Social Europe: The Catalan pardons: what do they mean?

 The talk of the town across Spanish media for the past week has been the pardoning of the Catalan political prisoners jailed following the unofficial referendum on independence in October 2017. Despite heavy opposition from Spain’s Supreme Court and the conservative opposition party, the Partido Popular (PP), the socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, confirmed the pardons at Barcelona’s Liceu Theatre, striving to promote concord rather than revenge.[...]

Opposition to the pardons has come from two very different standpoints. The PP, the far-right Vox and the Spanish-nationalist Ciudadanos—as well as the Spanish Supreme Court— claim that the political prisoners should not have been pardoned: their actions were unconstitutional, they included ‘sedition’ and misuse of public funds, and the prisoners showed no signs of remorse.[....]

The exiled Junts leader and 130th president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, criticised the Spanish state for releasing the prisoners over three years late and said no one should be ‘sold’ that the pardon would solve the political problem. The party vice-president, Elsa Artadi, also affirmed this would not be a ‘turning point’ in the Catalan conflict, claiming the Spanish government was seeking to mask its own violations of rights against the independence movement. [...]

On Monday of last week, a resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe urged that the prisoners be released and that Spain ‘consider dropping extradition proceedings against Catalan politicians living abroad’. An aggressive response followed from the judiciary in Spain, leading some to ask: are the pardons a step towards peace, or a red herring in the face of increasing international condemnation of the Spanish judiciary?

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Social Europe: Catalonia: a fraught dialogue begins

 The date for the dialogue between the president of the Generalitat and the prime minister of Spain was organised in June, following the pardons issued by Sánchez to former political prisoners. It symbolised the start of what both sides describe as a transition towards progressive deliberation between Spain and Catalonia. [...]

Aragonès has consistently championed two main objectives for the dialogue: amnesty for exiles and former political prisoners and another referendum for Catalan independence. Sánchez, referencing the Spanish constitution (a clause about Spain’s ‘indivisibility’) and consistent with his dialogue throughout this year, said ‘neither amnesty nor a referendum are possible’ and suggested the two sides need to talk about ‘closer issues’. [...]

Controversy was sparked the day before the dialogue when the Catalan president rejected proposed attendees for the meeting from Junts—the other half of the ruling Catalan coalition. Aragonès justified his decision by saying that the attendees should only consist of members of the government.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Pandemic Is Making the European Union More Integrated — And More Unequal

 During the last ten years, this vision has suffered some major challenges. Instead of continuous uninterrupted progress, the modern European Union has had to follow the path of crisis management. The Great Recession led to the sovereign debt crisis, then the Portuguese crisis, the Spanish crisis, the Irish crisis, and, of course, most drastically, the Greek crisis. The talk of a “Grexit” — the possibility of the other countries booting Greece from the Union — smoothly transferred to talk on the crisis over Brexit, as the British right actually split their country from the union. This, at the same time as the mounting environmental crisis, the so-called refugee crisis, the crisis of democracy caused by right-wing populism in countries like Hungary and Poland. But from crisis to crisis, the Union lurches forward, and the solution is always the same — more integration. [...]

The knights don’t go into the lair alone, of course. Another thing the press likes to do is to divide Europe into convenient blocs. Populations of countries like Finland are, time and again, led to believe that the problem with the European Union is that there are too many Mediterranean countries in it, that everything would be okay if the EU could just somehow drop or at least ignore the Southern countries for their profligacy. The name of choice for the Northern nations for the negotiations was the “frugal four,” part of the former “New Hanseatic League.” This group set out to oppose the package, eventually getting some concessions, but in the end having little effect on the basic forms of the package itself. [...]

