Santiago Train Crash....The Accident That Should Have Been Avoided

The funeral service has been held today for the victims of last week's awful train crash in Santiago. The judicial investigation into what happened is also just underway, although for many it's already a closed case. Despite the fact that the black boxes recovered intact from the train have still not been opened, and that no serious investigation of all possible factors has yet occurred, for Spain's government and sections of the media it's a done deal. The train driver is to blame for everything. 

The accusation has enthusiastic support. La Razón and ABC, competitors in the bid to be the most servile conduit for the Spanish government's message of the day, have been the worst offenders with some truly appalling reporting. It may be the case that the driver didn't do what he needed to do in the section of the route where the crash occurred, but the reasons for pointing the finger so loudly and quickly at him have little to do with a real desire to know the truth about what happened. 

In what was fairly clearly a political manoeuvre, the police were ordered by the interior ministry to arrest and hold the train driver even though he was in hospital following the crash and showed no signs of going anywhere. In Spain it's the investigating magistrate who has to present any formal accusation and so it was that yesterday the driver appeared before the magistrate and, at least from what has been reported, recognised that he failed to reduce the speed of the train as he entered the curve where the fatal derailment occurred. He's facing charges of reckless manslaughter.  

The media and political campaign didn't need to wait for such needless legal formalities. The driver of the train had posted a photo on Facebook some time ago of the speed display on his train showing 200km per hour. That was enough for those looking for a summary trial, the driver had obviously caused the accident because he is a reckless, boastful, boy racer.  Now I've travelled many times on Alvia trains like that involved in the accident and similar ones running on high speed tracks built for the faster AVE, and they still go very fast - frequently at more than 200km per hour. So a train driver pointing out that he has hit 200km with a train like this isn't boasting about doing something that he shouldn't do.

What is really missing in such tragic circumstances is that someone from the government appears and makes clear that all necessary steps will be taken to ensure such an accident doesn't happen again. If that has happened, I haven't seen it. There hasn't even been a single press conference yet by the heads of the public companies involved, infrastructure (ADIF) or operator (RENFE). Instead the government, in what has now become almost a trademark procedure for PP administrations, looks for someone to blame and then acts as if responsibility for rail safety has nothing to do with the national government. It's that Prestige approach to crisis management all over again with that special "how dare you call me to account for what happens on my watch" arrogance. 

But there's more to it than this habitual attempt to evade any political responsibility, commercial motives have also played their part in this urgent campaign to blame the driver and only the driver. Spanish companies are bidding for high speed rail projects around the world and in some cases there are conditions for bidding that include a clean safety record. So the line where the accident occurred is no longer considered to be high speed since the accident, although it was presented as such and forms part of the planned AVE line connecting Madrid and Galicia. It's true that no AVE trains run on the line at the moment, but there are services running on it capable of travelling at speeds up to 250km per hour. That's not high speed?

The regional president of Galicia, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, who should be fully occupied with the consequences of dealing with those affected by the crash in his region instead decided to go for the idiotic 'Leyenda Negra' argument claiming that evil unnamed foreign interests are out to get Spain's successful high speed rail industry. Despite obvious differences, I'm reminded of the Paddington train crash in 1999; a product of a stupid and disastrous privatisation plan that left passenger safety at the bottom of the priorities list way behind the bonuses and fat profits that were being earned by those in charge of the rail infrastructure. It was another avoidable accident, and as in the case of Santiago there was a concerted campaign to attribute it to 'human error' rather than to deficient safety systems. 

So what do I mean when I write about deficient safety systems? How about this odd situation where, of 87 kilometres of high speed line built between Ourense and Santiago, the last 7km into Santiago were left with a safety system dating from the 1960's whilst the rest were equipped with a modern state of the art system. A modern and expensive system which is not being used at the moment, for reasons which have not been explained. Yes, the 7 km with the old system includes the stretch where the crash occurred. The driver should have braked 4 kilometres before the curve, says the president of ADIF. Which sounds like more than enough time until you do the calculation and understand that a train travelling at 190km takes little over a minute to cover that distance. An up to date safety system would have stopped that train. 

At first many people were also asking what such a potentially dangerous curve was doing on a high speed line, requiring a train to slow down to a maximum of 80km in a relatively short distance. It seems that this is far from being a unique case on Spain's high speed lines. Nor is it necessarily a bad solution in itself. The alternative is to either put a special AVE station well outside of Santiago city limits (Tarragona or Segovia style), to tunnel, or to bulldoze a significant part of the city to build a nice straight line for the fast train. The drive for speed above all else is a big part of the problem.

