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Spain anti-politics protests

Lo Siento.

Lo Siento.

Second As Farce
Anyone been following the protests in Spain? Puerta de Sol where I was last night was front page on a few newspapers...

Young people across the country have occupied central squares in the cities, held big demonstrations under the banner of "REAL DEMOCRACY NOW". There are municipal elections coming up, and the demos are against the two main parties (yes, both! the Partido Popular and Partido Socialist Obrero de España). The latter has swung to the right after the crash, and is trying to pay for the debt with sell-offs of public services and various labour reforms.

There were a few thousands in Madrid's main square last night, re-occupied after the police kicked them off yesterday morning.

Motivations include: 20% unemployment (40%+ among young people), the monopoly of the two widely unpopular ruling parties over the electoral system, the spread of "basura" (garbage) temporary contracts at work, attacks on workers rights, the trade unions selling out, low salaries (as low 600€ a month for an unskilled job), worsening access to higher education, corruption amongst the governing parties, government collusion with high finance, cuts to social services (the list goes on)

you can see the main square in madrid live here

facebook group

and bbc article
 
TruXta said:
Are they for anything in particular or is it more "no to all of this shit"?
Click to expand...

they've been having public assemblies to decide on some things they're favour of, but "no to all of this shit" would probably be a good summation, I suppose.

(ie. they're encouraging people to take the opportunity to vote for anyone except the pp and the psoe, and actually demonstrate how collectively unpopular they actually are, they want the "basura" contracts abolished, and the labour reform abandoned, the government to actively engage in creating employment, they want people implicated in corruption purged from the party lists)
 
I'm happy to see that protests are targetting the political/economic class as a whole, and not just one part of it and still having a lot of resonance with the wider public.
 
Sounds like a great idea, best of luck to 'em, shall try following this as I need to improve my spanish..
 
twitter hashtags if you're into that sort of thing - #nonosvamos #notenemosmiedo #acampadasol

for Spanish speakers, their proposals

"si no nos dejaras soñar, no te dejaremos dormir" (if you won't let us dream, we won't let you sleep)
 
With local and regional elections this Sunday, Partido Popular are quite cheerful about these protests, thinking (plausibly enough) that the movement is made up of left-ish people who are now less likely to vote, while PP's people will go to the polls.

The United Left (IU) are insisting that they are part of the movement and are hoping to get votes from it. I think they are at about 6% in the polls which is quite good for them by the miserable standards of recent years, but I don't know that they'll get many votes from this protest movement.

With unemployment horrendously high (21%) and many many young (and now not so young) Spaniards stuck in their parents' home into their 30s, I particularly like the proposals for sharing out work and for the state to take over empty properties to turn them into social housing.

Abstentionism would, as almost always, be a mistake. Punishing PSOE, by not voting for them this time, is one thing. Letting PP do very well by not voting against them is another. I'm not a great fan of IU, but I would much rather they got the votes of the protesters and people who think like them than watch Rajoy and his chums chortling after having done even better than expected because many of their natural opponents chose not to vote.

Anarchists, no doubt, feel differently.
 
Proposals (roughly) Translated.

Elimination of the Political Class' privileges.
- strict control of absenteeism of elected officials. Specified punishments for abandoning their posts.

- End of their privileges regarding tax payments, pension payments and pension plans, equivalence between elected representatives' salaries and the mean salary (plus necessary expenses)

- End to any legal immunity for elected officials, officials guilty of corruption to banned from standing
- Obligatory publication of all elected officials financial interests.
- Reduction in the number of nominated (unelected) officials

2. Against unemployment

- sharing out of work through reduction of the working week until structural unemployment is eliminated.
- Retirement at 65, and no rise in pension age until youth unemployment has been dealt with
- incentives for firms to have less than 10% temporary hires
- job security: make mass redundancies illegal for companies generating profits. Auditing of companies to ensure they aren't using temporary contracts when they could offer permanent ones.
- re-establishment of 426€ unemployment benefit for all long-term unemployed

3. The Right to housing

-expropriation by the state of all unsold houses within housing developments to make them available for protected rental.
-financial assistance for young and impoverished people to rent houses
-allow indebted families to foreclose on their houses in order to cancel their mortgages (and thus their debts)

Quality Public Services

- Elimination of unnecessary spending by public administrations and establishment of independent control over budgets and spending
- hire health workers until waiting lists disappear
-hire teachers to guarantee a low ratio of children per class
-reduction of university fees, match postgraduates fees to other levels of education
- public finance for research to guarantee independence
-cheap high quality, environmentally sound public transport: re-establish the trainlines currently being replaced by the AVE with their original prices, lower the price of local transport, restrictions on private traffic, construction of bike lanes.
-Local resources: effective application of the Dependency Law, local care workers, local mediation and tutor services

Control of Finance Sector

- Prohibition of any type of rescue of or capital injection in banking insitutions: those insitutions in dificulties should be allowed to go bankrupt or be nationalized, establishing a public bank under social control.

