votes needed to elect a single member of parliament can be three or four times that required to get the same result in a province such as Soria. It is principally the first factor that is used as an argument in favour of the voto útil.

The non-proportional nature of the electoral system means that IU’s few elected members come from the larger areas. In these elections they are already in danger of losing their representative from Valencia because of internal disputes in the selection of candidates. The danger they face is that a squeeze on their vote could leave them with less than five members of parliament, in which case they lose the right to form a separate parliamentary group. Not surprisingly, IU have included reform of the electoral system in their program, and emphasise the issues where they differ from the PSOE. They need to convince their supporters that the most useful vote is one that keeps them where they are.

Election Songs

It's time to lighten things up a bit on the blog. Let's start with a magnificent mariachi performance in favour of Barack Obama, "hasta con plan de salud" isn't a line you find in the chorus of many songs.

Meanwhile, a Colombian song written in support of Mariano Rajoy has become the background for several videos, of which this is an example. I should point out that the song was produced before he decided to make immigrants the target of his campaign so I can't confirm if the authors have signed his integration contract.

Spanish General Election 2008....The Real Rajoy

I went to bed last night after the electoral debate between Zapatero and Rajoy feeling that neither of the two contenders had managed to land any kind of killer blow, in what was a tense and nervy encounter. However, it’s always difficult to disentangle your own feelings about the participants and take a cooler, more distant view. So this morning I decided to look first at a pro-Rajoy news source (El Mundo) to see how the political right had interpreted the debate. Once I saw that their poll had Zapatero as the winner then I realised that my own assessment wasn’t so affected by my (fully justified) prejudices against Rajoy. If anything, I had slightly overrated his performance. When I saw that even the PP controlled TeleMadrid had given Zapatero a slight advantage it confirmed the outcome.

In the end we didn’t get a fake Mariano Rajoy last night, the recent attempt by the PP to present their candidate as a relaxed, carefree, person was dropped in favour of the Rajoy that we already know very well. From the first intervention it was clear that he was hyped up and aggressive, and he maintained this attitude throughout the debate. Both the manner and the arguments used were typical of the PP’s opposition strategy over the last four years. Beginning with the economy Rajoy was better when he talked about concrete price increases, but his attempts to try and force Zapatero not to talk about general economic performance betrayed the weakness of the PP’s case on the economy – they only want to talk about the last 3-4 months. Spain is not in recession, despite the attempts to portray it as being in crisis, so the doom laden discourse of the PP on this issue has limitations; one of the reasons why they lost the economic debate held last week.

On immigration Rajoy was a predictable disgrace, portraying immigrants as taking more than they contribute from the Spanish state, and trying to link immigration and crime. Not a single word about their contribution to Spain’s economic growth, no mention of how their taxes pay the pensions of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards. In the face of this opportunist onslaught on those who can’t vote, Zapatero did well to point out some realities, most notably the fact that the PP left a huge number of immigrants in an unregulated limbo during their time in office. Great for those employers who want cheap unprotected labour, not so good for the immigrants or for the social security system. In the midst of this discussion, Rajoy revealed how in touch he is with the lives of his compatriots by showing he didn’t know what a bonobus is; the multiple journey ticket that any user of public transport should be able to identify. I predict this will quickly become as legendary as Zapatero's ignorance of the price of a cup of coffee.

Turning to terrorism we got a familiar PP discourse with Rajoy accusing Zapatero of deception and of having negotiated politically with ETA. Zapatero hit back with Aznar’s own negotiation with ETA and with the Madrid train bombings. Rajoy fell into the glaring contradiction that always seems to escape PP supporters, how can they claim that ETA was on its last legs when Aznar left office if at the same time they accused it of carrying out the biggest terrorist attack the country has ever seen? I felt Zapatero could have made more of the PP’s hypocrisy on this issue, but it is clear that the PP case is one more suited to campaign speeches where no one has right of reply. Other issues included an exchange on the reform of regional autonomy statutes. Zapatero waffled his way through this one a bit; it’s a difficult issue because it pleases his supporters in some parts of the country but not in others. He did challenge Rajoy on why the PP has voted in favour of things in some regions that it has challenged as unconstitutional in the case of Cataluña.

