Political issues, personal reflexions and other things from a spanish teacher
Published on March 17, 2004 By Carlos Jose Navas In International
Some conclusions I get after my country's( for how long it will be a whole country?) general elections:
1. Terrorists can alter the results of an election. It's just a matter of how many people the kill and the proper media aid.
2. The more people they kill, the urged the people feels to seek "dialogue" with the killers instead on fighting them.
3. Only three things gets together all the nacionalism and left-wing people in Spain: their hate to America, their hate to the Catholic church and their hate to the right-wing people (or in plain spanish, "la derecha").
And now, some personal opinions on these three points:
1. The thought on the 3.5 million people that voted for the socialists in the last elections that hadn't voted in the previous election (participation was the biggest in the last ten years) was that the terrorist atack on Madrid was the result of Aznar's policy of total support of Bush antiterrorism global war, especifically the war on Irak. It didn't matter that 9/11 was before the atack, that no single spanish soldier was invoved in it. The people on the illegal manifestations on saturday at the Popular Party's buildings all though the country favourite chant was "killers, killers!" (¡asesinos, asesinos!). Aznar was the terrorist, not the one who planted the bombs.
2. The terrorist group ETA (it hurts me every time I see "basque separatist-group) has killed near than 1.000 people in Spain in it's 30 years existence. On the arrival of democracy, two general amnesty's were declared, with the consequences of more killed people. After their near one-year cease-fire three years ago, the tried to bomb the "Torre Picasso" building, one of Madrid highest buildings. On new years eve, the planned an attack on Chamartín train station with bombs planted on a train, trying to demolish the whole buliding. Hopefully, the police prevented it. Two weeks before the terrorist act on Madrid, ETA sent a van with more than 500 kilos of explosives to an still undetermined objective near Madrid. Hopefully, the police (in concrete, La Guardia Civil), prevented it. And we still want to dialogue with them.
3. The main, and possible the only, objective of the elections for every party other than PP was to kick out the PP from the government by any means. The post-election speech of the main director of the comunist party (yes, the comunist party) stated how happy were them that "la derecha" was busted-out. No matter they lost half their representatives at the Congress. La derecha was out, someone else was in. And with that, the spanish international policy was to change in no more than a day. At last we were free of Bush the Devil slavery. Now we can return to the old Europe's slavery with France and Germany, where we are indeed happier. We can now renounce to the Nice accord, that were denounced by them after it was signed by all the EU, because they thought it gave Spain to much power on EU votations, because the are our allys. No matter that one year ago, when Marrocco invaded spanish isle Perejil they look to the other side: it's not our business, it's a domestic affair. Only America helped us(but this is a bigger issue that I think deserves an whole article). Now we can talk with terrorist, we can talk to separatists, we can talk to everyone...except la derecha and the church. They are not democratic, they are a bunch of fascists, they are the worst of the worst (well, excluding Bush, of course). 9,630,512 fascists voted for the PP on the elections. They deserve no dialogue, no talk.
I've been damn proud of beeing an spaniard on the last eight years. I'm starting to feel ashamed of it.

Comments
on Mar 17, 2004
Great post !

Nice to read a first hand account, instead of conjecture.

Does your parliament have the ability to hold a vote of no confidence ? Perhaps in the near future your leaders
will see the error of their ways ( with hope that the vision doesn't come with more terror )
on Mar 17, 2004
Yes, the ability stands, but it has never passed due to two fundamental reason of our political scheme: the president of the government is elected by the congress representatives, and usually is the head of the political party of the most-voted party. And second, there is an very, very strong party discipline on political votes, in part because we do not vote for a person to be representative at the congress, but instead a political list made by the political paties. So, vote of no confidence, although it can stand for a media matter, is near impossible to pass.
What has happened when there's a big problem with the government are anticipated elections. Although we elect the congress for a four years term, the goverment can call out anticipated elections before the date is due. In fact, before Aznar's two full four years term, both their predecessors (UCD, Democratic Center Union, now an extinct party and the socialists) called for thiese anticipated elections. It could happen again, and some people on Spain think this way. I'm not among them, as I'll try to explain in a further article on Spanish media.
on Mar 17, 2004
I came across a poll in the Economist the other day, from shortly before the Madrid explosions stating that 90% of the Spanish public were opposed to the War in Iraq. Is it possible that that could be one of the reasons for the way people voted?

Cheers
on Mar 18, 2004
No doubt about it, but I think war would have had a lesser effect if the terrorist attack hadn't happened. Numbers are that the PP lost no more than 750,000 votes form the previous election, socialist party won about 3,000,000 new voters. Also, until thursday the published polls showed that the PP was still in front for the election, and nobody could expect the final results. I'll try to focus on this issue in following articles.