- Raise bank taxes to pay for the public spending generated by their mismanagement.
- Banks to return to the state all public capital
- Ban Spanish banks from investing in financial paradises
- Regulation through penalties of bad banking practices and speculation


Public finances

- rise in taxes for the wealthy and the banks
- elimination of open-ended mutual funds (SICAVs)
- Restitution of property tax
- more effective control of fiscal fraud and capital flight to financial paradises
- international promotion of a tobin tax

Civil Rights and Participatory Democracy
- no to control over the internet, abolition of the Sinde Law (anti-piracy law)
- protection of freedom of information and investigative journalism
- binding referendums over policies which drastically change the living conditions of citizens
- obligatory referendums before the introduction of any policy mandated by the EU
- reform of the Electoral Law, guaranteeing an authentically representative system which does not discriminated against any political movement or social aspiration, where the spoilt are also represented in the legislature.
- Judicial independence: reform the post of Chief Justice, the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court, stop the presidency from nominating its members.
-Establishment of effective mechanisms guaranteeing internal democracy in political parties.
 
JHE said:
With local and regional elections this Sunday, Partido Popular are quite cheerful about these protests, thinking (plausibly enough) that the movement is made up of left-ish people who are now less likely to vote, while PP's people will go to the polls.

The United Left (IU) are insisting that they are part of the movement and are hoping to get votes from it. I think they are at about 6% in the polls which is quite good for them by the miserable standards of recent years, but I don't know that they'll get many votes from this protest movement.

With unemployment horrendously high (21%) and many many young (and now not so young) Spaniards stuck in their parents' home into their 30s, I particularly like the proposals for sharing out work and for the state to take over empty properties to turn them into social housing.

Abstentionism would, as almost always, be a mistake. Punishing PSOE, by not voting for them this time, is one thing. Letting PP do very well by not voting against them is another. I'm not a great fan of IU, but I would much rather they got the votes of the protesters and people who think like them than watch Rajoy and his chums chortling after having done even better than expected because many of their natural opponents chose not to vote.

Anarchists, no doubt, feel differently.
Click to expand...

Whatever happens Spain will wake up on the 22nd May with a PSOE government, and either the PP or the PSOE in regional government (with the exception of the Basque Country and Cataluña). Both parties are in broad agreement in anything of any real significance. So I fail to see that there's anything at all to lose in these elections, voting or not voting. The thing to be doing is continue building momentum, generalising the rejection of the PPSOE and the whole establishment...
 
Lo Siento. said:
Whatever happens Spain will wake up on the 22nd May with a PSOE government, and either the PP or the PSOE in regional government (with the exception of the Basque Country and Cataluña). Both parties are in broad agreement in anything of any real significance. So I fail to see that there's anything at all to lose in these elections, voting or not voting. The thing to be doing is continue building momentum, generalising the rejection of the PPSOE and the whole establishment...
Click to expand...

Catalunya
 
Lo Siento. said:
Whatever happens Spain will wake up on the 22nd May with a PSOE government, and either the PP or the PSOE in regional government (with the exception of the Basque Country and Cataluña). Both parties are in broad agreement in anything of any real significance. So I fail to see that there's anything at all to lose in these elections, voting or not voting. The thing to be doing is continue building momentum, generalising the rejection of the PPSOE and the whole establishment...
Click to expand...

I guess you mean the 23rd May - ie, Monday, the day after the elections.

I don't really accept that PP and PSOE are as bad as each other (any more than I accept that Lab and Con are the same), but I do remember a (then) prominent Spanish politician pushing the line that they are the same. Julio Anguita used the claim to come, reasonably enough, to the opposite conclusion from you. Since PSOE are as bad as PP, he argued, people on the left should vote IU.

IU and some other smaller parties may prevent PP or PSOE holding an overall majority in municipalities and regional parliaments. (It isn't only in Catalonia and the Basque Country that there are other significant parties.)

PP are going to do well on Sunday. It is yet be decided how well. It would be sad if a sizable bunch of people whose views are on the left helped PP to do very well.

Surely, it would be better to get some IU people elected.
 
JHE said:
I guess you mean the 23rd May - ie, Monday, the day after the elections.