Despite lacking a bit of precision, and occasionally seeming unable to fill up his allotted time, in the end Zapatero held his own and with that probably achieved his objectives for the night. If the general perception sets in that he won the debate then there may even be further improvements in the opinion polls for the government. Rajoy needed more from this debate, but seems to have opted for a message that was aimed almost entirely at those who are already his convinced supporters. His aggressive style, steely eyed even when he was trying to smile, doesn’t go down well in the country which is one reason why he is so poorly rated as a leader in the polls. The question now is how the PP will approach next week’s debate between the two men, they used up a lot of their ammunition last night without inflicting damage. More of the same is unlikely to work. They could opt for trying to turn the second debate into a shouting match that puts voters off; a lower turnout in theory favours the more committed PP vote. They need to do something, having started the campaign effectively they are now losing the initiative as well as the debates. Mariano only has one journey left on his bus ticket.

Spanish General Election 2008....The Debates Make A Difference

Tonight sees the first electoral debate between Mariano Rajoy and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The fallout from last week’s debate on the economy demonstrates that the debates themselves may not be very interesting, but the consequences can be. Only the most ardent Partido Popular (PP) supporters claim that Manuel Pizarro won that debate against Zapatero’s Finance Minister Pedro Solbes. Sometimes no amount of post debate spin can change a perception that already seems to have translated itself into a bigger lead for the government in the daily tracking polls. The reaction of the party leaders to the debate tells its own story; Zapatero has repeatedly praised Solbes in his subsequent election speeches, whilst Rajoy has avoided mentioning the debate at all.

Pizarro was supposed to be the star signing for the PP in this campaign, but he demonstrated the other night that there is a big difference between knowing when to sell your stock options, and knowing anything about the broader economy in general. His most pathetic moment came when he attempted to avoid a proper explanation of how the PP would pay for the substantial tax cuts that they are proposing. Pizarro’s response that he would do it by abolishing the housing ministry and by not giving money to terrorists only demonstrated that they still haven’t tracked down anyone in PP headquarters with an economics degree and a calculator. Meanwhile Solbes showed that these events are not just about presentation alone. Nobody has ever accused him of being charismatic, and with one eye almost completely closed due to a recent illness he even had a faintly sinister appearance. Nevertheless, content triumphed over style.

The bounce in the opinion polls in favour of the government means that it is Rajoy who is under most pressure tonight; he needs to do something to try and arrest the momentum that Zapatero’s campaign has got from the unexpectedly clear victory for Solbes. Zapatero just needs to hold his own, and apart from controlling a tendency to improvise he can more or less be himself. Rajoy and his advisers have some tough choices, because an over aggressive approach could easily backfire on them, yet they need to put Zapatero on the defensive. The PP’s catastrophe laden discourse on the economy has now lost its force following Pizarro’s defeat, although Zapatero is much less secure on economic issues than Solbes. In recent days the PP has turned once again to its favourite theme of terrorism and its claims that Zapatero betrayed the country with his negotiations with ETA. However, it is one thing to use this issue in speeches to a supportive audience where no one has right of reply. Pressing it too much in a debate could invite Zapatero to respond on the PP’s own negotiations with ETA; not to mention their repeated manipulation of the Madrid train bombings.

Rajoy is naturally an abrasive debater, which has already cost him in his parliamentary clashes with Zapatero. He has been trying to promote a much softer image in the campaign, but if I was Zapatero I would go the debate armed with the (long) list of all the insults that Rajoy has directed at him over the last few years. Many of those insults come from Rajoy believing in his own superiority over his opponent, and it remains to be seen whether anyone has convinced him that this approach doesn’t work. He has to make the biggest effort to change his natural style and maintaining the pretence over two debates could prove to be difficult. The “debate” itself is really going to be a series of alternating short monologues by the contenders, with tightly controlled conditions agreed on everything from the issues to be discussed to the camera angles permitted and the temperature in the studio. It could well end up like one of those big football games which generate so much expectation, yet end up with the fear of losing dominating over everything else. Except that one of the contenders needs to score tonight.

