Not a good night for Spanish Socialists

by Guy Hedgecoe, Madrid

Although Pedro Sánchez's [Spanish] Socialists have emerged as winners having suffered only slight losses in this election, the overall result is not a positive one for the acting prime minister.

With Podemos having lost some ground and Más País securing only a handful of seats, there is no clear left-wing majority.  The Socialists' arch-rivals on the right, the PP, have recovered many of the seats they lost in April's ballot.

If the country's longstanding political stalemate is to be broken, Mr Sánchez might have to seek the support of the PP [centre right], or else a third election in the space of one year could beckon.
Meanwhile, the huge surge by the nationalist Vox party makes it the country's third political force and it will now find it easier to set the agenda on the right. That is likely to hinder any attempts by Mr Sánchez to seek a conciliatory solution to the Catalan crisis.

The April election ended in deadlock, with parties failing to form a coalition by a September deadline, thus forcing Sunday's election.


To form a coalition now, they would need to form alliances with smaller, nationalist parties, analysts suggest.

Meanwhile, the PP and Vox could seek to make the most of their gains.

One PP politician said Prime Minister Sánchez should "start to think about going", given the early results.

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Broken Politics on the Iberian Penisular

 by Brian Bamford

BROKEN-up politics has characterised Spain since the successful rise of Podemos and the Citizen's Ciudadanos party in the 2015 election.  After that the two-party system was over.  Now with the far right VOX party gaining 24 seats in yesterday's elections there is a real fragmentation in political life which mirrors events elsewhere in Europe.

This election came less than a year after Spain’s then prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, was defeated in a vote of no confidence owing to corruption in his Popular Party.  The leader of the socialist party (PSOE), Pedro Sanchez, then formed a minority government with the help of the Catalan separatists, leading his critics to accuse him of being too friendly with the independentistas.  

  

However, Sanchez was unable to hold this informal coalition together and last February he called a snap general election when he was unable to get a national budget through the Cortes parliament when the Catalan nationalists witheld their support owing to the problems over Catalan independence.

The issues of independence, identity and Spanish unity flavoured the election.  And yet, the most significant consequence of these elections was the fragmentation of the right and the centre right.  The most damaged party in these elections has been the conservative Popular Party, which has lost votes to both the far Right VOX and the more centrist Ciudadanos Citizen's party.

  Catalan Independence

The Catalan independence conflict originally came to a crisis in October 2017 when the Catalan separatists held an unconstitutional independence referendum, which drew 40% of eligible voters but saw a 90% vote to secede.  Three weeks later, Carles Puigdemont, the region’s president at the time, declared independence — leading to Spain’s deepest constitutional crisis since its return to democracy.

As a result, the Spanish government, then led by the Popular Party, fired the Catalan parliament, wrested control of the region, began arresting the movement’s leaders and called for fresh regional elections.

While separatists criticized the government for cracking down, some on the right argued the Popular Party was too soft on the independentistas.

Fragmentation of the Right

Consequently some Popular Party voters turned to VOX, which seeks to suppress regional autonomy in Catalonia.  A xenophobic party VOX echoes Franco’s nationalist rhetoric and follows the populist trend seen in recent years across Europe, stoking fear of immigrants and demonizing feminists.

On the other hand some other former Partido Popular voters seem to have drifted towards the centrist Citizen's Ciudadanos party.

The Catalan crisis and the rise of Vox have changed the debate in Spanish politics.
'This is not an election about the economy - a different situation from what we have seen in more than 20 years,' says Juan Rodríguez Teruel, professor of political science at the University of Valencia.

Despite widespread concerns about unemployment - which remains high in Spain compared with its European neighbours - it barely featured during the campaign and was raised during the debates only briefly

But Prof Teruel warns that the surge for Vox is coming at the expense of other right-leaning parties - the PP or Ciudadanos. And for the first time since the 1970s, the right is 'very fragmented' - something that could benefit opponents on the left.

'The main reason now to vote for the left-wing electorate is to avoid the potential coalition among right-wing parties,' Prof Teruel says. 
 
Ciudadanos, meanwhile, could feasibly support a coalition with the Socialists, despite publicly dismissing the idea.