This isn’t really a matter of the so-called political families within the European sphere. In the “Northern” group, the Austrian conservative Sebastian Kurz joined the Dutch liberal Mark Rutte and the social democrats in Nordic countries, such as Finland’s Marin, to oppose the social democrat Pedro Sánchez in Spain, the conservative Angela Merkel in Germany, and — stretching the meaning of the word quite a bit — the “liberal” Macron in France. The one country in the EU that currently has the far right in government is Estonia, where the nationalist EKRE party has talked tough about the EU and federalism. But in the end, it presented no effective opposition to the package, after Estonia was promised a windfall of EU subsidies as a result. Other right-wing populists, like Matteo Salvini in Italy, muted their criticisms even longer ago. [...]

Even a federal Europe would not, as such, alter the underlying economic systems leading to more and more environmental destruction in search of personal and national profits. Indeed, once one looks under the hood of the European liberalism’s internationalist rhetoric, the practical work of European integration is often advanced by the same inward-looking arguments as nationalism always has been: the idea of a continent threatened by, say, China or Russia, or international terrorism. Indeed, when looking at Macron talking about the “cultural vitality” (though not the values) of Hungary and Russia as a model for his preferred European “civilization state,” or Belgian liberal Guy Verhofstadt — for decades almost the living personification of the EU — literally referring to an “EU empire,” one wonders whether the idea of a European federation guided by the values of the Polish or Hungarian governments is as far off as one might think, even now.

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Politico: Sánchez loses bid to be reelected Spanish PM

Spanish lawmakers on Thursday voted down Pedro Sánchez’s bid to be reelected as prime minister — triggering the countdown for a new election to be held in November if the Socialist leader doesn’t manage to assemble a majority within two months.

Sánchez — whose party came first in a general election in April with 29 percent of the vote but fell short of a ruling majority — had been negotiating a potential coalition deal with the far-left Podemos. But the two sides failed to reach an agreement and accused each other of blowing up the talks in a parliamentary session that turned into a blame game. [...]

Ciudadanos head Albert Rivera used the word “gang” to refer to Sánchez’s potential allies among the far-left and regional nationalists, and argued that “the gang just couldn’t agree on how to share the lot.” [...]

It took close to three months after the April 28 ballot for the Socialists and Podemos to start talks, which took place against a backdrop of mutual mistrust, threats and ultimatums aired in media, and leaks of both parties’ negotiating positions.

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Politico: Spain’s Sánchez waiting game

On Thursday, Sánchez was tasked by King Felipe VI with forming a government, a formality that recognizes him as official candidate for prime minister. But when the Socialist leader later addressed reporters at La Moncloa, the Spanish government headquarters, he didn’t add much to what has been obvious to any informed observer since the April 28 ballot. [...]

José Manuel García-Margallo, an MEP for the conservative Popular Party (PP) and a former foreign minister, said Sánchez had “a clear horizon ahead,” adding that the seat distribution in parliament gave him several options: setting up a minority government; wooing the liberal Ciudadanos for a coalition; or forming a multi-party alliance with the leftist Podemos, the Basque Nationalist Party and other minor regional parties. [...]

Sánchez invited the three main political parties beside his Socialists — the PP, Ciudadanos and Podemos — to a series of meetings next week, suggesting that he sees the support of these four parties as crucial to his reelection. That means he is likely seeking not just the support of Podemos, but also some form of cooperation with Ciudadanos or the PP, such as an agreement that one or both of the two parties would abstain in the investiture vote. [...]

As well as the general election in April, Spain held local, regional and European ballots in May and is awaiting the election of mayors of over 8,000 towns and cities and the presidents of 12 regions. Sánchez’s Socialists won the election by a wide margin, but which party rules in many regions and cities will depend on coalition negotiations.

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Jacobin Magazine: Power Has Returned to Power

On April 29, as Spaniards woke up the day after the general election, it was the Right that was left wondering what might have been. The right-wing Partido Popular (PP) had achieved its worst ever score, and the far-right Vox’s breakthrough was less than expected. For the conservative FAES — the country’s most influential think tank — the blame for the right-wing parties’ poor results lay with the division of their forces combined with voters’ “reckless ignorance.” Federico Jiménez Losantos, a hard-right radio host, declared Spain “lost, stupefied, and idiotic.” [...]

