Strange Afternoon
The conservative Partido Popular (PP) held a mass demonstration today in Madrid, busing in tens of thousands of participants from across Spain. In theory, the protest was convened in response to the socialist government's unpopular decision to release an ETA terrorist, De Juana, who was on the verge of dying from a hunger strike. The PP's leader, Mariano Rajoy, in a boldly overstated assessment of the event, called it, "the most important demonstration for democracy in recent history." However, in practice, there is a much simpler reason for the growing attendance of protesters who, over the past few years, have come to Madrid. It's a low cost trip to Spain's capital city. Without diminishing the political cause that, in reality, does motivate families from Cuenca and Valladolid to convene in Madrid against the socialist government, I believe it should not go unnoticed that the local Partido Popular chapters organize these weekend trips to Madrid, at reduced group rates, for their party's demonstrations. To draw a similar comparison, if the Republican Party in the US were to bus tens of thousands of participants to New York once a month--which is then displayed to the media as an impressive showing of the party's popular support--why wouldn't your middle-American housewife and her bridge club sign up to go? I do not mean to deny the fact that fervent party supporters are indeed in attendance at these "protests"--nor do I wish to downplay the importance of the crowd's symbolic role and active power at a gathering like this one. Rather, what strikes me as odd is the false assumption that "seeing" large numbers in a crowd (particularly when reported second-hand, via news media) is directly related to the number of constituents who support the political agenda being rallied around. It's as if granting "visibility" to the sheer numbers in attendance equates--and collapses--these numbers into a solid base of popular support.The news media report that those in attendance are, by and large, many of the same people who protested three weekends ago against the government's negotiation with the terrorist organization ETA to arrive at a delicate and now foiled, permanent ceasefire. Perhaps by modest conjecture, we could assume that these are also many of the same families who came to Madrid almost three years ago to protest the legalization of gay marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples, a march that was thinly-veiled as "pro-family" and "in defense of our families." These are the same demonstrations that, the socialist government has rightly complained, draw "pre-constitutional" (i.e., fascist and Francoist) banners, symbols and anthems, including Falange members and neo-nazi youth groups chanting the fascist slogan, "One Spain, Grand and Free." (On a side note, busing party supporters to Madrid for massive demonstrations is a practice that originated under dictatorship; the Franco Regime required a visual display of "supporters" congregated in the Plaza del Oriente below the Royal Palace balcony, from where the dictator would read his speeches, forming part of the regime's legitimizing myth. Even conservative Spanish politician Luis Guillermo Perinat commented in his autobiography Recuerdos de una vida itinerante that these buses brought "people who came [to the capital city] delighted to spend a few days of paid vacation in Madrid.")
And now that the protest is over, thousands of people have flooded the streets of Chueca, the gay district, and downtown Madrid, making for a spectacle of Spanish tourists gawking at the rainbow banners and skyscrapers, while they carry their Spanish flags proudly. Fuencarral, a street famous for its hip, designer stores and punky flare, is overrun with fur coats and baby strollers dressed in red and yellow ribbons. Near the pink-neon parking lot entrance, the one that bears a sculpture in the form of a red AIDS ribbon, the surrounding planters are smattered with posters that say "Not in my name!" and "Zapatero, if you had two balls you'd call for another election!" In sum, it has been a strange afternoon.
posted by Jon at 8:49 PM
9 Comments:
An afterward inspired by yesterday's newspaper, El País: Saturday's protest ended with Rajoy, the PP's political leader, leading the crowd in three chants of the Francoist slogan, "¡Viva España!" and then the national anthem, which by law may only be played for State-sponsored events and not for political rallies. And as if this weren't reminiscent enough of the discourse & symbols of dictatorial Spain, Rajoy's speech called on Spaniards to defend "the unity of the Nation" -- a strikingly clear continuity with the political ideologies of fascism.
Okay, I understand the addendum, but now I'm confused. Your post made it seem as if the protestors were protraying themselves in service of democracy (not that's necessarily genuine). Is it the left that's invoking fascism or would it be painfully obvious to most people.
Spain is generally a mystery to me, but I hear there's good liquor.
Oh Nicholas, you innocent fool. Here's how it works in Spain: all Fascists, please form a line to the right, all Republicans, please form a line to the left; now march in step to the edge of the cliff and jump off.
From the sound of it, this would be on a par with a political rally in Germany that ends with a singing of "Deutschland ueber alles". The Germans are, however, slightly more - shall we say - housebroken than the Spaniards, and don't tend to let their seams show.