Spanish General Election 2008....The Campaign Begins

It seems almost crazy to talk about the Spanish election campaign beginning now, when it seems like we have been in full campaign for months. Nevertheless, the official campaign period began at midnight last night; leaving us with just 16 days until the day of reflection that precedes election day itself on March 9th.

The election currently appears to be very tight between the governing PSOE and the Partido Popular (PP). At one point a few weeks ago it looked as if the gap in the opinion polls between the PSOE and the PP was widening slightly. If anything, the reverse has been the case as some of the most recent polls show the gap being as low as 1.5%. Although many analysts talk of the polls reflecting a stalemate or technical draw because of the margins of error, the reality is not quite that simple. There is still not a single poll that has put the PP in front of the PSOE, and the lead the PSOE has is occasionally greater than the 3% which is commonly assumed to be the margin of error. That said, there does seem to be a trend showing a slight increase in the PP’s support.

Other indicators included in the opinion polls tend to reinforce the idea of the PSOE being ahead, when it comes to evaluation of the party candidates then Prime Minister Zapatero consistently outscores PP leader Mariano Rajoy. On questions of competence for dealing with different issues, the PSOE does better in the majority of cases than the PP. The opinion poll scores we see on the front pages of the newspapers are heavily adjusted, the raw data on voting intentions shows a much bigger PSOE lead, but the results are then weighted to take into account factors such as likely abstention or those who tend to lie to opinion pollsters.

Analysts differ on whether the narrow gap the polls show is good for the government or not, some seem to think it will motivate abstention-prone PSOE voters to turn out as the threat of the PP returning to power becomes greater. It is seen as very bad news for Izquierda Unida (IU), the party to the left of the PSOE. The closer the gap between the two major parties the bigger the squeeze on the IU vote as some of their natural supporters switch to the PSOE in an attempt to prevent a PP victory. As if things weren’t complicated enough already, it is worth pointing out that the opinion polls in Spain have not been very accurate in predicting general election outcomes in the past. I am not just talking about the last election in 2004, where no one predicted what would happen after the train bombings. The polls have been wide of the mark in several elections, so surprises can never be completely ruled out.

Barring all major and unpredictable events, it is hard to see what will happen between now and election day to significantly change the current situation. The PP, having aggressively attacked to make the economy and factors such as immigration the focal points of the campaign, are probably going to be content with a relatively boring official campaign; they have consolidated and motivated their support and a higher rate of abstention tends to work in their favour. Hence the reported “gaffe” by Zapatero last week when he was recorded saying to a journalist that the government needed a bit of tension in the campaign to get their supporters out.

Huge attention will be devoted to the two televised debates which have been agreed between Zapatero and Rajoy after very protracted negotiations. At one point there was much speculation that the PP was seeking to avoid the debates as they insisted on only having them on the private channels of Telecinco or Antena 3. The PSOE offered five or six different alternatives and in the end the PP gave way and the independent television academy will organise the debates. This is the first election to see debates between the main contenders since 1993 when Felipe Gonzalez agreed to go head to head with José Maria Aznar. The debates will be held on the 25th February and the 3rd March, although the agreed format is so tightly controlled that the opportunities to score points are going to be few and far between. Last night saw a dreadfully tedious debate on the economy between the Finance Minister Pedro Solbes and his PP equivalent Manuel Pizarro. Majority opinion seems to think that Solbes edged it as Pizarro’s verbosity and lack of political skills undermined his case.

