by the Night Writer
Along with planning for our trip I’m also trying to get up to speed on the news and politics in Spain before we go over there. The New York Times maintains an on-line news page on the country that is a handy reference. Allow me to excerpt three of the top stories for your consideration; I’ve bold-faced some words for emphasis, but this post is just snapshots, not analyses. I don’t have the time or the historical context to attempt an analyses at this point, but I do have enough intellect and curiosity to file these under, “Things that make you go, ‘Hmmmm.'”
The first article summarizes the March, 2008 electoral victory of the Socialist Party and PM José Luis Zapatero, which was first elected in 2004:
Spain’s governing Socialists triumphed in elections held in March 2008, giving Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero a fresh mandate to pursue his agenda of sweeping social, cultural and political liberalization.
Despite a bitterly fought campaign, the outcome seemed to endorse some of Mr. Zapatero’s boldest decisions, including the withdrawal of Spain’s troops from Iraq, the granting of more autonomy to Spain’s rebellious regions, simplified divorce and the legalization of homosexual marriage.
Among the bold decisions includes a head-on conflict with the Catholic Church on abortion.
Spain Steps Into Battle With Itself on Abortion
By VICTORIA BURNETT
MADRID — One day last month, Sister María Victoria Vindel gave her 15-year-old students a shockingly graphic lecture on reproductive health: PowerPoint slides of dismembered and disfigured fetuses interspersed with biblical quotations and pictures of a grinning José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister.“They laugh while many innocent children will die,” one of the captions read. The presentation ended with the message, “No to abortion, yes to life!”
Sister Vindel’s class at Purísima Concepción y Santa María Micaela, a parochial school in Logroño in northern Spain, is the most controversial episode yet in an increasingly contentious debate about Mr. Zapatero’s plans to ease Spain’s restrictive abortion law.
The class was described by the mother of a student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of possible repercussions for her child, and by Inmaculada Ortega, a Socialist lawmaker who spoke to several students and their parents.
The school, where Sister Vindel is headmistress, refused to comment on the slide show, which appeared to be downloaded from the Internet. The regional government, run by the opposition Popular Party, sent inspectors to the school, a Catholic institution that is financed partly by the state and partly by the parents. The government called the presentation “inappropriate” and said that it could constitute “moral aggression.”
Since he became prime minister in 2004, Mr. Zapatero has pushed an ambitious series of reforms, prying the social fabric of Spain from the centuries-old grip of the Roman Catholic Church. The Socialist government has legalized gay marriage, eased divorce law and expanded the rights of transsexuals.
I’m not up on my history of the Catholic Church’s prior relationship with the Socialists or Zapatero, but in Central and South America the Church has been known to support and endorse Socialist uprisings and candidates. I wonder if it has been happy with the resulting social conditions? Something to look into.
Leaving aside the spiritual, it appears that Zapatero may also have some issues with the temporal:
Spain’s Falling Prices Fuel Deflation Fears in Europe
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZVALENCIA, Spain — Faced with plunging orders, merchants across this recession-wracked country are starting to do something that many of them have never done: cut retail prices.
Prices dipped everywhere, from restaurants and fashion retailers to pharmacies and supermarkets in March. Hoping to increase sales, Fernando Maestre reduced prices by a third on the video intercoms his company makes for homes and apartment buildings. But that has not helped, so, along with many other Spanish employers, he is continuing to fire workers.
The nation’s jobless rate, already a painful 15.5 percent, could soon reach 20 percent, a troubling number for a major industrialized country. (Ya think? Later on the article also includes this stat: The jobless rate for those under 25 is at a Depression-like level of 31.8 percent, the highest among the 27 nations of the European Union. NW)
With the combination of rising unemployment and falling prices, economists fear Spain may be in the early grip of deflation, a hallmark of both the Great Depression and Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s, and a major concern since the financial crisis went global last year.
Deflation can result in a downward spiral that can be difficult to reverse. As unemployment rises sharply and consumers cut spending, companies cut prices. But if sales do not pick up, then revenue can decline further, forcing more cuts in workers or wages. Mr. Maestre is already contemplating additional job and wage cuts for his 250 employees.
Nowhere is this cycle more evident than in Spain. Last month, it became the first of the 16 nations that use the euro to record a negative inflation rate. The drop, though just 0.1 percent, had not happened since the government began tracking inflation in 1961, and Spanish officials have said prices could keep dropping through the summer.