'I'm not sure they could keep this position if the numbers give the potential of a coalition,' Prof Teruel says.

'The pressure on Ciudadanos will be very, very high.'

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Inside Spain!

" ALGO NECESARIO" - Something Necessay!
by Carlos Beltran

IT IS necessary to await the triumph of the motion of censor presented by the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party) against Mariano Rajoy (the leader of the Partido Popular [Conservative Party]).  It's complicated to grasp that the Partido Socialista doesn't have any alternative, still less anything to lose.  For the motion to really succeed the important thing is to put all the parties before a mirror.

Or to vote against Rajoy, and his corruption and his anti-social policies:

The result was 180 votes in favour of the motion of censure; 169 votes against and one abstention.  That was ten votes  more than Ranjoy got when he was chosen two years ago - two years of cuts and corruption that it would have been possible to abstain in the election of Ranjoy in 2015.

This amounts to a rejection of Ranjoyand the Partido Popular, rather than support for Pedro Sanchez.  Yet for Sanchezit is an opportunity to dismantle the most aggressive policies of the reactionaries in the Partido Popular, in respect of pensions. civil liberties, labour laws etc. 

On th theme of the Catalans; the most important thing now is to look for the broadest consensus to take forward this issue; yes with their 84 deputies the left have to confront the block of 169 right-wing deputies.

From my point of view and the tenor of the composition of of the Government, it is an agony and it brings in a period of hope and pleasure and at least we have a President who speaks English. A government with a majority of women; a government which as a dialogue with the trade unions and social protection; social justice; and the reduction of tension in Cataluña: this isn’t a panacea but it is better than to abandon the country to a situation of obscurantism and a lack of common decency of those who believe they own the country. Yet don’t forget the Partido Popular have the most seats in the Congress; there is division of the Left, and there is the problem of Cataluña.

But yes, ‘there is a road to travel’ with pot-holes that are difficult to navigate.

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Reasons for the Catalan Crisis

'The elections in February [19]36 was celebrated with [the former Catalan President, Lluís] Companys* and his [Catalan] government [still] in prison, later what followed was the proclamation of the Catalan republic inside the federal Spanish republic.  Then with the victory of the Popular Front [parties] came amnesty [for Companys and the other Catalan politicians].  How it is that history repeats itself, unfortunately with other parameters, but without gun shots, physical violence, and despite the social break (the catalan society is divided in two parts)" '

Carlos Beltran:  former representative in the Madrid CGT / CNT 

GERALD Brenan, the anthropologist and historian (who lived in Spain from 1919 until his death in 1987), in his book 'The Spanish Labyrinth' (1962) wrote:
'Both linguistically and culturally Catalonia was originally an extension of the south of France rather than a part of Spain and, under the rich merchant class which ruled it during the Middle Ages, it acquired an active, enterprising character and a European outlook very different from that of its semi-pastoral neighbours on the interior plateaux.'

More recently in 2006, after lengthy negotiations a Socialist PSOE government had agreed a Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia that devolved further powers to the Catalan region in 2006.

This statute was put to a vote in the Spanish and Catalan parliaments and it was endorsed in a referendum in Catalonia.  At that stage, support for Catalan independence stood at just 14 percent. The conservative People’s Party (PP), then in opposition, promised to reverse the statute unilaterally and took the issue to the Constitutional Court. In 2010, the court struck down a large part of the statute.  The response in Barcelona was a huge demonstration of more than a million people under the slogan  'We are a nation. We decide.'

The following year, Rajoy’s PP won an outright majority in the general election.

As a consequence, the Catalan government and its supporters were annoyed and attempted to negotiate with Rajoy about what should happen next.  Rajoy refused to engage.  The results were to drive up support for independence, increased success for separatist parties in regional elections, the first of a series of attempts to hold a referendum on independence, and the replacement of the Catalan government’s centrist leader Artur Mas by the more radical Carles Puigdemont.  Thus it was Rajoy and his refusal to negotiate that almost single-handedly brought about the election of a majority-separatist government in Catalonia in 2016.

Meanwhile, a Madrid judge has jailed eight MPs involved in the Catalan government that had declared independence.   


