Spanish Political News

[JuanTwoThree]

Is it a big deal tbh?

Well if he earns €100,000 a year and his partner much the same then half a million plus seems about right. If not downright modest.

It may seem a lot but he presents TV programs and so on. There's no scandal attached to where the money has come from, AFAIK, except the spurious scandal of it being a lot.

 

[Riklet]

Def shouldn't have made the comments he did before tho.

- he earns less than 1000 euros a month (from teaching tbf)
- 'la casta' and politicians moving out to Somosaguas (another wealthy suburb like Galapagar) is wrong
- Luis de Guindos shouldn't have spent 600.000 on a flat
- "I would want to live in a normal neighbourhood"
- the great example of the revolución boliviana.

Linky.

People dont like do what I say, not what I do. This is the party that 4 years ago I would see posting up weekly bills of every fucking cent spent on their office. The Venezuelan scandal a few years back and now this latest mess at very best don't show good political strategy and clear thinking from a modern left wing party.

Despite what I said before, I think it's just about having some consistency and putting your own ego aside. I already felt/feel that Podemos is dead as a political force, partly cos of their pandering to the centre and 'liberalism' and party cos theyre such a bunch of annoying weirdos the whole leadership. A 600,000€ house ok - but did they not anticipate the issues with it??

Then again, almost every figure in the PP is so mired in corruption and murky deals to the tune of millions that it shows this up to be as minor as it is, proportionally.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

Here are Pablo's earnings in 2016, according to 'Podemos'

PODEMOS - Pablo Iglesias Turrión

And here are Irene's from 2016, presumably from before she became a congressperson

PODEMOS - Irene María Montero Gil

As far as I can see other people in Congress take a salary from Podemos so that's probably what she does, while his 80,000 in 2016 was from Europe. Maybe now he does the same.

TBH I'm not going to look into it any more.

 

[Riklet]

You havent really responded to my points though. Im aware he earns over 100k, and did even back in 2015 apparently. Altho didn't they have some party rule about 1.900 15 pagos being the max they would claim?

Considering this is a politics thread, it would be nice to have a political take on things though. Even things our political mates do and say. A novel concept for Annuder Oik maybe but was hoping for more from everyone else.

Considering one of the best arguments against the various independentistas is the need for a united struggle against corruption, croneyism, dodgy dealings and out of touch neo-liberal elite all over Spain, I feel it's a relevant issue. Also a discredited left will likely not help Carmena and Colau get re-elected and in general that would be a big frickin shame. As I said I am a bit undecided as on one hand I think 'nice house, fairly earnt, well played' and on another 'what a lying hipocritical shitbag, get those tatty fucking bracelets off!'.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

I seemed more sarky than I meant to. I had been wading through lots of 'imaginative' accounts of Iglesias' and Montero's earnings but the only information I could see from their end was their now irrelevant 2016 tax returns, so I gave up.

I thought too that they only got some modest multiplier of the salario mínimo. Which would make a mortgage of this size very strange.
Some talk of them getting a very soft loan from some progressive organisation; in return for what? and anyway that's still around €400/500 a month for 100 years at 0% interest.

On the other hand if he's getting 100 kilos or thereabouts good luck to him. In which case though his previous comments have almost presciently come back to bite his arse.

It's lose/lose in terms of his reputation, which now may easily put Podemos in the same shitty boat as all the other parties:

As I said I am a bit undecided as on one hand I think 'nice house, fairly earnt, well played' and on another 'what a lying hipocritical shitbag, get those tatty fucking bracelets off!'.

indeed.

Another conflict I have is that he led a Gramsci influenced group at the Complutense which pulled off a textbook Gramscian move from which he emerged as a leader. But it's sold as a grassroots movement.

Still the best bet though in a poor field.

 

[J Ed]

With PSOE bringing a motion of no confidence, the stage surely must be set for a general election and a thumping Ciudadanos victory and then Ciudadanos+PP coalition?

 

[Favelado]

Bet that Ciudadanos vote is soft though.

 

[J Ed]

Hope so

 

[JuanTwoThree]

I know this is true of all parties to some extent, but the difference is that they have some party discipline.

It seems to me, based on little more than a feeling and local gossip, that Ciudadanos very much depends on who decides to set it up in a given place.