Some of the decline came as volatile food prices sank; the cost of fish fell 6.2 percent, and sugar was down 5.7 percent. But even prices in normally stable sectors like drugs and medical treatments fell 0.7 percent in March, and there were slight declines in footwear, clothing and prices for household electronics.
“Alarm bells are going off,” said Lorenzo Amor, president of the Association of Autonomous Workers, which represents small businesses and self-employed people. “Economies can recover from deceleration, but it’s harder to recover from a deflationary situation. This could be a catastrophe for the Spanish economy.”
I’m sure we’ll try our best to stimulate that economy!
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The Catholic Church in Spain is different than the Catholic Church in Latin America and also, the time you refer to about the Church being involved in radical politics was pretty much between the 60s and 80s. (With a few notable exceptions, it wasn’t the Church, it was some quasi independent religious orders like the Jesuits and the Maryknolls who made common cause with the Left.) To understand why Spain’s trajectory was different, You have to remember the Civil War which was socialists (who were atheists and vehemently anti-Church) and the phalangists (fascists–different from either Hitler and Moussolini). Franco ruled the place with an iron fist until his death, I think around 1975 and democratization (in all facets of life) proceeded slowly after that. Abortion is one of these contested areas where the old Spain and New Spain are duking it out.
If you want to understand modern Spain, a good novel to read is Jose Maria Gironella’s the Cypresses Believe in God. It’s actually the first book in a trilogy which takes you through the entire war and its aftermath but the first book is probably the best and gives you a feeling of how complicated that period was and how it left many issues unresolved for 30-40 years.
Thanks, Margaret – I have been squeezing in side-reading on 20th Century Spain, in particular the Civil War and the rise of Franco, which has also led to a better understanding of the tenuous relations (if not outright animosity) between Madrid and the provinces. While most are aware that the Basques are especially separatist, I hadn’t realized the depths of the animus between Catalunya and Castille; perhaps not unlike our own North and South. (One of my guidebooks even helpfully offered that you wouldn’t ingratiate yourself in Barcelona by gamely trying out your Castillian Spanish!)
It is mind-boggling to dip yourself into a history and culture with so many dynamic tensions while trying to pick up context on the fly. That is, however, one of the things that makes travel so interesting and broadening! I’ll definitely look for “Cypresses Believe in God”. (Have you read the novelized biography of Enrique Granados entitled “Fallen Nightengale”?
I posted these 3 stories, again, as a snapshot and because it raised a question for me: can you run a functioning socialist goverment without the proceeds from significant oil reserves (ala Britain, Norway, Venezuela)? As you suggest, there’s more that goes into this political paella than just doctrine.
I’ve heard of that book, but never read it.
Spain is actually “The Spains” it was referred as this until well after the conquest. Every region has a strong identity. They were actually just an alliance. Southern Spain is very different too, with it’s wealthy, laid back not fundamentalist Islamic heritage. The big thing that sets castillian spanish apart as you probably know is the z (pronounced theta, not zeta like it would be in Southern Spain. Unless you are planning on learning Catalan and Basque, you are better off playing the dumb, non spanish speaking tourist.
Economically, Spain actually benefited from being the poor man of Europe, with cheaper labor and they were a market for goods that had jumped the shark in other countries. For example, It wasn’t until the mid 80s that most people had phones in their homes and by that time cell phones had arrived on the scene. But now they are suffering from the big run up and crash like everybody else.
The phrase “could constitute ‘moral aggression'” from the second excerpt in the original post caught my attention, as it appeared that the speaker was alluding to an actual law, rather than giving a mere opinion on the state of the situation. It sounded a bit 1984-ish, so I did some digging and discovered that it does refer to an actual law, or rather an interpretation of a law.
The explanation is lengthy, but suffice it to say that the term “moral aggression,” which does not appear in the European Social Charter, was nevertheless used in applying the Charter to conclude that Spain must eliminate a certain provision from its Civil Code. The offending provision? Article 154, which previously provided that parents “may administer punishment to their children reasonably and in moderation.” The European Committee of Social Rights observed that corporal punishment in the home was not prohibited by that law. Article 154 was changed 12/28/2007; the new version eliminates the offending provision.
National socialism, meet continental socialism.