Now with television channels showing images of police vans with flashing blue lights said to be taking the former ministers to different prisons, Catalans took to the streets in anger and disbelief.
There were protests in front of the Catalan parliament in Barcelona, the regional capital, with police estimating a crowd of 20,000.  Others gathered outside town halls across the region including 8,000 people in both Girona and Tarragona.

Marta Rovira, a lawyer and Catalan separatist lawmaker, briefly broke down in tears as she spoke to reporters in Madrid after the announcement of the detentions.
'The Spanish state is a failed state, a state that has failed democratically," she said. "I'm convinced we won't surrender, we won't, we will fight until the end.'

Carles Puigdemont, the fugitive former president of Catalonia, on Sunday handed himself over to Belgian police before a European arrest warrant invoked by a Spanish judge triggered his capture and detention.

Today, the Belgian vice-premier and interior minister stated that Madrid had overreacted and all efforts must be made to ensure that Mr Puigdemont and his colleagues get a fair trial if he is returned to Spain. Jan Jambon, who criticised the “silence” of the European Union on the issue, said:  'I am just questioning how a European Union member state can go this far and I am asking myself whether Europe is to have an opinion on this.'

*   Lluís Companys i Jover (Catalan pronunciation: [ʎuˈis kumˈpaɲs]; 21 June 1882 – 15 October 1940) was a leftist politician. He was the President of Catalonia (Spain), from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War.
He was a lawyer and leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) political party. Exiled after the war, he was captured and handed over by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, to the Spanish State of Francisco Franco, who had him executed by firing squad in 1940. Companys is the only incumbent democratically elected president in European history to have been executed.^{[3][4] [5]}

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Podemos, Catalonia, & Spanish labour

The left and self-determination

  Excerpt from 'INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM' Issue: 155 