The AVE has become, in these times of crisis, an absurd trophy project that swallows huge resources at the expense of the rest of Spain's rail network. Both in terms of investment and because other train services around the country are being cut so that fares on the AVE can be discounted for expensive trains that have to run almost full to stand a chance of breaking even. This time it's prestige with a small 'p', the AVE offers tremendous inauguration and boasting possibilities for Spanish politicians from all governments since the 1990's and has become an untouchable icon of Spanish progress. So you have the bizarre way in which the new Madrid-Alicante line was introduced just before the summer, the authorities on the inaugural ride whizzed through ghost stations where a dirt road leaves the forecourt. Then those managing the line beg, borrow or steal the rolling stock from other high speed lines so that appearances can be maintained. Everything works fine until it doesn't. 

The technology already existed to prevent the Santiago accident, and it has existed for quite a long time. Placing all responsibility on the driver for anything that happens on a high speed rail line isn't just unfair, it's irresponsible. It seems hard to believe that everything will just continue as before with the driver as the scapegoat. You have to hope that, at the very least, when memories of the accident fade and the commercial bids have been submitted workers will be quietly sent in to put in place the safety system that such a section of track requires. You hope, but you can't be sure that's what will happen. 

Regional Election Results For Galicia And The Basque Country 2012

I did toy with the idea of continuing wordless blogging and just post the results widget from El País. The results will start coming in after 20:00 Spanish time.

Both of the regions voting today belong to that select group of comunidades autonomas in Spain (along with Cataluña and Andalucia) that set their own electoral timetable instead of having a common voting day. Neither Galicia nor The Basque Country have made it through the full four year term, although the reasons for early elections are different.

The outgoing Basque government had no choice but to call elections after the Partido Popular withdrew their support for the minority administration led by the socialist Patxi López. The expectation for today's election is that 'normal service' will be resumed and that the nationalists will sweep the board, probably taking the first two places. A return to nationalist rule would probably have been the case even without the fall in support for the two big national parties (PP and PSOE) provoked by their management of the crisis. The legalisation of parties linked to ETA's political wing means that the full nationalist vote will be reflected in the results, unlike the previous election.

This will leave Patxi López free to become the 'continuity' candidate for national leadership in the PSOE when current leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba finally gets the message that he is not the future of his party. López will be in an even stronger position if the Catalan socialists get a drubbing in the forthcoming elections there. Carme Chacón almost beat Rubalcaba to the leadership but she will be damaged by a bad result in Cataluña. The next time a leader is elected there will be other contenders. 

The effect of ETA's continuing truce and the legalisation of their political wing changes the balance of power in nationalist circles. The conservative PNV has always dominated the nationalist vote but now they are in competition with a strengthened rival. The margin between the PNV and Bildu will be important for the balance between those satisfied with regional autonomy inside Spain and those who favour a push for independence.

In Galicia the reason for early elections is simply political expediency on the part of the PP. The party has decided that with the economic situation continuing to deteriorate and the with the threat of imminent EU intervention to prop up Spain's finances, there is less political cost in bringing the elections forward. The PP may even conserve their majority in the Galician parliament, the PSOE shows little sign of electoral recovery and the Galician nationalists have been in disarray. If it comes off, the PP will feel fully vindicated in their consistent strategy of putting the party interest before anything else. 

Barring surprises, the distribution of the vote may not change very much. What will be important is turnout, a big decline will be seen as something of a vote of no confidence in the big two parties. Some recent national opinion polls show them with little more than 55% support combined, when in happier times for Spain it would have been more like 80%. Some disenchanted voters will vote for the smaller parties, but many may simply opt for abstention. 

Then, with the elections out of the way, perhaps Spain's government will come out of hiding although Rajoy's administration seems to have decided that is the best way to weather the storm. The decision on whether to ask for an EU rescue doesn't just depend on the electoral timetable, but as with the case of Andalucia earlier this year we have seen that the PP has no problem with concealing their intentions for electoral benefit. No-one in that party believes in falling on their sword for the greater good, power and the opportunities it presents are too tempting. As for those who suffer the consequences of this, ¡que se jodan!

