The next socialist leader

Presenting the next leader of PSOE: Rubalcón!

(This is from Polonia, a very funny Catalan program on TV3)

Catalan Politicians

As much as I like to complain about language politics, I have to say that as a whole, politicians in Catalunya still seem to be relatively idealistic and seem to actually care about affecting what they think are positive chances in society.

They are also remarkably poor. Outgoing Montilla was worth about 365,000 euros and incoming Artur Mas clocked in around 502,000 euros. (There is always the question of undeclared or wifely assets, but none of these politicians leads a particularly extravagant lifestyle.) In the US it would be unusual for a successful politician at the governor level not to be a multi-millionaire.

This is also in remarkable contrast to many other parts of Spain, such as Madrid, Andalucía, and Valencia, where the political class seems to exists primarily as a way to flow government money and favors to the richest and most connected.

One loosely connected anecdote: I recently went on a tour of the super-computer Mare Nostrum, where one of the applications they were showing was a collaboration with the Generalitat on modeling pollution in Barcelona.

The contrast with Madrid couldn’t be more pronounced. After numerous complaints at the EU level, Madrid solved its pollution problem by moving the measuring machines to less polluted locations.

What happens to the Euro?

One of the best articles I’ve read so far about what is likely to happen in the Euro-zone over the next couple years.

The “easy” solution is to hope that economic growth will raise all boats and that eventually the debts will become manageable.

If this doesn't work out, then solving the problem is a political, not an economic issue. How will the pain of adjustment be shared? Each solution (default, leaving the euro, inflation, raising taxes, austerity, etc) assigns costs to a different group.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t “win/win” solutions to this problem, but these all require a high level of trust and co-operations. Germany has been fundamentally unhelpful in this aspect, a large part due to the lack of leadership of Merkel. She has repeatedly placed narrow domestic political calculations (remember how she let the Greek crisis fester for weeks because she had a regional election to worry about?) ahead of finding pan-European solutions.

What do Catalans think about independence?

The institute of political science at the Universitat Autonoma publishes an annual poll of opinions in Catalunya on a wide range of topics. Here’s a couple things I found interesting in the 2009 poll. One thing that shocked me was that 68% of people in Catalunya have at least one parent that is from outside Catalunya.

Question 23: Do you believe Catalunya should be a:

Region of Spain	4%
Autonomous community in Spain (status quo)	48%
A state in a federal Spain	20%
An independent state	21%

Question 24: How important is the debate around the shape of the state to you?

Very important	12%
Somewhat important	42%
Little important	30%
Unimportant	12%

question 37: what does “Spain” mean to you?

My country	23%
A nation of which I am a member	6%
A state of which I am a citizen	21%
A state that consists of different nations and regions	37%
A foreign state that my country belongs to	10%

question 47: where were you born:

Catalunya	61%
Andalusia	10%
Rest of Spain	11%
Foreign	18%

question 50: where were your parents born:

Both in Catalunya	32%
Both outside Catalunya	55%
One in and one outside	13%

Germany tries to blackmail Spain into more cuts

Germany (or at least some German officials) tried to play dirty and plant rumors about the Spanish government being on the verge of needing IMF help in order to try to get the Spanish to go for an even harsher austerity program.

Sort of like shooting someone in order to convince them to donate blood.

Spain retaliated by releasing the results of recent stress tests that showed Spanish banks doing better than average (which Germany had opposed).

I really hope that more European governments realize that Germany is playing with a very weak hand with their austerity drive. Sovereign default in Europe is a game of mutually assured destruction, and Merkel is not willing to pull the trigger.

Britain’s 500 year-old foreign policy

While reading this article about how the new UK government was going to show the rest of Europe that it is eager to get involved, I could help but be reminded of this exchange from the wonderful British show Yes Minister from the 1980s (which we are currently watching with much amusement):

Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it's worked so well?

Hacker: That's all ancient history, surely?

Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing [the EEC] up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it's just like old times.

Hacker: But surely we're all committed to the European ideal?

Sir Humphrey: [chuckles] Really, Minister.

Hacker: If not, why are we pushing for an increase in the membership?

Sir Humphrey: Well, for the same reason. It's just like the United Nations, in fact; the more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up, the more futile and impotent it becomes.

Hacker: What appalling cynicism.

Independentists win in Belgium

Belgium took another step down the road of separation, with the New Flemish Alliance winning the largest number of seats in the election yesterday.

There is a somewhat similar history of language imposition to Catalunya, since the French speakers ran the country for the first 100 years after independence in 1830. Now the Flemish-speakers are back with a vengeance, ready to “protect” their language at any cost.

A major flashpoint centers around several predominantly French speaking suburbs around Brussels (which is in the Dutch speaking northern part of the country).

Many of the same kind of stupid stories I’ve heard here repeat themselves there:

Mayor Francis Vermeiren is determined to uphold Flemishness. All visitors to the town hall must bring an interpreter if they don't speak Dutch, as staff are banned from speaking another language

[…]

Some who are learning Dutch feel they could be made to feel more welcome in Zaventem. Souhaila, a 16-year-old student, says her native French is banned from the school grounds.

