Spain Notes, Oct 19: Israel-Gaza tensions, separatist amnesty, Vox xenophobia
1/ The First Minister of Catalonia, Aragonès (Esquerra), did not mince his words in his Senate speech this morning. He was quite clear: “the amnesty is not the end but must be the starting point, a starting point for a journey whose destination is for citizens in Catalonia to vote in a referendum on their political future, to vote on independence”.
2/ A synagogue in the Spanish North African city of Melilla was surrounded or attacked by a mob last night after a pro-Palestinian protest in the city. No one was injured after police intervened.
3/ The First Minister of Melilla, Imbroda (PP), called for calm, saying the city was “an example of coexistence” between Christians, Jews and Muslims, and that inhabitants had worked hard together over the years, with wisdom, to achieve that peace. He asked that external conflicts not now disturb it.
4/ The Israel-Gaza conflict also caused great tension in the Madrid regional assembly this morning, with the First Minister there, Ayuso (PP) railing at Mónica García (Más Madrid), “I am starting to think you are not just in favour of the Palestinian cause but are deeply antisemitic […] I encourage you to get out of the Retiro [park in central Madrid] and travel to the Gaza strip”.
5/ Cameras then caught a very angry Mónica García making insulting gestures back at Ayuso. “You are on the side of shameless genocide”, their spokesman spat back. In a play on words, commentators on the right have taken to calling the party “Hamás Madrid” (instead of just “Más Madrid”).
6/ Sánchez said he had spoken to both the Emir of Qatar and King Abdullah of Jordan about the conflict: officially they are all trying to avoid an escalation and are worried about the need for humitarian aid reaching Gaza.
7/ His unruly Minister for Social Affairs, Belarra (Sumar), continues to press her recalcitrant position on TV and in the media: “History will not forgive Europe for being complicit in the genocide Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian people”, she said, calling for “urgent” action, sanctions and an arms embargo.
8/ After remaining quiet on the issue for most of last week, El País today published two editorials on the situation: in one, the paper thinks the diplomatic situation is now “urgent”, with the international community “against the clock”; and in the other, it writes about the “extreme noise” surrounding the Spanish position and calls the Israeli Embassy’s “overacting” “unacceptable”.
9/ A user on Spain’s biggest forum, Forocoches, posted a video he recorded on a high-speed train leaving Seville for Madrid on the afternoon of October 13, and it looks like he managed to record poor Prieto in the other train too, the one TVE found with their camera zoom several days later during their programme. This perhaps calls into question some of the official narrative authorities have published over the past week about he ended up there.
10/ Vox has launched a(nother) anti-migrant campaign, with some intense far-right, racist, fearmongering rhetoric, against the “invasion” of Spain and “the avalanche of migrants” on beaches: “Military age males invade our Canary Islands with the complicity of the government, mafias and NGOs, without checking their criminal record, without knowing if they are a danger to national security or not”, they wrote.
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