We should not underestimate the scale of this defeat. Five years after its triumphal breakthrough in the 2014 EU elections, Podemos has suffered a resounding defeat, losing almost all of the key municipalities it won with grassroots coalitions in 2015. The exceptions are Cádiz — whose anticapitalist mayor, Kichi, won an impressive absolute majority — and Valencia, still governed by a leftist coalition, but where Podemos has failed to secure a municipal foothold. [...]

More broadly, we can today characterize the current situation in Spain as governed by a stabilization of the center after years of popular revolt. Indeed, for all its threatening appearance, even the emergence of the radical right Vox has facilitated this process. Failing to make a breakthrough in this weekend’s election, it appears to have hardened as a small party that appeals only to wealthy Spaniards and members of the armed forces. It is enough to propel the conservative PP to regional and local power, but also serves PSOE prime minister Pedro Sánchez as a convenient boogeyman. As he forms a national-level government may now be tempted to draw the liberal Ciudadanos away from a right-wing coalition and toward a large, centrist alliance. [...]

Sánchez, however, is under no hurry to invite Podemos into the government — even less so after Sunday’s results. In previous televised debates, he refused to clarify, when pressured by Iglesias, whether he would seek Ciudadanos’s support. It fell upon Rivera to insist that his party would rather join forces with the radical right. But Rivera has broken his word before, and he has a proved talent for overnight ideological conversion. In four different regions, Ciudadanos’s support could prove instrumental for PSOE to hold power. One of them is Madrid, without which the PP would lose its last remaining stronghold.

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Politico: The battle for Spain’s empty center

Sánchez has good reason to be focusing on the interior. Polls predict that the Socialists will replace the Popular Party (PP) as the biggest party in a majority of inland provinces. But it's not because rural voters are flocking to the Socialists; it's because the far-right Vox party and the liberal Ciudadanos are taking votes away from the PP. [...]

Spain is divided into 52 electoral districts, and the rural areas are valuable. The 28 most sparsely populated constituencies have just 20 percent of the population but 30 percent of the seats in parliament — 103 out of 350. On top of that, the electoral system becomes less proportional in these areas because of the reduced number of seats per district, giving the winning party a bonus.

In 2016, the PP won 40 percent of the vote in rural districts and 51 percent of the seats. A poll of polls for El País forecasts the conservatives will lose almost half their seats in those constituencies, while the Socialists will grow from 29 to 48. [...]

Ciudadanos unveiled a plan to cut personal income tax by 60 percent and bring fast internet to underpopulated areas. The PP has defended its rural track record and its role negotiating the CAP in Brussels. The far right has focused on defending hunting, fishing and bullfighting. The far-left Podemos, which risks losing all its current 15 lawmakers in the least populated provinces, has promised better social services and infrastructure.

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Jacobin Magazine: Spain’s Troubled Spring

Today, Sánchez’s government is at the end of the line. And again the issue at the center of Spanish politics is the national question. With Spanish nationalists on the rise and the Catalan and Basque independentists withdrawing support for Sánchez’s budget, fresh elections are now set for April 28. The result of the campaign is uncertain. But things are not looking promising for the forces of social transformation. With the Catalan independentists lacking a strategy for a way forward, the Left is once again buried in in-fighting. [...]

Vox’s breakthrough and the rise of Ciudadanos (with the PP also holding firm) meant that there were enough right-wing MPs to hand the presidency of the Andalucían region to the PP for the first time. This union of the three right-wing forces is key to the reconstruction of the political camp so dear to former conservative premier José María Aznar; the absolute majority he won in 2000 may indeed repeat itself in the April 28 contest. Though they act separately, these forces today make up a three-headed beast, with the conservative soul of the PP in concert with the liberal soul of Ciudadanos and the ultra-right Vox.

