What happened to decency among democrats?
What has happened to political discourse? I first arrived in Spain 25 years ago, when almost the whole country was united, socially, politically and publicly against the ETA terrorist group. It was the summer following the terrorist murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco. Nobody talked about the Civil War. All of my new friends seemed very pleased with the modern, European, democratic Spain their parents had managed to build as they were growing up in the generation after the Transition and the end of the Franco dictatorship. In 2023, the right is now using an ETA related slogan, “Txapote can vote for you”, against Sánchez to try to win the general election, after also using it successfully during the local and regional campaign in May. Young people, who perhaps were not even born then, chant it into any open TV reporter’s mic they can find and it is now even splitting ETA terror victims’ groups. Txapote murdered Miguel Angel Blanco, among many others. Sánchez, a sitting Prime Minister, displayed open contempt and aggression towards the Popular Party candidate during Monday’s debate. The Vox candidate, Abascal, has added a racist “Mohammed can vote for you” bit onto the terrorist bit. And today you can read repellent bile against the First Minister of Madrid, Ayuso (PP), after she announced she has just suffered a miscarriage, or wonder what on earth the Sumar candidate in Andalusia was thinking when he refused, physically and contemptuously, to even look at the female Vox candidate during a debate there. How did we manage to start in that place and end up here? When did shared public decency among democrats turn into bitter, polarised sectarianism against each other? And where will such an attitude take us in the next parliament?
Multi-layered disappointment, I think.
1. Spanish voters, in their infinite wisdom, don't give either PP or PSOE a majority, and also don't back any Centre Party, and also DO back ethnonationalists and reactionaries of doubtful democratic persuasion.
2. PP and PSOE prefer to play to the gallery calling each other Fascists and Communists than to work out coherent, competing visions for the good of Spain, or recognise they are overwhelmingly Centre Right & Centre Left parties who have no business encouraging extremists.
3. It is clearly UNTHINKABLE that the outcome of the July elections could be a Grand Coalition along the lines of Germany or Ireland, where commitment to democracy means NOT allying with the pretend-democrats of Vox or Catalan Nationalists. Why not?
4. What kind of democratic constitutional system even *allows* parties to exist for whom Democracy, Equal Rights and Constitution are words to sneer at? The Bundesverfassungsgericht would have given them short shrift.
5. What kind of politician prefers to score points pointing at ex-criminals and murderers running for office than - at any point in the last 45 years! - to pass laws simply barring such folk from public office?