If I learned anything last year, it's that Spain is NOT one nation, no matter how many flags they wave or gigantic bulls they put alongside their highways.
Thanks for your comments, mikey & nicky.
The PP's political leaders who claim this protest is in the service of democracy are not at all genuine in this assertion; you're right nicholas. I believe the slogans & anthems of "bygone" Francoism (can it really be considered entirely a thing of the past?) are indeed painfully obvious to Spaniards today. And obvious to those of other nationalities living here, like Mike, who graced the sweltering capital with his presence for a few months last summer.
Although this thought is just a 'disparate,' you touch on an interesting point, mike, that nazism became a national burden of guilt in post-war germany, even today. However, in Spain, where fascism endured until Franco died of 'natural' causes, a sense of "national" guilt (already problematic to define in the case of Spain) looks like an entirely different beast. The late author Vázquez Montalbán once said that the Spanish left felt subdued by guilt in Spain's extradition of Chilean dictator Pinochet, considering Vázquez Montalbán's 'own generation' had 'allowed' the Spanish dictator to die in his bed.
That said, I've heard there is good liquor.
Oh don't even get me started on German collective guilt! How any Spaniard could come up from his tobacco and gin haze long enough to feel an indeterminate twinge of remorse is well beyond me. Leave it to the Republicans to feel guilty for two or three minutes while they shovel Pinochet into an airplane - that's as much as anyone will get.
Seriously, though. There was something like a "pact of silence" in postwar Germany, and in fact it was part of the motivation for the '68 generation in Germany to ask, "Hey Mom and Dad, how come you never want to talk about those 12 years in between about 1933 and 1945? Between all that flag-waving and death-order-signing, there must have been some interesting picnics or something to tell the grandkids about." Now of course there's a generation of university students who neither had anything to do with Nazism themselves, nor did their parents, and yet they still bear the onus of Germany's past when they travel abroad. Not that they don't have their own current problems either. For instance, the fact that those who are outwardly the most liberal and free-spirited are nearly the most likely to say that a woman of Turkish ancestry whose parents were born in Germany, was herself born in Germany, and speaks only German is "not German, she's Turkish!" I'm speaking from experience here.
But this distracts me from the question I really want to ask: the Left's hand-wringing over Pinochet et al notwithstanding, does anybody in Spain actually feel bad about the fascist period, or feel like Spain bears a black mark among the world at large? Is there any discourse in Spanish society about the ambivalence that comes from growing up in a hopelessly provincial fascist country and suddenly arriving full-grown in global, neo-liberal capitalism? Is there any discourse about a sense of shame that comes from voluntarily participating in a fascist regime? Does anybody feel in the slightest bit queasy about it, or is it just a change of masters? What I'm banking on here is the fact that queasiness and ambivalence about the past requires one to change one's mind retrospectively about one's values and the meaning of one's actions. And to be perfectly honest, on my own very superficial observations, I don't see that change of mind as having taken place in Spain. What say you, J Dizzle?
lefties and neo-liberalism and guilty conscience, oh my!
you've given me some questions i'm not sure how to respond to. is there a sense of collective guilt for spain's fascist past, or a 'black mark' it left on the world? i don't believe so, not in comparison to the 'german case' if we're comparing fascisms. with the defeat of fascism in the rest of europe after WWII, francoism induced its own postwar political isolation (and in the early years of dictatorship, economic isolation from europe). but within spain, i suppose it depends on whom you're speaking to. (the PP would never recognize, for example, its many continuitites with francosim, which is undoubtedly one of the motivating factors in their consistent combatitive politics against ANY sort of remembrance for spain's history before 1975).
for instance, has the catholic church -an institution where one might expect remorse to come from first- denounced its former support of fascism in spain? no, not that i'm aware of. and because opus dei had its hands in the Francosit political pie, (and today, the neo-liberal economic pie and some politicians from the Partido Popular) i doubt it ever would.
feeling queasy about spain's neoliberal facelift, from dictatorship to democracy? few people question it publicly, you're right. and those few remain almost exclusively in academic circles, or they make up the growing visibility (at least in madrid) of those few in favor of a third republic. (the taboo on mentioning the republic in spanish politics, at last, is cracking; by way of example, this weekend at the demonstration a communist elected representative shouted 'viva la republica!' in response to the fascist chants of 'viva españa!')
