To the Polls! (¡a las urnas!)...

This week Europeans are being called to the polls to elect a new European Parliament. It’s already started in some countries like the UK, Ireland and Holland. Spain’s turn is this Sunday, and I’ll definitely be off to place my vote.

I’m afraid I’m not going to be in the majority, however. Here they’re predicting a turnout of only about 40-45% (probably even less in Madrid where I suspect many will be too busy recovering from celebrating or commiserating the results of the other big thing happening in Europe this weekend - the final of the European Champions League - to get around to voting. You see, quite amazingly, it is being fought out by two Madrid teams: Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid).

Football aside, people either don’t understand how the European Parliament and Commission effects them (according to recent media reports, 7 out of 10 Spaniards can’t tell you who the President of the European Commission is), are too tired to be bothered after all these years of crisis, or just don’t have any faith in politicians any more. I imagine it’s probably it’s a mix of all three.

And it’d be no wonder if the Spanish don’t quite understand the importance of these elections - there has been very little about Europe in local campaigning at all, at least from the two main parties.

The Socialists have spent most of the time complaining about some (very) machista (chauvinistic) comments made by the head of the conservative ticket and the conservatives (the Partido Popular) have spent almost all of their time rattling on about the herencia recibida (the shocking state of the economy that they inherited from the Socialists at the last Spanish general election) two years ago!

"Change Europe, Stop Rajoy."
The Catalan Socialist's very local slogan (Rajoy is Spain´s Prime Minister). 

The polls suggest that the conservatives will win Europe again. This is pretty interesting as it goes against what has been happening in most of the general elections in member states over the last few years. Not in that the conservatives are going to win – much of Europe has gone to conservative parties in recent elections - but in the sense that in general elections during this long and crippling economic crisis, most incumbent governments have been kicked out. But in Europe the conservatives have been in power for the last ten years – throughout the entire length of the crisis.

"What's at risk is the future" from the Patrido Popular. In the context of their campaign,
a clear reference to the Socialist's performance in the previous Spanish government. 

Whoever wins Spain’s share of the 751 escaños (seats) in the European chamber, you can be guaranteed they’ll be pro-European. Despite the savagery of the government’s spending cuts, most of which have been dictated by Europe, Spain is still pro-Europe.

The same can’t be said for other countries in Europe. In the UK, Holland and France, the polls are predicting some big wins for anti immigration, anti-European, anti-just-about-everything parties who have hidden none of their desire to be in the European Parliament with the sole intention of destroying the EU from within.

I’m a huge fan of the European Union as an institution – although, I have to say, not the policies and direction that those currently in power are taking the continent (I’ve probably just given away who I’ll NOT be voting for this Sunday).

I’d be a massive hypocrite if I wasn’t pro EU. I’m living here thanks to it: my dad’s Italian citizenship gave me a European passport and hence the right to live and work in the UK and now here in Spain.

But for me it goes further than this selfish perspective. The European Union has brought together counties that only last century all but destroyed the continent TWICE through war, to work for a common good and a common goal and with that has come a peace not previously known here. To me, if you’ll allow me the indulgence, it’s an earth-bound uber-prelude to Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets.

That doesn’t mean that the EU is perfect, there is plenty wrong with it - you just have to look at its inept (and arguably quite undemocratic) response to the current financial crisis to see that. But I think it’s much better to have something there to improve than nothing at all (or something whittled down to irrelevance). That’s what makes the popularity of the anti-Europe parties such a worry to me. Not to mention their unconstrained nationalism and vitriolic rhetoric, which all feels very 1930s.

Three key faces from, in my opinion, the scary side of European politics:

(L to R) Marine Le Penn of France´s National Front, Nigel Farange of the UK Independence Party & Geert Wilders of Holland's Party for Freedom.

But now, to finish, back to selfish reasons for why I’m voting this year: I’m itching to play my part in the democratic process again. I haven’t been able to vote for a government in Australia for years now (I missed the deadline to re-register one year and that cost me my right to vote there until I return) and here in Spain, unlike in the UK, as an extranjero, I can’t vote in a general election. So voting in these, probably more important than ever, European elections is just the ticket. 

¡A las urnas!

Farewell to “the leader who changed the history of Spain" (Adiós al “líder que cambió la historia de España” )…

Spain has been in mourning this week.  Adolfo Suárez González, the first democratically elected Presidente del Gobierno (Prime Minister) after Franco’s dictatorship, died on Sunday (March 23).

Suárez was Prime Minister from 1977 until 1981, as Spain transitioned from dictatorship to democracy – what the Spanish call simply "La Transición" (The Transition).

Now, and this is probably something you'll hear from time-to-time in this blog, it completely blows me away that the country in which I am living has been a democracy for only 37 years.

I’m sure that’s because I come from a country that has only ever known democracy (at least for its non-indigenous citizens), which probably makes me a little naive. And my Eastern European friends will remind me that their democracies are even younger. But that still doesn’t dull my fascination and (even) awe.

There are some aspects of Spain that I wonder might be signs that the democracy is still young(ish). Corruption, that so flourished during the dictatorship, is still rife in the political and business worlds (although the country been getting a better handle over it just in the years that I’ve lived here); the virtually undisguised disdain which many of the powerful still hold towards ordinary people; the influence that the Church blatantly still tries to wield and the strikingly authoritarian views that often appear in the conservative media (some of the worst offenders being TV and radio stations owned by these same Bishops), are some examples.

But there are positives too. One, for me, is the fervour with which the Spanish protect their rights and freedoms. Perhaps this is because there are so many people still alive who remember living without them. I think that in some slightly older democracies, like my own, we take these rights so for granted that we can sleepwalk into them being eroded.

Spaniards on the other hand, are very quick to recognise a threat and organise themselves to fight it – often into massive movements. I’ve mentioned before the astounding number of manifestaciónes (demonstrations) that have been held in Spain since the economic crisis hit - 25,461 just last year!  And whilst it is true that most of these have their roots in the economy, many people think the measures being taken to combat the crisis are also leading to an erosion of their rights and freedoms.

There have been the mareas ciudadanes (citizens' tides) of varying colours (white for health, green for education, violet for women’s rights), movements for better democracy have camped out for months in Madrid’s central Puerta de Sol square and people have marched from all points of the country to converge into macro-manifestaciónes in the capital.

The sheer number, participation, energy, variety and (in the vast majority of cases) peaceful and festive natures of these demonstrations have been truly awe-inspiring to me, as an extranjero. Things did get very ugly just the other day though: 67 police and 34 protesters were injured when violence broke out at the end of a demonstration, in scenes like nothing I had ever seen in all the demonstrations I witnessed whilst living in Madrid (and I saw a lot of them). I hope it's not a sign of things to come…

Regardless of whether I’m right to (perhaps cheekily, or worse) suggest that these are signs of Spain’s democracy being “young”, there is no denying it is strong and modern – something that most Spaniards are very proud of.

And that takes us back to Adolfo Suárez. Just about everyone I’ve heard talk of him this week, including ordinary Spaniards, interviewed as they waited in a two and-a-half km queue for their turn to file past his coffin, agree that the road to Spain’s democracy might have been very different without Suarez and his ability to both find consensus and persuade during the very tricky time that was La Transición.

And it is for this, much more than simply being the first democratically elected PM, that Suárez was farewelled with such honours. The title of this post I’ve taken from a newspaper headline and sums up perfectly how Spain sees Adolfo Suarez: he was the man who changed the history of the country. And just 37 years ago(!)