Immediately round here the PP is definitely the unreconstructed heir to the technocrats of the 60s (in fact we are on our third generation of a PP family whose first protagonist made that seamless transition from being a fascist to being an early PPista, having gone through the Suarez stage etc). So here Ciudadanos seem thoroughly reasonable Christian Democrats and the ones I am acquainted with are decent people. To the extent that right-wingers can be.

Just down the road Ciudadanos are indistinguishable from the PP and it seems to be more a feud between two factions of people with identical politics. The arrival of Ciudadanos gave one faction the chance to set up an alternative party machine. Perhaps to have a slice of the cake, it is being said.

In Catalonia there may be even more unsavoury types, as we have been told at length!

I'm guessing that in Valencia there are voters who wouldn't stomach a coalition with any members of the PP who are not banged up and others who wouldn't swallow one with the Valencian socialists.

What it will be like across the river in Euskadi will depend on the personalities of the people involved. I don't think they have any kind of organisation there yet.

Obviously all parties are a bit like this. But nascent ones even more so. I can see this all breaking up into Iberian alphabetti spaghetti when they compare notes across the country.

 

[J Ed]

Just down the road Ciudadanos are indistinguishable from the PP and it seems to be more a feud between two factions of people with identical politics. The arrival of Ciudadanos gave one faction the chance to set up an alternative party machine. Perhaps to have a slice of the cake, it is being said.

I'm honestly still trying to work out the politics of Ciudadanos, as you can it varies so much depending on the area just as it is with the Lib Dems in Britain, but this is what I have read on Contexto y acción...

Despite the historical continuity between Francoism and the PP, Ciudadanos are actually worse than the PP in many respects. The main difference between Ciudadanos and the PP, beyond the fact that they are marketing neoliberalism to a different segment of the population, is an increased amount of the same sort of surface level commitment to aspects of social liberalism that you get from the PP anyway on the one hand and an increased desire to attack what remains of the welfare state. The lack of a formal link to the Catholic Church means that there are areas of the welfare state which Ciudadanos would be willing to outright attack which the PP would not.

In a lot of ways, Rivera does remind me a lot of Macron. Muscular neoliberalism, built up by the media, taking a hardline against organised labour and those who are demonised in society while legitimising that hardline and demonisation through a sprinkling of very outward displays of social liberalism.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

MASSIVE derailment here. But it is the place where the Hispanophiles and the occasional phobe hang.

I'm going to be on a camp site near Pontevedra, Rias Baixas from the 17th to the 27th of August. Is that close to anybody for a meet up, barby, boozy lunch?

 

[LiamO]

Just who is Anudder Oik?

... Personally, if it was my decision, I would have banned you from these boards long ago.

Stop the bullshit, or simply fuck off.

Saw this - and some other similar bollocks - months ago Stanley Edwards but was not posting. cba searching for the one where you actually caalled for him to be banned, but I'm pretty sure I read it.

The guy is a cunt.

Time we ignored him altogether.

Who is this 'we' of which you speak? Dunno how many times I, and several others, have stepped in when you were being unfairly gang-banged. Turns out you are just another gang-banger who has finally found a gang.

I met Anudder Oik in person for the first time last October. I know a number of old comrades who knew - and rated - him.

You ask who the fuck is he? I'll tell you what I experienced/observed.

AO (in sharp contrast to his somewhat ridiculous labelling on here as some kind of right-wing, Nationalist nut-job) is a softly-spoken, tri-lingual, english leftist. He has a 30 year track record as a political and cultural activist, both in Britain and (latterly) in Catalonia, including the sharp end of anti-Fascist activity in Barcelona some years back. His mum was also a lifetime left-wing political activist right back to the early 70's.

He now lives in a small Catalan town with his Catalan wife and daughter, where he seems exceptionally well got with the wider community, both Catalan and Spanish. He contributes to that community, tirelessly and consistently, in all sorts of ways.

You, on the other hand, have been dossing, begging and harrassing and harranging your way around the Iberian peninsula for an apparently similar number of years. Settling only for as long as it takes you to be run out of town by irate locals and contributing sweet fuck all - except reinforcing negative stereotypes about drunken brits.

Frankly, your behaviour disgusts me.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

his somewhat ridiculous labelling on here as some kind of right-wing, Nationalist nut-job

It wasn't for nothing. I mentally put the context of 'Notting Hill Carnival' in the relevant places in stuff like this, and didn't like what I was hearing :

There are entire neighbourhoods where the identity is Castillian and not catalan. They even have a "feria de Abril", which is an Andaluz tradition not a catalan one. The Spanish and Catalans are very different in culture and temperament.

and I wasn't the only one. You can call it 'ganging up' if you like but I call it 'a generalised dislike of the way the conversation was going'

and there's a lot more.