"If they catch us speaking French in playground they tell us to stop. If we continue we get a detention. This bothers me," she says.

The irony that much of the wealth of Belgium has come as a side-effect of being the capital of a more united Europe is apparently lost on the now richer Flemish speaking part.

Squeezing the small guys

The government continues its policy of trying to soak the middle class to pay for decreasing the deficit. Now they want to raise the regulated portion of electric rates by 10%:

The Ministry of Industry has prepared a draft Ministerial Order on the proposed increase from July 1 the regulated electricity tariffs (so-called access tolls) by 10% for homes and small businesses, 5% for medium voltage customers and 0% for large consumers (mainly industry).

This is on top of the increase in VAT for July.

Meanwhile, the story about raising the taxes on the rich has pretty much disappeared (other than Catalunya’s rather symbolic 1% raise).

Perhaps people just need to get more creative, like this builder (who also incapable of building a vertical wall, as demonstrated on left with a level and a piece of cheese) in Mira-sol, who decided to run a hose from the municipal park next door to water the garden:

CiU tries to appeal to dumb voters

These signs are plastered all over Sant Cugat:

Their slogans are all about that things are going to change for the better once they are in power.

What is this plan of theirs?

Apparently most of it involves the right to chose. Which apparently is dog-whistle talk for having a referendum and has nothing to do with abortion.

For CiU it’s not about Catalunya being independent (which about 80% of the population agree is probably never going to happen and CiU is generally against), but about the unalienable right for Catalunya to choose to be independent.

Sort of like “Loretta’s” unalienable right to have babies despite not actually being biologically able to do so:

How Garzon pissed off the Supreme Court

Interesting analysis on Garzon and some of the reasons why he is despised by the majority of the Supreme Court.

One particularly amusing episode happened in 2008 when Garzon ordered an extremely thorough closing of the Acción Nacionalista Vasca (ANV). In his ruling, he froze their bank accounts, seized their subsidies, and cut their water, light and phones for good measure.

Later that same afternoon, the Supreme Court was to hear a parallel case appealing the banning of the ANV. The attorney for the ANV didn't even bother to showing up to the hearing, since there wasn't anything left for the Supreme Court to shut down. Garzon got the headlines and the Supreme Court felt humiliated.

Reminds me of a video...

The Iceland volcano and American health care

According to our friend Rush Limbaugh, the recent eruption in Iceland is due to God's anger about the passing of health care reform in the US.

Apparently this is not God's first geography mistake, after mistakenly ordering the invasion of Iraq in response to a bunch of Egyptians and Saudis flying planes into buildings.

If anything, maybe the Norse gods are retaliating against the UK for their attempt to impose ruinous debts on Iceland.

CiU excludes seperatist candidates from its lists

It's always been my theory that the CiU really has no interest in advancing actual independence for Catalunya. Sure, members of the party (including Artur Mas) will occasionally support independence personally, but it has no place in any of its official manifestos.

So it wasn't really a big surprise when Artur Mas decided to exclude independentist candidates from the upcoming regional elections.

Snarky El Pais

In an article on various judicial groups supporting Garzon, El Pais notes:

On Tuesday will be held at the Facultad de Medicina de la Complutense an act of support to the judge convened by CCOO and UGT, assisted, among others, by Pasqual Maragall. The former Catalan President, sick with Alzheimer's [my emphasis], leads the "Manifesto for a memory without borders".

Thank you Aznar

In a speech yesterday, Aznar said (apparently with a straight face):

"The Popular Party was and must remain incompatible with corruption. We must always be alert, never be dishonest and never tolerate or minimize corruption. The PP that emerged from Sevilla was relentless against corruption, and I believe that our members require us to remain so," he said.

Supposedly the speech was prepared prior to the Gurtel revelations.

Rajoy (playing up his Galician mastery of ambiguity) in response said:

"I want to thank Aznar what he has done for the party, Spain, and personally, what he has done to/for me."

Luciano Varela to get hoisted on own petard

Victims of Franco yesterday filed a criminal complaint for prevarication against Luciano Varela, the judge responsible for accepting the criminal complaint against Garzon. The document is based largely on the judge's own doctrine.

Should be interesting how this plays out.

In a further ironic development, relatives of victims of Franco have filed suit in Argentina against ex-Franco officials citing universal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes against humanity.

What's Luciano Varela problem?

The supreme court judge Luciano Varela who is responsible for accepting the case against Garzon seems to really have something against Garzon.

Varela is hardly a crusader against corrupt judges. Last year when fellow judge Francisco Javier de Urquía was convicted of bribery and prevarication, on appeal, Varela threw out the conviction of prevarication and reduced the sentence for bribery to the minimum allowed by law.

(Even more amusing is that earlier this year Urquía was convicted again, this time for accepting a 60,000 euros bribe in exchange for granting bail to a suspect.)

The amazing thing about the indictment of Garzon is that not only does Varela accuse Garzon of exceeding his powers for the investigation of crimes during the time of Franco, he actually accuses Garzon of knowingly and with prevarication exceeding his powers.