Such are the forces of Spanish nationalism. Yet from the outset the Catalan independentists had been decisive in getting Sánchez into office. They unconditionally backed his bid to oust Rajoy in June 2018, in the hope that a PSOE government would make gestures toward dialogue with the Catalan autonomous government and some kind of solution for the Catalan political prisoners. This contrasted with the right-wing Basque nationalists of the PNV, who played their hand best, selling support for Sánchez in exchange for greater economic powers for the Basque Autonomous Community. [...]

With this question we get to the most tangled knot in the current situation. The PSOE can hope to bind the left-wing electorate behind itself on the basis of two main developments, namely the fragmentation of Unidos Podemos (with divisions at the regional level, but especially the bad image resulting from Iñigo Errejón and Manuela Carmena’s plan to stand separately of the party in the Madrid local elections) and the danger represented by the far-right Vox, which the polls predict to be on the brink of a historic breakthrough. Calling the elections so soon will leave all of its right-wing rivals relatively unprepared, and also exploit a moment in which Unidos Podemos is internally divided and lacks a strategic perspective.

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UnHerd: What snapped in Spain?

Spain was due to hold a general election next year anyway, but it was always more likely than not that the PSOE would be forced to go to the polls before then. The party ousted the scandal-hit Rajoy government in a parliamentary vote of no confidence that won the backing of 180 MPs back in 2018. The vote followed a ruling by Spain’s highest criminal court that the PP had profited from illegal kickbacks from government contracts. Yet the anti-Rajoy alliance – which Sanchez himself described at one point as the “Frankenstein coalition” – crumbled soon after the PP had been deposed.[...]

In a country that had grown tired of the financial scandals surrounding the governing PP, Sanchez’s ruthless action in toppling Rajoy proved popular. As such, the PSOE currently sit at around 24% in the polls – granted a modest improvement on the 22% it was polling at prior to Rajoy’s departure, but nonetheless the largest share for any single party. [...]

Support for Podemos has almost halved in the polls from a high of 27% in December 2014 to 15% today, putting them in fourth place, and only four points ahead of Vox, a party of the hard Right. The steady decline of Podemos – in part the victim of that familiar curse of Left-wing political parties, the factional squabble – offers Sanchez breathing space on his Left. [...]

Only a fool would write off ‘Mr Handsome’ – as Pedro Sánchez is nicknamed. Like Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Sanchez has been written-off many times in the past by establishment politicians and commentators only to re-emerge ahead of the pack. After almost a decade of austerity, fatigued voters may yet throw a spoke in the wheel of Spanish politics and return the Prime Minister who promised more money.

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Deutsche Welle: Opinion: Gibraltar dispute shows the absurdity of Brexit

Sanchez does have a point. The future arrangement for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is a prominent issue in ongoing Brexit talks and the deadline for reaching a final agreement has been postponed to 2020.

Yet, the border between the British peninsula of Gibraltar and Spain has not featured in the Brexit talks, and nobody knows what will happen to the 10,000 Spanish workers who commute to Gibraltar every day when Britain leaves the EU. [...]

It is possible that the border between the British peninsula and the Spanish mainland could be temporarily closed, like between 1969 and 1985. It is one of the reasons the vast majority of Gibraltar residents voted in favor of Britain remaining in the EU. [...]

The fight over Gibraltar illustrates the utter madness that is Brexit – irrespective of all the bureaucratic efforts being made to achieve a workable split. Leaders attending the upcoming EU summit on Sunday will wave through a Brexit plan that simply postpones reaching a final agreement on numerous contentious issues.

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UnHerd: Could Spain’s Pedro Sánchez save Europe’s centre-Left?

Down but not out, Sánchez subsequently toured the country in his beaten-up Peugeot, meeting with grassroots PSOE members and drumming up support. Like Corbyn – and in contrast to figures from the political centre – Sánchez draws his support predominantly from the grassroots. As a result of reaching out to Socialist Party activists he was easily re-elected as party leader in June 2017. A year later he became the first politician in Spain’s history to unseat a prime minister through a no-confidence motion. [...]