I take your word for the essential good character of AO, especially of the person you've met IRL, but we've only got some very dodgy opinions expressed here to go on.

Stanley is a soft target. Do you back the more inflammatory comments of AO? Things like "The catalans won't shout in your face". Which took me right back to some geezer explaining to me the problems of immigrants in about 1975. Can you see where we were coming from with our 'ridiculous labelling'?

 

[LiamO]

No. Not really.

You lot stopped actually debating with AO months ago. All I can see since is the ritual bashing of strawmen.

Ye have labelled him a right-wing, uber-Nationalist and everything you post is first viewed through that prism. He seems to have decided you are an apologist for the Spanish state.

Neither of these are (IMO) true. Therefore the exchanges are fatally flawed.

For example... you posted a while back about his use of the term 'Spanish knuckle-draggers'. You claimed this was anti-Spanish people. But - in context - his statement was a simple observation. The people he was speaking of were Spanish and they were (what many posters on Urban would refer to as) knuckle-draggers.

If you can show me where you have consistently objected to people referring to E-E-EDL types 'as knuckle-draggers' I will, of course, revise my opinion.

There was another long post (I think by you) a while back where you counter-posed (similarly de-contextualised) statements made by AO with racist attitudes to immigrants in Britain. That was where Fonzie jumped the Shark for me.

If you can link to it, I will be happy to expand.

 

[LiamO]

Stanley is a soft target.

It is precisely because Stanley is such a 'soft target' and a frequent (historical) recipient of Urban gang-banging that I find his behaviour on this thread reprehensible.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

For example... you posted a while back about his use of the term 'Spanish knuckle-draggers'. You claimed this was anti-Spanish people. But - in context - his statement was a simple observation. The people he was speaking of were Spanish and they were (what many posters on Urban would refer to as) knuckle-draggers.

The problem wasn't the term knuckle-draggers. I'd agree. It was my objection to the constant use of 'Spanish' as if the word was being spat out and this was an example. Perhaps not the best one; certainly not the only one. Very much a side issue.

Ye have labelled him a right-wing, uber-Nationalist and everything you post is first viewed through that prism. He seems to have decided you are an apologist for the Spanish state.

I have (mostly!) said he 'sounds' like one, except when he called me a troll and said that a fascist was my friend, which did upset me a bit. He rowed back on that one.

I think you are seeing things through the prism of actually knowing the guy. My prism is how he comes across.

We've also had interesting moments where we've agreed but when he goes off on one about transmigrants to Catalonia not being 'proper Catalans' then, yes, it reminds me of similar remarks I've heard all my life about other new arrivals. It is de-contextualised, but things that remind you of other things are, it's inevitable.

What does 'catalans won't shout in your face' remind you of? Nothing at all?

What does 'There are entire neighbourhoods where the identity is Castillian and not catalan' remind you of? Nothing at all?

Shall I go on? There's plenty more. It's how he comes across. You know him though and I believe you, even when he said 'Got any more right-wing sources?' to me. Just my prism, I expect.

 

[Favelado]

It's nice that he's your friend and everything LiamO , but he's been obviously anti-Spanish on this thread. In fact he's been anti-Catalan to an extent too. A lot of the people he would insult consider themselves some combination of Catalan and Spanish, but wouldn't meet AO's criteria. I don't need to go back and quote-mine, but he's referred to them as dumb, as problem migrants who won't integrate, and a variety of other unpleasant things. There's plenty of source material on here.

He actually denied that a more pernicious type of xenophobic Catalan nationalism existed, and then disappeared from the forum when, erm, the new president of the Generalitat got into bother for comparing the Spanish to animals and so on. He has used a sort of plausible deniability tactic on the thread. Those of us who have lived in Spain, know the attitudes that exist here, and he's been able to just say "NOT TRUE!", because a mainly British audience will be none the wiser, turning it into his word against ours.

 

[J Ed]

Really enjoyed listening to this Jacobin podcast on Spain The Dig: Left Out of Spain’s National Question thought it was very balanced, and touched on a lot of themes discussed on this thread and has reached largely the same conclusions on a lot of issues. Particularly enjoyed the discussion on the uniqueness of the characteristics of the far-right in Spain, they discuss the fact that in Spain the way in which it is spread out across the PP and to a lesser extent Vox on the one hand and on the other that Ciudadanos have also absorbed a lot of the far-right vote by cherry picking a mix of social liberalism and far-right positions.

