Spain Notes, Dec 7: Israel-Gaza + reactions to implosion of Podemos-Sumar
1/ Sánchez expressed his support for UN boss Guterres over the “unbearable” situation in Gaza, after Guterres said he was activating Article 99 of the UN charter for the first time, to ask the Security Council “to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe”.
2/ The Israeli Foreign Secretary, Eli Cohen (Likud), slammed the UN boss: “Guterres’ tenure is a danger to world peace”, and accused him of supporting Hamas and endorsing rape, murder and abduction.
3/ Borrell (EU, Spain, PSOE) denounced the destruction of an EU-built school in the West Bank: “it was demolished by Israeli settlers in violation of international law”.
4/ Belarra (Podemos): “Colonialism is behind the genocide in Palestine by Israel”.
5/ Sánchez said “we will have to negotiate a bit more”, after Podemos split from Sumar.
6/ Pablo Iglesias wrote that “Diaz has just lots five MPs from her parliamentary group, she can no longer fulfil the task Sánchez had given her of controlling Podemos and Belarra’s team gets its full capacity for parliamentary action back, making their five votes as essential as the five votes from the PNV for the whole of the parliament that has just begun”.
7/ Podemos is selling its move as “a brave voice that tells the truth is needed in parliament”.
8/ A Sumar spokeswoman tried to redirect attention to the “European context of harassment by the right and far-right”.
9/ Sumar wants the five Podemos MPs to resign and give the seats back.
10/ El País: “Podemos never accepted its brand being diluted with the others within Sumar […] the only party to blame for the break up is Podemos, although the responsibility is shared”.
11/ El Mundo: “the exit of the purple party throws a spanner in the works for Diaz’s project, subtracting parliamentary force, and threatens to radicalise the government’s action, making an already fragmented, weak colation even more fragile”.
12/ ABC: “The five purple MPs will now have greater visibility as part of the mixed group and will have full voting autonomy, not subject a party line. That freedom could potentially become a problem for Sánchez”.
13/ After deleting all of the salacious messages about the Queen, Del Burgo wrote another tweet (in English) that clearly positions him on the anti-monarchist, praying Hail Marys against Sánchez bit of the political spectrum: “I recognize only one King in Heaven, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth”.
Questions from readers:
14/ The “mixed group” in the Spanish parliament is where the MPs who don’t belong to any of the larger party groups get bunched together, to organise parliamentary time and resources (including some money).
15/ A suggestion of “dissident right” as a label. Alt-, far-, further-, radical-, hard- etc. The new version of right that is not the standard conservative-liberal offering and that has its roots in the old xenophobic, nationalist, excluding far-rights but doesn't want to admit that openly in 2023 because that looks ugly on TV. Still huge global debate about this. Also applicable to the left(s) in their space.
16/ The point about the Cameron-Clegg coalition in the conversation with Simon was just that it was the first one in the UK for a long time, like the Frankenstein I coalition was in Spain, not that they are the same ideologically or politically. Of course every country and political moment is different.
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