Posted on 29th June 2017 Héctor Sierra

PODERMOS and IU have refused to lend their support to the pro-independence majority.  They have argued that CiU waves the flag of independence to divert attention from its own role in implementing cuts and have accused CUP and ERC of helping whitewash its neoliberal record.  But CiU never really supported independence, embracing the cause only when it saw it was unstoppable.  And no one has done as much to unmask their responsibility for austerity in Catalonia as the CUP’s militants.
The current attitude towards self-determination by parties such as Podemos and IU has been typical of the Spanish left at crucial points in the country’s history.  Both the Communist Party (closely tied to the Soviet Union) during the Civil War (1936-9), and the Eurocommunist current during the transition to democracy, were dismissive of the nationalist movements, when not openly conceding to Spanish chauvinism.
IU claims to be interested not in any national struggle, but in the social struggle, missing the point that Catalan independence is interlinked with the most radical demands of society.  They pose as internationalists, but Catalan and Spanish nationalism cannot be equated. Spanish chauvinism is an ideology pumped out from the top of society, whose core components were devised by the Catholic Church and the fascist regime over 40 years and which today remains in the hands of the state.  What is commonly branded as Catalan (or Basque) nationalism is a much more complex affair, and does not lie firmly in the grip of the Catalan bourgeoisie.  Independence means different things for the different classes supporting it.  For instance, former Catalan president Artur Mas said in a visit to the US that an independent Catalonia would remain loyal to Nato—but among working class people there is a broad consensus that the country would not have an army.
Refusal to back independence has also been justified on the grounds that it weakens the unity of the Spanish working class.  But, while there have been repeated attempts to divide Spanish and Catalan workers, they have come from politicians and the media, not from below.  In fact, the national minorities are a ruling class’s recurrent scapegoat when it comes to diverting attention from issues such as austerity or corruption.  The way to achieve unity among workers is precisely through supporting the rights of Catalans and Basques, continuously under attack, and challenging scapegoating, something the Spanish left has largely failed to do.
Podemos’s talk of a multinational state, inspired by Errejón’s study of Bolivian politics, was refreshing at first. Iglesias and Errejón tried to appeal to left voters in Catalonia and the Basque Country by arguing that Podemos would bring about the democratisation of the Spanish state that would make possible a recognition of their national rights.  But while paying lip service to self-determination, in practice they have proved unable even to lend support to non-binding municipal initiatives for the democratic right to a referendum.  More recently, Iglesias has proposed a status of shared sovereignty as an alternative to independence.  This, of course, presupposes and is reliant on an eventual Podemos-led government.  Unlike these abstract prospect, the possibility of independence exists now and is within reach.
There is nothing inherent in the Catalan working class that makes it more left-wing than that of the rest of the state, and arguments of that kind should be challenged as they foster illusions about the viability of socialism developing within the limits of a single country.  An independent Catalonia could well end up being another capitalist state, controlled by its national bourgeoisie that goes on exploiting workers.  But there was nothing inevitable about Catalan society shifting to the left because of plummeting living standards. It has been the leading role of the Catalan left, along with the systematic work of the anti-fascist platform Unitat Contra el Feixisme (UCFR) in preventing fascist groups from tapping into the mood, that has ensured this was the case.  The same remains true when it comes to fighting for independence and defining its content.
The unmissable fact is that right now the left in Catalonia has a much more advantageous balance of forces than in the rest of the state, and levels of class confidence and consciousness are higher there—which is not to say that they cannot develop to the same extent everywhere else. Indeed, ensuring a victory for the Catalan left could be the way to achieve this goal.
The damage to the Spanish ruling class that the loss of Catalonia would cause is unimaginable; Catalonia makes a large contribution to the state’s revenues, with 18.8 percent of national GDP.  The centrality of national unity to the dominant ideology of the ruling class would also turn the event into a political earthquake.  A victory for independence would thus precipitate a crisis of unforeseeable consequences, throwing into chaos not only the PP but Spanish capitalism as a whole.
Socialism can only be achieved internationally, but by opening new prospects for the left in Catalonia and by breaking the consensus imposed by fascism in the transition to democracy, Catalan independence would advance the cause of the entire working class.  And, if a triumph of the Catalan left would be a positive development for workers in the rest of the state, what would the consequences of its defeat be?
Due to the need to look strong and stable, and the pressure exerted by the Spanish nationalist lobby, the PP has refused to negotiate with the Catalan parliament.  The pro-independence majority has pledged to organise a referendum on 1 October but all the calls on the central government to cooperate have fallen on deaf ears.  Likewise CiU and ERC have fruitlessly sought the intervention of the EU and third countries to lift the bar on a referendum.  The EU will not accept the unilateral separation of part of a member state, and the idea of being out of the EU sends shivers down the spine of CiU politicians.  As it becomes clearer that to go ahead with the referendum will involve an open confrontation with the Spanish state, and that they no longer control the process in motion, the risk exists that the Catalan bourgeoisie will instead try to strike a deal from above.  However, awareness that supporters of independence are running out of patience and will not accept more excuses complicates this.
Meanwhile, threats and attacks by the Spanish state have mounted. Individuals and associations have been brought to court for organising a non-binding referendum in 2014 that was ruled illegal. Activists of the CUP have also faced trial for burning pictures of the Spanish king at a public event. The main newspapers in Madrid and senior army officers have repeatedly asked the government to send the army in and suspend Catalan autonomy, as the constitution allows.
Only the CUP discounted from the beginning the possibility of an agreed referendum and has demanded the Catalan Parliament stop obeying laws coming from Madrid.  The work of activists in the CUP’s ranks and other left groups in the next months will be crucial to bring pressure from below to bear on the Catalan government.  A half-heartedly called referendum will give Rajoy the excuse he is awaiting to act.  An actual military intervention cannot be ruled out in the end. If this happened, nobody can seriously think that it would not be followed by an immediate clampdown on opposition everywhere else in the state and by new steps towards authoritarianism.  What the left does inside and outside Catalonia can prevent this scenario.  The leadership of Podemos and IU will act according to an electoral logic, but every activist, in these or other groups, who wants to challenge the system must actively support independence.  Solidarity with Catalonia can make a fundamental difference.