Sánchez’s ruthlessness in deposing the stale and corrupt Rajoy government changed that. A poll taken shortly after Rajoy’s departure had the PSOE on 28.8% of the vote, ahead of the PP on 25.6% and Ciudadanos on 21.1%. Support for the PSOE’s Left-wing rivals Podemos also fell, slipping to 13.1% – less than half of what the insurgent party were polling three years earlier. [...]

Sánchez is therefore under huge pressure to call an election. He had initially promised to do so – a move calculated to win support from other parties during the no confidence vote against Rajoy. Yet since becoming Prime Minister he has done a swift about-turn, announcing recently that he would stay on until his mandate expires in 2020 so as to “normalise” the country.  [...]

The biggest sticking point for the new government, however, will be in delivering a budget that moves Spain firmly away from austerity. This week Sánchez agreed a deal with Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos. The deal proposes a raft of Left-wing measures for next year’s budget, including a 22% increase in the minimum wage, heavy investment in education, longer paternity leave and higher spening on benefit payments. The deal seeks to avoid an early general election, which benefits both men: if one were held, Podemos would likely do poorly and there is no guarantee the PSOE would win a majority.

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The Atlantic: The Politics of a Long-Dead Dictator Still Haunt Spain

The many Spaniards who revile Franco tend to stay far away from the Valley of the Fallen, the vast, surreal monument outside Madrid where thousands of those killed in the Spanish Civil War are interred along with its victor. Its 150-meter high cross is visible from miles away, looming starkly over what is often referred to as Spain’s largest mass grave. The remains of more than 33,000 people who fought on both sides in the 1936-1939 conflict are buried here, transported—often without permission—from other sites after the Valley was finished in 1958. Their graves, unlike Franco’s, are unmarked, and the identities of more than a third remain unknown.

To many families of the fallen, the presence of Franco—who was buried here after his death in 1975 on the orders of the then King Juan Carlos I—is a final insult, converting what was conceived as a monument to the war dead into the pharaonic tomb of a fascist dictator. Up to 1 million people died in the three-year conflict, which Franco helped spark by leading a military revolt against Spain’s elected government, then run by the left-wing Republicans. Thousands more died during the purges that followed Franco’s victory and the imposition of a dictatorship that lasted until his death. That period remains burned into the memory of many in Spain, which unlike countries such as Germany or Argentina has never undergone a process of reconciliation. The lack of such a process, some argue, has left the wounds of the era seeping into politics and society four decades on. [...]

Argelia Queralt Jiménez, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Barcelona, said the exhumation of Franco and the historical memory drive would help defuse the perception among Catalan separatists of Spain as “Francoland,” a country that had not fully abandoned dictatorship for democracy. In an interview, she said that perception had little basis in reality, but explained that the failure of the Spanish right to discuss the Civil War and subsequent regime had effectively “normalized” and justified that assault on the democratic order. Meanwhile, the story of one side—of the defeated—had been “silenced” and victims treated with “disdain,” said Queralt.

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Spiegel: 'I Don't Like Being in Exile'

Puigdemont: Unfortunately, it is indeed different in Spain. The Spanish legal system has more weaknesses. If we Catalans want to split from Spain, it's because of the 1978 Constitution. For example, the judge who will decide on my appeals used to be a senator in the conservative People's Party. How can he be trusted? We can turn to the European Court of Justice, but that would leave many people languishing in jail for years before any ruling in their favor on the grounds that Spain has violated their fundamental rights. [...]

Puigdemont: It wasn't only my doing. It was a combination of two factors: The fact that the people mobilized, and the new communication platforms. What would have had to happen in secret just a few decades ago can now be shared all over the world. When I was in Helsinki, just before I was arrested in Germany in March, I said: We want a society in which the smartphone is more powerful than the sword. [...]