however, the socialist party (PSOE) is part of the neoliberal project and has been historically (since the 1920s, at least) the political wedge in determining what spanish sovereignty looks like: the crutch that maintained Primo de Rivera's 'modernizing' dictatorship for seven years, the middle ground to negotiating the installation second republic, and then the first 'leftist' protagonists of spain's transition to democracy in the 1970s with Felipe González's government. today, the neoliberal extension of projects that were hatched in franco's regime have been brushed over entirely--and here, i'm going to take a leap and say that as long as the über-conservatives aren't in power, and a vast majority of people living in spain continue to enjoy the benefits of a newfound economic prosperity, this continuity with francoism will go unexamined in prevalent circles of public discourse.
is this somewhat of an answer, mikey?
Hey Zeus, Mike! and you say my posts are getting long...
Anyway, this may sound like "politics from the other side of the world," but i think it's relevant to the discussion of relative fascisms.
I see a lot of what Jon calls seamlessness with fascism in what the LDP has been up to here recently, namely the denial (and embarrassing retraction of that denial) of the gov't having any involvement in the camps of so-called "comfort women" set up for Japanese officers in Korea and China as well as the recent immigration debacles (two daughters of Afghan refugees who've lived here all their life were arbitrarily declared to be "Japanese enough" so as to be allowed to stay under Japan's draconian immigration policies).
In the previous Koizumi administration, he would always deny any relationship with the fascist wackos who run Yasukuni Jinja but still make his yearly visit in an official capacity to "honor the war dead," even though the Emperor himself, the very symbol of ultranationalism in this country believes it to be obscene that convicted war criminals are enshrined there.
Of course, if you dig into the matter even a little bit, you'll discover that no less 5 previous Prime Ministers and countless high level government officials have sat on the governing board of the shrine and as such were avowed fascist wackos. These are the same people who later came to decide educational policy (eliminating any sense in history texts of Japan's involvement in colonizing most of East Asia) and foreign policy (one only has to look to the obvious racist Aso Taro currently running the foreign office). One only has to look to the hubbub over the Crown Prince's recent "miraculous" birth of a male heir at just the time when the Diet was considering amending the law permitting only male accession to the throne (even though historically Japan has had many Empresses) to know that there is obvious collusion between the conservative elements that swarm around the imperial household and the interior ministry that was fighting so hard to curb all debate on the issue.
The primary objection to female ascension? "What if the princess were to study abroad and bring back one of [impure foreign types] to become part of the imperial household?"
But strangely what sticks in my brain, not because I think it calls into question motivations - precisely the opposite! - is what it means that we are in a certain sense outsiders observing these things. I don't personally feel how the Japanese are preceived in the world; I can only observe it. To what extent is there a desire not to see the land of your birth, which you may love for other reasons, as deeply flawed? We are, after all, all three white male polyglots raise in the US with similar educational backgrounds.
why, this blog entry is the prettiest girl at the dance!
true dat, mister nicholas. we are three white males with similar educational backgrounds and, to boot, can communicate in at least one other language. i'm a big fan of pulling out the "why am i interested in what interests me?" juggernaut, and i think that is a productive question to get at what motivates our own perceptions of 'cultures' we have been in some way introduced to. but in reality, my assessment of spanish politics is not founded by some deep seeded desire for the US to remain unflawed, in whatever sense. i know i don't need to remind you that you're speaking to someone who has recently jumped ship from the USA, considering it, more and more from the 'outside', a difficult place to live (for me).
I think this is a very narrow way to see the political problem in Spain and way too simplified.
I am sorry, but there is a lot of people that are not fascists and not even from the conservative party that are proud of being spanish and carry the flag. I am gay, republican, I don't agree with Zapatero, neither with PP. I have my own ideas and criterions...like most people should but don't, and sometimes I carry my flag, as it is the symbol of my country at this moment.!!!!!!!
Like I have my pin with the republican flag that I carried on the 14 of April.
People that carry the pre-constitutional flags are as stupid and people carring distinctions of the Extreme Left!!!!!!
It is not the first time that a political party hires buses to help its affiliates to demonstrate THEIR OWN VIEWS. It is because they agree with the Party that they belong to it, why is it strange that people with the same views help each other demonstrate? And besides, what about the "No a la Guerra" (Not to the War) demonstrations? Many organisations, including political parties such as PSOE sent buses. What is wrong with that?
I could continue all day...
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