I don't really accept that PP and PSOE are as bad as each other (any more than I accept that Lab and Con are the same), but I do remember a (then) prominent Spanish politician pushing the line that they are the same. Julio Anguita used the claim to come, reasonably enough, to the opposite conclusion from you. Since PSOE are as bad as PP, he argued, people on the left should vote IU.

IU and some other smaller parties may prevent PP or PSOE holding an overall majority in municipalities and regional parliaments. (It isn't only in Catalonia and the Basque Country that there are other significant parties.)

PP are going to do well on Sunday. It is yet be decided how well. It would be sad if a sizable bunch of people whose views are on the left helped PP to do very well.

Surely, it would be better to get some IU people elected.
Click to expand...

The point is that the people in the square don't care if the PP or the PSOE do well.The problem, ultimately, isn't that there's no difference, it's that both, broadly, are taking Spain in the same direction (as are their equivalents across the continents) and it's not a direction that anyone sane wants to go in. It's far more important to work on discrediting, attacking that direction in general, than to worry about the trivia that they disagree on. Otherwise at best you'll end up in the same place but with a minor concessions.

I've no problem with people voting for one of the many other parties, whatever they fancy. But I'm certainly going to say that the focus of the movement should be bumping the vote up for some party or other, because it's not important, and the other parties aren't going to win, and they aren't going to get into a position to change things.
 
JHE said:
Sorry to disappoint you, but according to the group's website, Democracia Real Ya is opposed to vandalism.
Click to expand...

yep, and goes to show strategically that you can have a positive impact without it. Also, given the vagueness of the call-outs and the initial lack of proposals, that as Europe's political class gets more and more discredited, it's going to become easier to mobilise people like this...
 
According to El País, the Spanish protests, as well as taking place in dozens of Spanish cities, have spread to Spaniards in foreign cities, including two in Britain. In London, the place is the Spanish Embassy (near Sloane Square, I believe). In Bristol, the place is the city centre (I don't know where exactly).
 
Random said:
Spain has always been prone to being invaded by North Africa.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. One of the differences, of course, is that a movement for greater democracy and reform in Spain will not lead to Islamist power in the near future, while in North Africa, insofar as the movements succeed in ousting the existing shitty regimes, that is exactly the outcome that can be expected.

As Manuel Fraga once said in an entirely different context, Spain is different.
 
JHE said:
Hmmm. One of the differences, of course, is that a movement for greater democracy and reform in Spain will not lead to Islamist power in the near future, while in North Africa, insofar as the movements succeed in ousting the existing shitty regimes, that is exactly the outcome that can be expected.
Click to expand...
As far as I can see, the Brotherhood in Egypt are Islamist in the same way Angela Merkel is 'christianist'. But anyway, mine was a throwaway remark and it's perhaps best to keep this on-topic, sorry!
 
Spain bravely upholding democracy by, er, effectively banning the protests pre-Sunday's election: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/20/spain-bans-protest-ahead-election

Someone should point out to the authorites that protesting about austerity cuts and unemployment is not electioneering. Not too sure about the "socialist" government wanting to wave the big stick so close to the election though - can't imagine pictures of Espana Plod wading into the protestors being a vote-winner.
 
Random said:
As far as I can see, the Brotherhood in Egypt are Islamist in the same way Angela Merkel is 'christianist'.
Click to expand...

Have you really managed to kid yourself that their programme is not the establishment of Sharia?

"Allah is our objective
The Prophet is our leader
Qur’an is our law
Jihad is our way
Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope"

I expect their Palestinian section, Hamas, is pretty much like a bunch of tolerant peaceful Quakers who just happen to pray a little differently.
 
MellySingsDoom said:
Spain bravely upholding democracy by, er, effectively banning the protests pre-Sunday's election: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/20/spain-bans-protest-ahead-election

Someone should point out to the authorites that protesting about austerity cuts and unemployment is not electioneering. Not too sure about the "socialist" government wanting to wave the big stick so close to the election though - can't imagine pictures of Espana Plod wading into the protestors being a vote-winner.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's certainly going to be interesting to see what happens. It is not the government, but the Central Electoral Council (JEC), which has said the demonstrations will not be allowed on the 'day of reflection' (ie the day before the elections). As far as I know, all demonstrations and all campaigning are always banned on 'the day of reflection'. Hopefully, the JEC or someone else can find a way around this. Some in the protest movement have promised passive resistance. If Señor Plod had to remove many people offering passive resistance, he might get quite heavy and I'm not sure the resistance would then remain passive.
 
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