La Playa De Las Catedrales

In another of our summer trips to the north coast we spent a weekend exploring the coastline lying on both sides of the Asturias/Galicia frontier. We based ourselves in the small Asturian town of Tapia de Casariego, which turned out to be a good choice. On day one we headed for what is probably the most famous beach on this stretch of coastline, La Playa de las Catedrales. Our route started and finished in the village of Rinlo, just a few kilometres inside Galicia. From here there is a signposted Ruta de las Playas which takes you for about 7 kilometres along the coast to Catedrales. It's an easy route to walk and much of it passes directly beside the coast, although some stretches have to be walked on the road. Whilst thousands of people at this time of the year head directly for the Playa de las Catedrales, there are other beautiful beaches along the walking route we did.


Many of the beaches on this coast are only accessible when the tide is out, and it makes sense to check the time of low tide before doing this walk. We got to the Playa de las Catedrales at a good time for the tide, but also at the point when most of the people on holiday in the region decided to descend on the same spot. Despite the crowds, the beach is big enough to take it and walking around the caves and rock formations of the beach was still quite possible. Our route took us along the top of the cliff above the beach before finally descending.


Obviously with so many people on the beach at low tide you can spend a lot of time taking photographs of people who are in turn taking photos of other people.


Because the high tide completely covers the beach, many of the rocks on the lower part of the cliff are home to colonies of mussels and the inexplicably popular goose barnacles - percebes.



A final comment on this route, the reward for the walk was a hugely satisfying arroz caldoso de marisco in the restaurant run by the Cofradía de Pescadores in Rinlo. Strongly recommended if you like that sort of thing - I think you might need to reserve at a busy time of the year.

In the afternoon we did another walking route around the estuary of the River Eo, from Figueras to Castropol. This is also a marked route although finding the starting point in Figueras is not so easy, it's up in the village rather than down by the waterside. They say the route is 4 kilometres one way, although I suspect its a bit more than this. Perhaps it was just the effect of the arroz de marisco that made me feel that way. In any case, doing both of these routes on the same day is probably a bit too much for those who prefer a more relaxed pace of life.


The next day we walked another coastal route, this time starting in Tapia itself. From the village you walk across the beach and up the other side where they have a recently built urbanisation/coastal atrocity that makes you imagine that the Ley de Costas has never existed. From here there are two choices, if you follow the "official" route then you follow the road for a while before getting to a path that takes you down in between the maize fields to the coast. The less official way is to try and follow the coastline from the part of the urbanisation nearest to the sea, which will soon bring you to another beach. From there you can pick up the coastal path, although this occasionally veers inland to avoid the rougher and more inaccessible parts of the cliffs.

We walked up to a point where things got just a bit too difficult to continue following the coast. The beaches on this route are completely wild and can be just as beautiful, but much less popular, than Catedrales. The Atlantic coastline is almost always more impressive than that of the Mediterranean. There is of course the slight detail of the weather in these parts, but we were lucky yet again. I can't remember the name of the beach below, not sure if I ever knew, so for me it will always be Iguana Beach.



Back in Tapia there was a festival of Celtic music in the evenings, as I found out years before on my Navia visit it's a mistake to assume that Celtic Spain starts and ends in Galicia. It's not normally South of Watford policy to recommend restaurants but as I've already done it once in this post I might as well do it again. The pulpo and calamar en su tinta served to us in Tapia´s El Pilón were worth the wait in this busy place.

La Coruña

Some photographs of an August weekend trip to the city I shall call, in the interests of linguistic diversity, (L)a Coruña. Amazingly, considering the amount of travelling I've done in the rest of the country, this was my first visit to Galicia since my first ever time in Spain - the same journey that took me to Navia. I guess this is because it is just not easy to do a short trip from Madrid to this region - unless you fly and you can get a good timetable. On that first visit to the country I ended my fairly random wandering in Coruña and to be honest the place didn't leave much of an impression. This time I was far more impressed, things have changed for the better and it is not a bad place to consider for a weekend trip. I even took the gamble of travelling without anything to protect me from the rain and it paid off. After a cloudy but dry Saturday, the following day saw Riazor beach packed with people for what seems to have been the first day of summer in the city this year, at least according to the taxi driver who told us it was the worst summer he could remember in 35 years.

Inside that stretch of the city bordered on one side by the beach and the other by the port there are some pedestrianised streets, one of which is full of bars and restaurants and which leads to the Plaza of Maria Pita, a heroine of the resistance against an unsuccessful English attack on the city in 1589. This isn't the only English connection to the city. Starting from the small old city a bit further down from Maria Pita, we soon arrived at the park where the remains of General Sir John Moore lie in a shady garden overlooking the port.