Puigdemont: That doesn't surprise me. I always warned that no one would recognize an independent Catalan state. I have criticized the EU for failing to make an official statement on what position it would take on an independent Catalonia. But above all, as a European citizen, I was deeply disappointed by the silence after the police violence on the day of the referendum. [...]

Puigdemont: We never talk in terms of nationalism, but of sovereignty. What is happening in Catalonia is not a traditional, nationalist struggle for independence. If our aim were to create a nation-state, we would have tried to do so earlier. Nationalism is a danger to Europe.

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Politico: Spain’s Franco plan: Bring up the body

His decision to move Franco’s tomb is on firmer political ground. It is in line with the 2011 recommendations of a national commission endorsed by the United Nations, and a decision by parliament in 2017. [...]

“A country that looks to its future needs to be at peace with its past,” Sánchez told parliament in June. “Wounds have remained open for many years, too many, and it’s time to heal them. Our democracy will have symbols that unite citizens, not ones that separate them.”

But Sánchez’s decision still carries risks. It leaves him open to accusations that while he claims to be healing the wounds of the past, he is actually reopening them by harking back to a dark and divisive period in Spain’s history. [...]

Francisco Ferrándiz, a researcher at the National Council of Research (CSIC) who has studied repression under Franco, said he often guides foreign guests around the complex. He always includes a daily mass celebrated in honor of Franco by Benedictine monks who live in the attached abbey and whom he described as hardline Franco supporters. Many visitors, he said, can’t believe their eyes. [...]

A major CIS study from 2008 — the most recent on the issue — showed most Spaniards supported actions such as excavating mass graves to give victims of Franco a proper burial, getting rid of symbols glorifying the dictator and annulling the verdicts of political trials. But efforts to investigate human rights violations or put on trial perpetrators of abuses didn’t gather the same level of support.

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Jacobin Magazine: Flowers at the Tomb of a Fascist

The dictator chose the site during a hike in the Sierra with General Juan Moscardó. Its proximity to El Escorial monastery, the historic resting place of Spanish kings, was no accident. Franco had hoped that work on the project would be finished by April 1, 1941, the anniversary of his victory in the civil war, but the paid labor provided by construction companies San Román, Huarte (now OHL), and Banús could not complete it in time. As a solution, the “Redemption through Labour” scheme deployed republican prisoners as slaves on the construction project. With their involvement the complex was finally finished in 1958, after a more than seventeen-year delay.

Now Spain’s new Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is seeking to end the basilica being used as an apologia for the Spanish genocide. His Socialist Party (PSOE) government has promised to remove both the remains of Franco and those of the 1930s Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera before the end of the summer. The idea is turn the complex into a site of historical memory and reconciliation. Since the transition to democracy in the late 1970s, the PSOE has spent more than twenty years in power without daring to pull down this symbol of the fascist triumph. The speed of their announcement has surprised many, coming less than a month after taking office, but it seems designed to take advantage of the current weakness of the right-wing Popular Party (PP) after the fall of Mariano Rajoy. Founded by seven Francoist ministers, the PP are the political heirs to the dictatorial regime and have repeatedly obstructed attempts to gain justice for victims of his regime. [...]

As I approach Franco’s tomb an assemblage of fresh flowers lies on top. Those nostalgic for the days of fascism crowd around the grave, mixing with the tourists. A Japanese group visiting the abbey concentrate on the frescos in the cupula, ignoring the vigil at the grave of a dictator. But then an older man beside Franco’s marble tablet breaks the mirage, giving a military heel followed by a fascist salute. It encourages another man, who kneels and begins to pray beside the grave, then stands up and raises his hand to the sky. He remains standing for a few seconds, then bends to kiss Franco’s name carved in stone. Throughout this scene, the volunteer responsible simply repeats to the visitors that no photographs are allowed. I sit down on the ground in a corner, trying to gather my thoughts and write a few lines. The volunteer rebukes me, “Have some respect,” and tells me I can’t write here. Everything in this aberration is a metaphor for Spain.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Salvini Plan