The campaign may become unbearable but the tension over the eventual outcome promises to make this election memorable. If the polls are correct, or even close to being correct, then Spain is not going to have a majority government come March 10th. In the past a winning party hitting over 40% of the popular vote could expect to have a parliamentary majority. The big difference this time could be that both major parties hit that figure. The post-election scenarios in such a situation ironically increase the power of the smaller parties – the possible post electoral alliances will I think be worth a blog post of their own.

Cinema....The Oxford Murders

This film (titled Los Crimenes de Oxford in Spanish) is the first to be made made overseas by Spanish director Alex de La Iglesia. Based on a book of the same name by the Argentinian writer Guillermo Martinez, it is shot in English and has some well known names in the leading roles (John Hurt, Elijah Wood and Leonor Watling). I have to say that I went to see this film forewarned, Ben over at Notes From Spain had already posted on it and wasn’t impressed. Sad to say, I came out of the cinema at the end with a similar opinion to his.

In many ways it is a very traditional kind of film, a whodunit based around a series of murders that are said to be linked to a symbolic series – not for nothing do we see a Cluedo board in one of the scenes. Wood plays a postgraduate student who becomes involved in the mystery following the murder of his landlady. A professor at the university, played by Hurt, is the other principal character at the heart of the story.

The script is stilted and unconvincing, and the plot is developed almost entirely through what I would call “Holmes and Watson” moments of revelation as the Hurt-Wood pairing use their combined intellectual power to unravel the mystery. The police for some strange reason seem to feel happy with letting this odd couple lead the investigation. Meanwhile, there are other characters in the story whose only purpose for existing seems to be to provide us with a suitably large list of potential suspects.

Not having read the book I have no way of knowing whether the problem is the original story or the way in which it has been adapted. Perhaps it’s a case of what works on paper not transferring well to the cinema screen? A good murder mystery has to generate tension and draw you into the intricacies of the story bit by bit, the problem here is that the spectator is left passively waiting for the great minds to reveal their latest deductions. At the end of the film there were still some things I hadn’t fully understood about what had happened; the main problem was that it didn’t really bother me that much.

It’s a departure from the director’s usual style, and unfortunately I think the venture hasn’t worked – although the film seems to be doing reasonably well here in Spain. It’s a shame, because it’s yet another film that created expectations that are not fulfilled. My yardstick for a good De La Iglesia film still remains the same as before, if it doesn’t end with an action sequence on a building near or overlooking Madrid’s Gran Via then it doesn’t make the grade (La Comunidad or El Día de la Bestia).

Ellos Irán A Votar

I may not be able to vote in the Spanish election, but I have already passed this video to someone who can.

WARNING: This video contains images of very right wing people which some viewers may find offensive. Not suitable for young children or those of a sensitive disposition.




via El rey de la baraja

Fill My Boat With Water

It’s been quite a while since I got as wet in Madrid as I did last night, splashing through the rain to support the doctors of Severo Ochoa. Now that I think about it, Doña Esperanza was showing great interest a couple of years back in the issue of seeding clouds to solve the water problems of the capital. Perhaps there is a connection?

In any case, the rain that has fallen this week in Spain has done little to solve what threatens to be an acute crisis this summer if we don’t get more. Madrid is probably alright for this year, as long as the suburban garden and swimming pool set don’t go crazy. The east of the country has much more serious problems, even in areas like the Pyrenees the reservoirs are at very low levels and the current half year (going by the hydrological calendar beginning in October) is set to be the driest in 60 years.

There has even been some talk of Barcelona getting drinking water shipped in by boat if things don’t improve. Ironically, that water could come from Almeria, which is perhaps the region which has the lowest annual rainfall of all in Spain. A huge new desalination plant in Almeria is currently only operating at a fraction of its capacity, serving the local area around it. So in a crisis further up the coast this plant could end up being used to fill the gap.