Wellington seemed to have a feel for the diversity in Spain with his message "Españoles, dedicaos todos a imitar a los inimitables Gallegos". A message which the web tells me has travelled as far as the Centro Gallego in Buenos Aires. Down below this memorial is the Castillo de San Antón and from there you can begin to walk the 10 kilometres of paseo maritimo that the city possesses. We walked it all, some bits more than once.


Overlooking the ria it was strange to find a muslim cemetery for the North African troops who fought with Franco's forces in the Civil War. Obviously had they fought on the other side then their bones would just have been tossed into a hole beside the road somewhere!. The cemetery itself has ceramic decoration from which you learn the Arabic origin of so many Spanish words.


The open land nearby was used as an execution site by the Civil War victors and a "stonehenge" style monument now marks the spot.


One thing you won't be able to ignore is the fact that there is a tower in Coruña. La Torre de Hercules, recently declared to be a World Heritage site, is the oldest active lighthouse in the world. Most of what remains of the original tower is still said to be of Roman origin, in spite of successive remodelling operations throughout the ages. You can ascend most of the way up the tower and the views are worth it provided you can put up with the wind. Before you see the tower itself you will see it engraved on the paving stones, on the city shield which appears everywhere, and on the numerous posters supporting the campaign for it to be listed by UNESCO.


Over on the other side of the beaches there is the hill of San Pedro. Like many hills overlooking Spanish cities this was under the control of the military until they finally surrendered it to the municipality in the 1990's. It is now a public park and provides excellent views over the city as well as in both directions along the coast. As a reminder of its past usage there are still bunkers and two enormous guns which were imported from Barrow in Furness at the beginning of the 1930's. These weapons were never used in anger but apparently their 35km range protected German boats that wanted to stop in the ports of Coruna or El Ferrol during the second world war. Isn't the arms trade a wonderful thing? The paseo maritimo continues some way past San Pedro and out of the city, and it's possible to do the ascent of the hill from the end of the paseo too. Alternatively, there is a strange space capsule funicular to save you the climb.



This trip was never just going to be about walking, and Operación Pulpo was declared to be a great success. We tried a couple of the pulperias, unpretentious places that specialise in the tentacled beast to the exclusion of almost everything else. One was not far from the Torre de Hercules itself, and the other was somewhere near the railway station, located in ugly new Coruña. Perhaps not surprisingly, what Madrileños know as Pulpo a la Gallega doesn't seem to exist under this name in the region itself. The pulpo is almost always served without the ever present potatoes you see in Madrid, unless you get some as a side dish. Although we lived mostly off octopus during the weekend we did manage to squeeze in a mariscada on the Saturday night. For lovers of seafood the mariscada is heaven, and there are people who like nothing more than setting to work with their nutcrackers to get a thin string of meat out of a crab's leg. Personally I'm not a big fan of meals where the energy expended in getting at the edible parts is greater than that gained from eating them. Apart from anything else, I just don't see the point of eating percebes (goose barnacles), which are rubbery, tasteless and hugely expensive. I concentrated mostly on the gambas and cigalas. Tough life, tough choices.

Who Will Run The Basque Country Now?

By far the most intriguing results of the elections held yesterday in Galicia and the Basque Country are those in the latter region. In Galicia, barring an overwhelming overseas vote against the PP it looks clear that this party has recovered control from the coalition between the PSOE and the nationalist BNG. Four years the change lasted for, now the region is back in the hands of those who regard it as their personal property, albeit with a younger generation nominally in charge.

In the Basque Country things are very different. The PSE, the Basque section of the PSOE, failed to become the biggest party but the ruling nationalists of the PNV are left without any hope of repeating the three party alliance that has governed for the last four years. Even adding the seats won by Aralar, they still cannot reach a majority. 39 seats are in the hands of the PSOE, the PP, Izquierda Unida and the new party UPyD, although the last two only have one seat each. This leaves only 36 for the nationalist parties. Now the question is whether the PSE and the PP will reach an agreement to govern together, with the extra seat for a majority having to come from IU or UPyD. The change in the Basque Country that so many PSOE militants yearned for comes with a high price, if they want to head the Basque government they must do it with the PP; barring what seems the unlikely possibility of the PSE forming a minority government on their own. After all the effort to make themselves look as much a Basque party as a Spanish one they are confronted with the decision of going for an anti Basque-nationalist coalition.