It’s not just immigrants that Salvini has in his crosshairs. His Lega, today in government with the Five Star Movement, has discussed closing down many of Italy’s mosques, and his ministry has announced plans for a census of Roma camp sites throughout the country. He has also set his sights on immigration lawyers, liberal journalists, and NGO volunteers, claiming that they peddle fake news and engage in humanitarian activity for profit. The attack on perceived “foreigners” also targets NGO missions as representative of foreign capital: “foreign ships with foreign money.” [...]

By 2013, the route proved so deadly that large numbers of Syrians refused to take it, preferring to wait in North Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey for other routes to open. Under Matteo Renzi’s center-left government, the Italian state’s own Mare Nostrum rescue operation was axed. As the state left people to drown, humanitarian maritime missions run by NGOs tried to save them. Even so, as deaths at sea mounted during 2014 and 2015, this did not deter hundreds of thousands from daring the route: indeed, more than 150,000 made the crossing each year between 2014 and 2016. [...]

In spring 2017, Italy’s center-left government, led by Paolo Gentiloni and then-interior minister Marco Minniti, fleshed out a deal with the Serraj government in Libya to effectively arm and fund Libyan militia to seize departing migrant boats. The plan was finally implemented at the end of the summer. By the time of the march 2018 elections, there had already been a 75 percent drop in the number of migrant landings, and a campaign of racist rhetoric and violence outran the efforts of the progressive left-wing and Catholic forces, which had previously sustained rescue operations. [...]

The Salvini Plan might also be designed to break the Five Star Movement’s own coalition of support and consolidate the Lega’s power, both through ongoing local votes and any snap general election that might be called. Recent local elections have indeed seen the center-right win mayoral seats across Italy, often with 60 percent of the vote. The Five Star Movement, which came in first across the South in March’s general election, no longer seems to be polling well after allying with the Lega, whose anti-migrant rhetoric used to be matched by hatred for Southerners (it only recently dropped the name “Northern League” from its propaganda at the national level). A fresh election, likely resulting in gains for the Lega, would allow Salvini’s party greater control of state finances and satisfy the conservative capitalist interests that stand behind it, without having to give in to some of the Five Star’s (limited) demands for welfare reform. [...]

Yet the power of the extreme-right hate speech does not only draw from its radicalism or the leverage of the capitalist powers financing it. Matteo Salvini is not only a result of the Left’s failure, but ironically, the success of past revolt. The fear he stirs up is based on very real acts of resistance against the border regime. Without the mass breakthrough of 2015, in which migrants scaled and dissolved Europe’s eastern and southern borders, the new European right would not have had the basic material from which to construct its hatred and lies.

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LSE Blog: Rajoy Loses Power In Spain: What Happens Now?

In some ways, Spain’s problems closely resemble those of Italy’s. In both countries, public disgust with a corrupt elite combined with the financial crisis to bring about a partial collapse of the mainstream centre-right and centre-left, and facilitated the rise of new anti-elite challengers. In Spain, the conservative People’s Party (Partido Popular – PP) and the centre-left Socialists (Partido Socialista Obrero Español – PSOE) have had to contend with the left-populist Podemos and the centrist Ciudadanos, which somewhat resembles Macron’s La Republique En Marche in France. The PP and PSOE declined to record lows of support in the December 2015 elections; the PP recovered slightly in June 2016’s repeat polls and formed a minority government. However, the PP’s position was very weak; Rajoy only won office with Ciudadanos support, and even then relied on the Socialists abstaining, a decision that nearly tore that party apart and briefly cost Sánchez his job as leader. [...]