Conclusion: further destabilisation

It must not be forgotten that the PP is in office only because of the failure of all the other parties to form a government.  In the long run stability remains impossible and Rajoy does not rule out calling a new general election if the opposition PSOE, whose goodwill his government depends on, obstructs his work.
The PSOE say that they are the real opposition, not Podemos, while siding with the conservatives whenever stability is at stake. But they are deeply divided.  A managing board controlled the party for half a year after Sánchez’s removal, until in May a new leadership election took place.  Sánchez, although marginalised by the bureaucracy, stood again on an anti-Rajoy platform and beat Susana Díaz, the candidate of the establishment.  While this revived the talks of a hypothetical left coalition headed by PSOE and Podemos, the PSOE has since abstained in a motion of no confidence against Rajoy put forward by Podemos in June. It is uncertain to what extent the PSOE, still a pillar of the system, can be moved leftwards.  Nevertheless, the rebellion that has brought Sánchez back to power has exposed the noncomformity of a majority of the membership.
More importantly, the PP might have been able to mitigate the effects of the economic crisis temporarily, but the structural problems that brought the Spanish economy to its knees when the financial bubble burst remain untouched.  Investing in property and other forms of fictitious capital are still an important part of the economy, while productive investment and profitability remain low. This makes the Spanish economy extremely vulnerable to any upheaval in international markets in coming years.
Corruption remains rampant.  Hardly a week goes by without new scandals involving PP members coming to light.  While Rajoy has so far dodged any investigations, he is due to testify in court as a witness in relation to inquiries into senior party members close to him.  The Prosecutor’s Office for corruption is tightly controlled by the conservatives, so many cases do not lead to prison sentences, but corruption is an issue with the potential to unite people from all walks of life against the government.
As the dockers have shown, austerity can be fought.  The labour reforms can be repealed.  The Gag Law can be resisted. Rajoy’s government is weak and it can be brought down before 2020.
On the way to this goal, Podemos, IU and the unions are travelling companions, but the initiative must not be abandoned to their leaders.  If the left stands another chance to form a government, this should be welcomed and supported, without abandoning the critique of reformism or the building of a revolutionary party and without allowing mobilisation to decline again.
In making all this possible, the key issue that can alter the balance of power, throwing the Spanish state’s rulers on the defensive, is Catalonia.
Héctor Sierra is a Spanish socialist based in London and a member of the SWP.

'Anarchy' = Absence of government in Spain?

THE word 'anarchy' in its dictionary definition is often defined as 'an absence of government'.  Though pedantic thinkers, including anarchists, will often rely on narrow dictionary definitions of the meaning of words, modern philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein have discredited this approach to the pursuit of meaning.  Those of us come from a Wittgensteinian or ethnomethodological tradition consider the meaning of a word to be in its use.
Ironically the reality of the present situation in Spain is that for the first time since January 1492, when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon – the Catholic monarchs – occupied Granada completing their conquest of Moorish Spain, Spain has always had a government.  Even at the time of the Spanish Civil War in 1936-37 when the Spanish anarchists were at their strongest, their was a government in Spain (actual there were two if we count the Nationalist one and even the anarchists ultimately accepted the invite to join the governments in Madrid and Barcelona).
And yet, since December 20^th, last year., when the elections failed to give any party a necessary majority to form a government and attempts to form a coalition failed, Spain has had no effective government.   Under the Spanish system a Spaniard votes for 'diputados' (MPs) who elect the prime minister.  Then with a parliamentary majority, the winning party proclaims its leader, but without a majority, the parties need to negotiate.  This means a voter may end up supporting positions he/ or she would not normally support.  Today voting for the Socialist Party may mean a leftist coalition if the Socialists join with the Podemos Party, or a vote for the centre-right may involve voting for the conservative Popular Party (PP) and then get an alliance of the PP and the Ciudadnos Party.  It offers a blank cheque to the parliamentary parties, but even then the Spanish parties have not been able to get any agreement.  
Because of this failure to get agreement a second election had to be called on June 26^th, which ended in a very similar result to the one last December.  For more than 250 days Spain has been unable to elect a government. 
As things stand a 'caretaker' government is in place: the Partido Popular.  But it can't appoint new ministers, and from its original 13-member cabinet, only 10 are left.  The caretaker government has no authority to approve next year's budget, a basic tool of government and which should be in place by October; as you read this experts in constitutional law are pouring over the legal texts to search for a line that suggests authority in the current situation.  It has been nine months since the government enacted any laws:  its members are too busy campaigning and negotiating. 
Martin Caparrós, a journalist on the New York Times writes:
'These days, the “meanwhile” government manages everyday matters, and not very well.  In a situation that lacks legal status, no one wants to be in charge of important decisions, affairs are delayed and decisions never made...'
The life of ordinary people continues much as always, and Seňor Caparrós continues:
'In everyday life, a country without a government looks dangerously similar to one with one. ...  There are those who wonder if governments are so necessary and seem uninterested in any attempt to form one.'
This week, Mariano Rajoy of the PP will try to be reinstated as qa fully functioning prime minister.  But his option are limited.  If he fails, his party will probably call for new elections to be held on the 25^th, December.  If so that should give a boost to any latent anarchism in Spain, because Seňor Ranjoy and his party will be hoping the by calling an election during Navidad will benefit the right with a low turnout, but it will merely deliver a death blow to any vain expectations in elections whatever the outcome.  Especially since the Spaniards have a long history of distrust of governments.