Aralar have confirmed the predictions of some polls and in the process have become the fourth biggest party. It's hard to say exactly where their votes came from, the other nationalist parties have lost votes and there is the unknown factor of how many former Batasuna voters decided not to spoil their ballots in protest, and instead voted for another nationalist option. I've seen a claim that the spoilt votes would have amounted to 7 seats in the Basque parliament. The PSE result looks more impressive than it really is, their vote hasn't increased by a huge amount, but the decline in the vote of the PNV and PP means that they have risen substantially in the number of seats won. Add to that the factor that their party at national level is governing in the midst of a serious recession and it looks like a good result, but one which leaves behind it some difficult politics with implications at national level. The PNV will have their own problems following this result, the internal tensions between the different factions could now spill over into a battle for control.

Just as a footnote it's worth pointing out that the weight of a vote in the Basque Country depends significantly on which province it is cast in. In case anyone thinks that this is because nationalist parties are overrepresented, a common misconception in Spain, it's actually the least nationalist province of Alava where the fewest votes are needed to elect a representative.

Election Results In Galicia And The Basque Country 2009

With what promises to be a tense vote count tomorrow in both Galicia and the Basque Country, the widget wizards of soitu.es have done it again. Following on from their innovative presentation of the results in last year's general election, here you have a widget which will show the full results of tomorrow's regional elections in the Basque Country and Galicia as they are announced in the evening. In the meantime you can use this to check on what happened in the previous elections.



Updated 12:00 1st March

The abstainers will decide the day, seems to be the verdict of the press this morning. Although it's a common assumption that high abstention hurts the left more than the right the situation is a bit more complicated in two regions with an important nationalist sentiment. The PSOE is worried that the effects of the economic crisis in some of the more industrial towns of Galicia could cause some of their voters to stay at home, improving the chances of the PP getting the small increase they need to regain power. In the Basque Country abstention also threatens the ruling Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), one report I read this morning suggests they need a 70% turnout to ensure that they maintain power. This seems a bit over the top, as a level of participation this high hardly ever occurs in regional elections there.

An interesting analysis this morning from Ignacio Escolar on the possible consequences of today's election for the power struggle inside the PP, coupled with the ongoing fallout from the corruption and spying scandals. He suggests that if things don't go well for Mariano Rajoy the main threat to his position will no longer come from Esperanza Aguirre and friends.


Updated 15:00

The data released on participation up to 12:00 shows it to be about 4% down on 2005 in Galicia, but slightly up on the previous elections in the Basque Country. Could just mean that the Galicians have decided to wait until the rain stops....


Updated 17:00

One factor to bear in mind in Galicia's case is the overseas vote. If the election is very tight then there may not be a definitive result tonight, it could take another week to count the votes of Galicians living in other countries; mainly in South America.


Updated 18:30

Using state of the art methods of which I naturally cannot disclose details, the South of Watford Centre for Unreliable Electoral Forecasts has issued the following prediction for today's elections. A disappointing evening for the PSOE is in store as the PP narrowly squeeze home in Galicia and the PNV maintain their position as the largest party in the Basque Country and may even have a majority to govern as Aralar increase their representation. That's it, it will almost certainly be wrong.

It looks like I was right about the rain though, as participation in Galicia is now said to be above that of the previous election by a couple of percentage points.


Updated 20:10

The exit polls have the PP on the edge of an overall majority in Galicia, and the PNV winning in the Basque Country.


Updated 22:00

It looks very much as if the PP are going to win in Galicia, currently they have one seat more than they need for a majority and it has stayed that way pretty much throughout the count. I don't know whether the overseas vote can significantly alter that result.

In the Basque Country things are much less certain. Until about half an hour ago it seemed that there could still be a potential coalition led by the PNV, who are going to emerge as the biggest party. Then suddenly the PP seemed to leap from 11 to 13 seats and now there is a possible majority between the PSOE and the PP, with most of the votes counted.