Sánchez won office by exploiting a confluence of events that benefited his party. Firstly, although both of Spain’s legacy parties have been touched by accusations of corruption, the Socialists’ most notable scandal erupted in Andalusia, home of Sánchez’s chief internal rival, Susana Díaz. Meanwhile, the PP’s scandals have tended to receive more coverage in recent months. First, there was the discovery that the president of Madrid’s regional government, Cristina Cifuentes, had fraudulently obtained a master’s degree, and had been caught trying to shoplift. Then came the handing down of verdicts in the long-running Caso Gürtel. This years-old investigation looked at the illegal financing of the PP, and on 24 May, the Audiencia Nacional sentenced its ex-treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, to 33 years in prison. It also convicted Rajoy’s former health minister, Ana Mato, and found the PP itself guilty, fining the party €245,000. It was the Gürtel ruling that gave Sánchez his opening to introduce a motion of no confidence.  [...]

Ciudadanos, on the other hand, has been leading recent polls, well ahead of the PP, its rival on the centre-right. The party draws votes from both the PP and the PSOE, has strong anti-corruption credentials and is perhaps the most adamantly centralist party in Spanish politics – that is, it tends to oppose concessions to Catalan or Basque nationalism. The Catalan crisis has thus helped its support to grow. Although Ciudadanos has worked with the Socialists before, the party had been backing Rajoy since his re-election in 2016. In this case, it decided not to back Sánchez, instead claiming to want snap elections (rather disingenuously, since it had agreed to support Rajoy’s proposed budget). Most likely, Rivera did not wish to be seen voting alongside Podemos, or worse yet, Catalan nationalists.  

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Politico: 5 takeaways from the overthrow of Mariano Rajoy

Sánchez managed to assemble an unlikely coalition — labeled “Frankenstein” by rivals — with the far-left Podemos, two Catalan pro-independence groups and a Basque nationalist party, all of who had refused to endorse the Socialist for the premiership in the past. [...]

It was a bitter way to go for Rajoy, the first Spanish prime minister to be taken down by a motion of no confidence. It was also an extraordinary vindication for Sánchez, whose chances of getting the top job had been dismissed by polls, rivals and analysts. [...]

It was a particularly unglamorous end. He was sacked because of corruption in his Popular Party, although the PM himself wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing in the courts. Rajoy didn’t even attend most of the marathon parliamentary session called to oust him. On Thursday afternoon, he and his aides went to a restaurant instead. On Friday morning, he arrived late to the Congress of Deputies. [...]

Sánchez didn’t give many hints as to what his government will do, but he vowed to honor Spain’s commitments to its European partners in terms of budget stability and to lead a firmly pro-European government. [...]

With Rajoy out, the more moderate elements of the Catalan separatist movement will have an opportunity to push for a softer approach with Madrid. Direct rule over Catalonia by the central government will be ended within hours and Sánchez has defended greater powers for the region and constitutional change, although he lacks the majority in parliament to amend the constitution.

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Politico: Spanish Socialist’s survival strategy

The Madrid-born Socialist leader is offering constitutional reform that would give Catalonia increased autonomy, but not independence. “The secessionists are going to meet the wall of Spain’s rule of law if they go back to the unilateral path (to independence),” he said.

The appointment last week of hard-line independence activist Quim Torra as Catalan regional president makes it even less likely that the crisis is going to cool off in the short term. At the same time, supporters of Spanish unity have discovered a propaganda goldmine in Torra’s anti-Spanish writings and tweets. [...]

The Socialists are currently the second-biggest party in parliament after Rajoy’s conservatives, with the far-left Podemos in third place and Ciudadanos fourth. But recent polls of voter intentions put Ciudadanos either in the lead or second while the PSOE is most often ranked third after Rajoy’s party and Rivera’s. [...]

While Ciudadanos has poached voters from the PP and the PSOE, it is a more natural fit for disenchanted conservatives than leftists. Sánchez argued that the “fracture” on the right, in the context of a more fragmented political scenario where votes are split four ways rather than the traditional two-way PP-PSOE rivalry, means he is in a good position to win the next national election.

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