Water also features as an issue in the general election campaign. The plan to divert water from the River Ebro to regions such as Valencia and Murcia was abandoned by the current government in favour of more desalination plants. The Valencian regional government, controlled by the PP, has continued to push this plan and wanted it to be included in the party’s policies for the election. However, in a tightly fought contest votes in Aragon count as well; and the opposition to the plan in the regions through which the Ebro passes has made the PP nervous about stressing the issue. It would make little difference, even if this ecologically damaging plan had been implemented no water would have been transferred, because the Ebro is suffering from exactly the same problem as the rivers further south – no rain.

La Española Cuando Besa

It happened yesterday. Not once, but twice. Forget the economy, terrorism, Kosovo, the bishops, electoral debates and all that nonsense, the really big issue of the election campaign has been when Esperanza Aguirre and Madrid Mayor Alberto Ruiz Gallardón would once again exchange kisses. This follows their slight falling out over the question of whether Gallardón would get his wish to be on his party’s electoral list.

Since that fateful day when Gallardón lost his battle with Aguirre, a new academic speciality has developed which looks for the hidden meanings in all of his public pronouncements. It’s a bit like the Kremlinologists who used to analyse the speeches of Soviet leaders to find what was really meant by their words. The speech that Gallardón made at the end of Carnival was widely seen as a thinly disguised allegory of his battle with Aguirre. Coinciding the other day with Real Madrid star Raúl, Gallardón commiserated with the footballer over his exclusion from the national squad. Don’t worry if you are excluded from the national lists, said Alberto, there will always be others! Whatever could he mean?

Aguirre and Gallardón first kissed yesterday at the opening ceremony for the revamped bus and Metro station at Moncloa. The commemorative plaque of that event (above) says much about the differing styles of the two politicians. Aguirre gets a “Doña” and the full aristocratic surname. She didn’t include her DNI number because there wasn’t space. Meanwhile Gallardón is identified simply as the “Alcalde de Madrid”, no name or number. Whether he will ever be anything more than this remains to be seen.

Justice For Severo Ochoa

Having posted yesterday on a fraudulent demonstration in Madrid, tomorrow we have a different case altogether. The accusations made by the regional government of Madrid and friendly media against the doctors at the Severo Ochoa hospital in Leganés have been shown to be completely false. Despite Esperanza Aguirre claiming that she could always reinstate the doctors if the accusations turned out to be wrong, her administration has shown that it prefers to lie and distort the facts rather than admit that they got it all wrong. It hurts just to think that people who behave in this way are in charge of the health service for the whole region of Madrid. Tomorrow evening at 19:00 in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid there is a chance to protest that decision and call for the reinstatement of those doctors unjustly removed from their posts.

No Warm Spanish Welcome For Kosovo

The newborn state of Kosovo has at least one expense less as it starts life as a nation; there will be no need for the moment to send an ambassador to Spain. The Spanish government has today made clear what was already suspected to be the case, that they are not recognising the independence declaration by the Kosovans. The main reason for this is a fear of being seen to recognise rights of self determination overseas when the same right is not recognised within Spain itself.

Although there has been a welcome for Kosovo’s independence in some nationalist circles, it is probably fair to say that this has been fairly muted too, those who would like to see independence for Cataluña or the Basque Country are unlikely to see Kosovo as the model for achieving that aim; it is an impoverished state which will depend on foreign troops to defend its frontiers for some time to come. One of the ironies of the situation is that some of the troops currently stationed in Kosovo are Spanish, a little over 600 of them. This was an irony that escaped José Bono, who despite being a former defence minister seemed completely unaware of the Spanish contribution when he said a few days ago that Spain should send no troops there.

The Spanish right is even more nervous about anything that suggests that regions of countries can break away. El Mundo amusingly claimed the other day that the declaration of independence by Kosovo is yet another sign of how Spain has declined in influence since Zapatero came to power; as if Mariano Rajoy would have been able to prevent it from happening! With support from the US and other large European nations for independence, the Spanish stand makes little difference and the government almost certainly knows it. The Kosovan ambassador will probably arrive quietly in Madrid in a year or two.