The Common Touch

Here's an entertaining little snippet from the Galician election campaign. It seems that the PP candidate for president of this region, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, decided that he needed to connect with Galicia profunda in his search for votes so off he went to visit a dairy farmer. The dialogue between the two men went something like this:

Feijóo: "Why do all your cows have female names?"
Farmer: "Because they are cows"

Via La Trinchera Digital

Bermejo A La Gallega

Today's recipe. Take one slightly charred justice minister, remove the head and throw the rest away. Slowly stew the head in its own juices for a couple of days with occasional stirring. When it’s finally overdone, stick an apple in its mouth and present to the electorate on a silver platter together with the probably vain hope that the voters will then expect a similar offering to be presented by your rivals. The decision today by Justice Minister Mariano Bermejo to resign must count as an unexpected success for the Partido Popular and their media allies. As diversionary campaigns go, that against Bermejo has exceeded expectations as it became clear that the noise over Bermejo's hunting trips could end up affecting what is already being seen by some as an unsteady PSOE campaign in Galicia. Add to that the fact that much of Bermejo’s own party doesn't feel very comfortable defending his onslaught on the wildlife of various Spanish regions. Hunting is a more popular sport in Spain than it is in the UK for example, but hunting Bermejo style was too associated with images of heavily armed landed gentry roaming their private estates.

All the opinion polls over the weekend indicate that the regional elections in both Galicia and the Basque Country are going to be very tight and March 1st promises to be a tense day. In Galicia the polls suggest that voting intentions have barely changed since the last election 4 years ago. The significance of that lies in the fact that the PP fell just one seat short of a majority last time around, so they just need to do a little bit better to regain control from the governing alliance between the PSOE and the nationalist BNG. PP leader Mariano Rajoy is campaigning in these elections as if his life depended on the result, and there was a widespread feeling that a failure to recover control in Galicia would be fatal to his chances of remaining as leader. That's not so certain now, the closing of the ranks inside a PP that tries to present itself as the victim of a political attack by Baltasar Garzón and hunting associates is paradoxically making it much harder for Rajoy's internal enemies to attack him. Confidence has risen in the PP with a couple of the polls suggesting they are on the edge of getting that majority, a nervous PSOE will be looking to hit back after the Bermejo affair but they haven't got long.

Spirits in the PSOE in the Basque Country have been much higher, although the weekend polls still suggest that the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) will emerge as the biggest party, albeit without a natural coalition majority. The PSOE are still set to increase their vote significantly, but maybe not enough to strike the important blow of getting more votes than the PNV. Whilst sections of the right wing press are getting enthusiastic about the possibility of a non-nationalist alliance between the PSOE, the PP and possibly even the new party UPyD, the PSOE don't want even to discuss such an option at the moment. This is not necessarily because it will never happen, it's just that such a prospect will be used by the PNV to mobilise their more reluctant voters. The last time there was serious talk of a PSOE-PP government in the Basque Country was in 2001, in that election the PNV ended up getting their highest ever vote. If the PSOE do emerge as the strongest party, the nationalists may just decide to try and force them into an unhappy alliance with the PP.

A key factor in the Basque Country is that this is the first regional election where no party linked to ETA's illegal political wing Batasuna has been able to overcome the hurdle of the Ley de Partidos. The arguments used to justify the continuing illegalisations become increasingly bizarre. If up to now we had the dangerous notion that a failure to pronounce on an issue is sufficient proof of guilt, this time around things got worse. One party, D3M, was illegalised on the grounds that several members of their lists had connections to Batasuna. In the case of Askatasuna the argument advanced was that the absence of such connections was evidence of the intent to deceive! That closes the circle nicely. One party with quite a variation in their poll ratings is Aralar, a break off organisation from Batasuna who have explicitly rejected the use of violence by ETA. If they can convince enough of Batasuna's natural constituency not to abstain then they could emerge from the election as the embryo of a new future for radical nationalism; as well as perhaps tipping the balance towards a nationalist coalition. Tomorrow’s recipe….stuffed Bermejo.

Campaign In Galicia And See The World

You do a lot of travelling if you want to be president of the regional government of Galicia, the election is coming up on March 1st. Both candidates from the two big parties have already taken their campaign to Buenos Aires, home of a substantial part of the Galician diaspora. Not for nothing is Gallego the generic term for a Spaniard in that part of the world. Around 13% of the potential voters in the election live overseas and with the polls predicting a tight result it's not surprising that so much effort is being made to woo the emigrants.The other day Partido Popular leader Mariano Rajoy was searching for Galician voters in Switzerland, or maybe it's just that he wanted a break from his own party's mounting problems with the law.