Even if you hate Garzon, it is clear that there is a fair amount of disagreement among experts about whether the amnesty law covers crimes against humanity (in fact, even the supreme court itself wasn't unanimous in quashing Garzon's investigation). To argue that everyone who disagrees is operating in bad faith is quite a stretch.

In addition, Varela was completely unwilling to listen to any of the testimony that Garzon was asking for, basically complaining "Why should I have to listen to the opinion of other jurists?"

The big question for me is why Varela is going absolutely ape-shit crazy in his accusations. It feels like Garzon ran over his dog or something.

Womens rights and alphabetical order in Spanish elections

Graeme mentions that a parliamentary commission is recommending that candidates for the Senate no longer be listed alphabetically. This may not seem like much, but it's actually a huge deal.

The major parties in Spain have basically been lying about the participation of women in politics by strategically choosing women with last names that will put them later in the list than their male fellow party members.

There was an article about this last year, but I cannot remember where it was. I did find the study from 2009 that showed how this works.

By placing women on the ballot with last names nearer to the end of the alphabet (especially in regions that are contested), the parties know that only the male candidate near the top of the list are likely win. Here's an example of how it's done (notice the order of the PSOE candidates):



If you compare the number of women elected in the senate vs house, you can see how this effect has grown over the years:



The study concludes that not only are women placed against men on the basis of their last name, but that less qualified women are chosen specifically for their last names.

I suppose Zapatero wouldn't have had much luck running for senator. (Okay okay... it's Rodríguez Zapatero)

Laporta 2010

Laporta spins a fairly unconvincing study he commissioned as being an endorsement of a separate state for Catalunya. Only 47% of the people were in favor of their "own state", which is pretty low considering that he was able to set the wording of the question.

One interesting result from the study was that 38% of people consider themselves equally Catalan and Spanish. 26% were more Catalan than Spanish, and 6% more Spanish than Catalan. Only 27% considered themselves exclusively Spanish or exclusively Catalan.

This means that 70% of the population considers their cultural identity a mix between Catalan and Spanish.

That pretty much matches my experience, where conversations in groups of natives tend to switch back and forth between Catalan and Spanish, depending on what the speaker is most comfortable in or the language friends got to know each other in.

In any case, so far there's little danger of Laporta endangering CiU's march toward supremacy in the next election (according to La Vanguardia):

Salt and immigration

An interesting article in El Pais about the situation in the Girona suburb named Salt.

Salt was built back in the 70s to house migrant workers from the south of Spain during an economic boom in Catalunya. Eventually the workers became respectable citizens and moved to richer neighborhoods, leaving behind a vacuum that was filled by immigrants from Morocco, Senegal, Gambia, Pakisan and South America. Now the place is rife with crime, drugs, kids that don't go to school, etc. (I have to say, looking at the place with Google Street View, it doesn't look nearly as bad as the article says... I see a couple black people loitering around the "Productes Llatins" store)


View Larger Map

This kind of stuff happens all around the developed world and no one has really been able to deal with it well.

I think part of the problem is that European countries tend to throw up all kinds of barriers to keep immigrants from participating in civil society and then wonder why they don't integrate. In Germany, for example, Turks can now finally get citizenship, but are forced to give up Turkish citizenship in the process. Since this jeopardizes their ability to travel to meet their friends and relatives, they naturally refuse. The Germans think the Turks are disloyal, but the Turks just think they are being practical.

Arbitrary searches and harassment by the authorities doesn't help either. For example, at the Sant Cugat train station the other day, the police were stopping anyone that looked like they were from South America and demanding their papers. Some unlucky people probably got deported.

Will immigrants come to the police to report a crime in their community? Will the immigrant community prosper if criminals elements in the community are given free rein to victimize its members? Probably not.

Intra-EU immigration

The previous post was more inspired by this paper on the implications of intra-EU migration, rather than any unconcious attempt to goad Catalan nationalists.

...due to the freedom of movement within the union of its citizens, there now exists three separate classifications of minorities within the states of the European Union: ethnic minority, internal migrant and immigrant. The EU has had varying levels of apathy towards its responsibility to any of these groups, leaving much of the care for them in the hands of the state.

While unique, they share many similar characteristics and issues for the state. As White notes: “it is accepted in almost every immigration country that the existence of immigrant or ethnic minority populations necessitates consideration of their particular needs in various spheres of service provision such as education, welfare, health and housing”. In fact the term minority itself can be used to describe any of the three types of groups.

This ambiguity is seen in the wording of the European Convention on Human Rights which describes a minority as “a group inferior in number to the rest of the population and whose members share in their will to hold on to their culture, traditions, religion, or language” What this convention illustrates is that the classification of what it is and what is not a minority is not for the minority to decide. It is the majority group in the state that will decide who belongs and who does not.
[...]
It was not until the decision to expand the EU by 10 East European members by 2004 that the West Europeans became concerned about minority rights within the EU. There was an expectation that with the opening of the democratic process and ending of totalitarian rule in Eastern Europe there would be a flood of ethnic violence similar to what was seen in Yugoslavia. As a result of these concerns, the EU for the first time made protections of minorities a part of the accession process.