Also touched upon is the fact that Ciudadanos is more neoliberal than the PP, and would be more willing to attack what remains of the Spanish welfare state. They don't really talk about it, but it's something that has occurred to me, to what extent is the willingness of Ciudadanos to take a more neoliberal positions than the PP an outcome of the party being a sort of Partido Popular but for millennials? Older voters disproportionately benefit from the welfare state in Spain, as they do in most Western countries, so the Ciudadanos voters are not damaged as much by attacks on it as the much older PP voters. As a result it allows them to attack the welfare state in a sort of 'negative solidarity' way, 'you lot don't have X, so the eldery shouldn't have it either'. You can see this millennial negative solidarity line being explicitly pushed by groups like the Adam Smith Institute in this country, and more implicitly by 'centre-left' publications like the graunid or the New Statesman.

 

[J Ed]

Rajoy finally gone. Will Ciudadanos going down with his ship tarnish them by association?

 

[JHE]

Probably not much and they may well be calculating that:
- not supporting the left parties and the evil separatist destroyers of the nation will stand them in better stead to attract (even more) voters away from PP
- since Sanchez's plan is not to go for an election yet, they would have little to gain by supporting his motion
- if Ciudadanos are the biggest party after the next election, as now seems quite possible, they will be able to get support from PP to install a (minority) Ciudadanos government

Of course things could change, but at the moment it's looking really good for Ciudadanos. If they get into government they will be even worse for the Catalan question than PP. PP has antagonised many Catalans. Ciudadanos sometimes makes PP look moderate on the question.

Personally, I don't dislike patriotism. I don't dislike the Spanish patriotism of, for example, the moderate social democrat I was talking to earlier this evening or the elderly Socialist poet I will see tomorrow. But Albert Rivera wrapping himself in the flag and talking bollocks just makes me think he is an unscrupulous bastard.

 

[J Ed]

Hard to imagine this Sánchez gov being anything other than short lived and not very successful. No chance of a repeat of the Portuguese example, which has been able to actually legislate as it is propped up by left-wing parties.

Surely the PSOE would be better off just calling elections.

 

[teqniq]

Mariano Rajoy ousted as Spain's prime minister

 

[Favelado]

I'm happy. It looks like they are trying to hold on for 18 months before calling elections in 2020. There is immediate talk of repealing the ley mordaza, which on its own would make all of this worth it. Sanchez is talking of dialogue with Catalonia, Rajoy is gone, C's get are out of government for the time being. The snowstorm gets a bit of a shake, which can only be a good thing, considering what the status quo was.

It will be interesting to see if Podemos and PSOE work together or end up fighting and falling out.

 

[Favelado]

A Mongolia take on a classic.

 

[Riklet]

Sé que este es un grupo donde hay muchas maneras de pensar y espero no herir la sensibilidad de nadie. Hoy deja su cargo un hombre que ha puesto a este país a la cabeza de Europa, ha mantenido a los catalanes a raya y ha hecho que todos los que pensamos como él hayamos disfrutado.
Adios Zidane

Little bit lol on whatsapp.

Will be interesting to see what happens now! Will SOE actually cling on and even get rid of some of the reforma laboral?

 

[Favelado]

I think we can expect poll volatility. What we've seen in the past 5 years or so is that all of the parties have soft support. When elections do come, I think it's nigh on impossible to predict what type of government will come out of them.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

I have conducted a rigorous poll of a statistically significant number of respondents of various shades of opinion (three neighbours in the lift) and the general consensus is that our new glorious leader is a bit of a slimeball. Polling also indicated, though this was an opinion more prevalent towards the left, that Rajoy was a slimeball too, but in his case a preternaturally stupid one, so an intelligent slimeball might be an improvement and certainly couldn't be any worse.

 

[Favelado]

We won't like him, but we can get a reprieve from the deranged authoritian stuff of the past few years.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

Another opinion, hot from the bar where I had coffee

'It'll be good to get back to Felipe Gonzalez pulling the strings rather than J-M Aznar'

 

[Treacle Toes]

Ostias!..fucking LOL!

Muy bien hecho y clever use of Espanglish. Very, very gracioso!