One of the PP´s main candidates in Galicia showed his own special commitment to internationalism by receiving payments via the Cayman Islands for services rendered. He then "forgot" to declare the 240,000 euros received to the Spanish tax authorities, an oversight which has now cost him his position in the party's lists. The most amusing thing about his reaction was the way in which he attempted to pretend that it could have happened to anyone - as if we are all possessors of offshore bank accounts in tax havens.

The transgressor was defended by Manuel Fraga, whose image is apparently used to attract voters in Argentina in preference to the actual candidate, the considerably less famous Alberto Nuñez Feijóo. I've noticed the press are playing quite an entertaining game with Don Manuel these days. Taking advantage of his willingness to mouth outrageous opinions about anything, they have taken to asking him how he would have dealt with a given problem in the old days, when a certain general was still in charge. This produces the desired headline grabbing result which goes something along the lines of "In my day we didn't stand for this sort of thing, once we'd skinned the body, we'd then put the head on a spike to warn the rest and then go off hunting".

Galicia Prepares For Elections

Is it election time again already? Well only in Galicia, if press predictions are accurate the elections for Galicia’s regional government are going to be brought forward to the autumn even though they do not need to be held before next year. Although the voting will only take place in that region, the results will have an impact on national politics, as it is the first major electoral test since the general election in March.

The reasons for bringing forward the elections are purely political, the current alliance between the PSOE and the Galician nationalists (BNG) is quite capable of seeing out its full term; but the PSOE in particular has strong incentives to go for an earlier poll. Reason number one is that the economic situation is expected to get worse next year, and the Galician PSOE will be keen to avoid as much as possible a punishment from voters aimed more at the national government. If circumstances are not going to get better then you might as well go for it. Number two is a possible clash between the Galician election and the equivalent elections that need to be held in the Basque Country. This is where things become a bit of a gamble, because the possible timing of the Basque elections is also variable and depends on the legal wrangling over the proposal by the Basque government to hold a referendum. This issue is currently up before the Constitutional Court. Again, the Galicians will not want events elsewhere to overshadow their own campaign.

Not so keen on early elections in Galicia is the Partido Popular. PP leader Mariano Rajoy has been quick to downplay any suggestion that his position might be affected by a poor result in his home territory. He doesn’t sound very confident about his party’s chances, making it clear that he is not the candidate and distancing himself carefully. Of course a bad result there could restart the campaign against him, Galicia used to be a PP stronghold and a failure to recover control will renew criticism of Rajoy’s lack of electoral appeal. Galicia could hurt him much more than the results of the Basque elections or those for the European Parliament where heavy abstention could easily mean that the generally more loyal voters of the PP give Rajoy a victory.

Colin over at Thoughts from Galicia thinks that there will be a backlash against the nationalists because of their policies on language use in the region. I’m not so sure, their vote held up very strongly in the general election in March, and nationalist voters are generally more motivated in the regional polls. Those who voted for the BNG are not those likely to object to greater promotion of the Galician language, but we shall see. As yet, we still don’t have the official announcement.

Nice Palace, Where Did You Get It?

A wedding took place last Friday at the Pazo de Meirás in Galicia. What made the event newsworthy was that the bride was the great granddaughter of Franco, and the Pazo forms part of the dead dictator’s family fortune. The palace was a gift to Franco as a result of the local authorities organising a “voluntary” popular subscription to buy it, and it became the summer residence of the Franco family. The grounds were found to be a bit small for such a grand dictator, so it then became necessary to expropriate additional land surrounding the palace. It seems that those who were unwilling to surrender their land were threatened with being sent to Asturias! I can think of much worse alternatives to having to live next door to a fascist dictator, but I suspect the exile probably wouldn’t have included a lifetime’s supply of cider and fabada.

More recently the Xunta, Galicia’s regional government, have been trying to inspect the property with the intention of declaring it to be a Bien de Interés Cultural; a historic monument. This move has met with open opposition from the Franco family as it would compel them to open the property to the public for a certain number of days every month. Eventually, the Xunta’s inspectors were able to gain access to the property but the holding of last week’s wedding has been widely seen as the Franco family asserting their control over the property. It’s a curious situation, if the King of Spain is given a present then that passes to the state, but the family of a dictator is allowed to hold on forever to a property which in theory was presented to Franco as (illegitimate) head of state. It more or less confirms what we could probably call the Pinochet Principle whereby self appointed “saviours of the nation” always seem to find time to assure that being a saviour brings with it substantial economic benefits which are not always available to more conventional rulers. The spoils of war.