Squaring the Spanish Circle

SPANISH politics is in a state of shock following the latest elections which some now ask if this 'is the dawn of a new era?'    Following the result of the regional elections earlier this year it was not unexpected that the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP), which won a landslide victory four years ago, would suffer.  In the event it has now lost more than three million votes, leaving the PP of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy with the most votes at 29% of the total turn out, and 123 of the 350 seats in the Spanish Parliament, but well less than an overall majority.  

The alternating big two-party system of the PP and the Socialist Party (PSOE) which has dominated Spanish politics since the death of Franco in 1975, could now be on its last legs.   

The main reason for this political 'ruptura' being the rise of the Podemos meaning 'We can' led by 37-year-old Pablo Iglesias, which got 20% of the vote just behind PSOE.  Podemos was founded as a far-left party by a group of university professors, and it went on to accuse not just a particular Government but what it called 'the regime of 1978' (the year of the Spanish Constitution). 

In a way the socialist PSOE suffered more tellingly than the conservative PP, for while the PP was hit after having implemented years of unpopular austerity policies, after years in opposition the socialist PSOE lost more than a million votes in the election, mostly no doubt to Podemos.   

Given the history of Spain with its roots in the Civil War and anarchism it is probably not surprising that what some are calling the 'new politics' is being pioneered in Spain and southern Europe.  With over 20% unemployment and the young hit hardest, it is surprising that the established parties didn't get a worse result given their involvement in cases of widespread corruption, cronyism, scandals and political incompetence. 

Yet, the old parties, both the PP and the PSOE, seem determined to hold out against the shock of the new.  The Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in the run up to the elections refused to share a platform on TV with the new parties of Podemos and the Ciudadanos (Citizens), a kind of centre-right Podemos.  And, last Saturday in El Pais, the socialist general secretary of PSOE, Pedro Sánchez  was adamant that his party would not  unite 'the PSOE with a pact of the Left that respete the integrity of the Spanish territory' and if Podemos wanted a referendum for Catalan independence, a pact with them would not be possible:

'If Podemos insists on its condition of celebrating a referendum in Catalonia, an accord will not be possible.' 

The socialist PSOE won 90 seats against the 123 seats that went to the conservative PP, but Podemos got 69.and the centrist new party Ciudadanos had 40 seats.   

The Spanish economy is the forth-largest in the eurozone, yet it is hard to see how with a election result like this that it will be possible for any possible coalition of the parties to hold the fort without another election that can give a clearer result.  For the Spanish socialists their share of the vote has crashed by half from 44% to 22% in only two elections.  Yet this would still be enough to make them the King-makers but the two alternative choices for coalition with the PSOE are toxic:    the PSOE has made it clear it would not support the re-election of Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister and PP leader which would split the leftist elements of the party who would then turn to Podemos; and Pedro Sanzchez has said that he would not go into alliance with Podemos so long as it remains committed to an independence referendum in Catalonia, the north eastern Spanish region, historically anarcho-syndicalist, that has long been the centre of  secessionist aims.