16. The Aftermath
The ruling class really had no right to expect so favourable an outcome as this. The Democratic Transition was a generous gift bestowed upon them by the leaders of the PCE and PSOE. The serious representatives of big capital saw that they could only save themselves by calling on the help of the workers’ leaders, especially the Communist Party.
The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party
In the Spain of the early 1970s there was a party, the PCE, which grouped together the vanguard of the working class. It was rooted in the masses, and could mobilise hundreds of thousands and, potentially, millions of workers. The problem was that the leadership of that party never set itself as a conscious goal to fight for socialism or even the achievement of complete democracy. They limited themselves to reaching the goal of an agreement with the old regime. In exchange for the concession of certain limited formal democratic rights, they would agree not just to maintain capitalism, but to permit the survival of important elements of the old reactionary state and its institutions, without demanding any kind of responsibility or settling of accounts with the heirs of the Franco regime for their crimes.
Carrillo and the leaders of the PCE stood for a historic compromise between conservatives and communists. In reality, as we have seen, it was the former who gained all, while the communists lost everything. This new image of moderation, which they carefully cultivated, was supposed to guarantee success at the polls, and Santiago Carrillo would finally take his place in the sun as a government minister – or even, who knows? Prime Minister. The whole thing seemed to him to be so eminently sensible, logical and practical, that he regarded it as virtually inevitable. But this kind of practicality in politics frequently turns into the worst kind of utopianism. So it was in the case of the PCE.
The plain fact is that the masses were already conquering democratic rights in practice through their struggles. If the PCE had been a real communist party, it would have led these struggles forward to the point where the regime could have been overthrown. Instead, Carrillo and the other leaders of the PCE played a key role in undermining the revolutionary movement of the working class and helping the bourgeois restore control when it had slipped out of their hands. Of course, the leaders of the PSOE were not one whit better, but they did not command the kind of support that was in the hands of the PCE and the Workers’ Commissions that it controlled at that time.
Increasingly, Party members realised that the political views of the party corresponded more to those of the PSOE than to the communist ideas they had fought for all their lives. Many simply dropped out of organised politics altogether. Of crucial importance in the sharp decline in the Party’s support was its decision to order a halt to street and trade union mobilisations after the 1977 elections. This was known as ‘the brake’ (el freno), and it was bitterly resented by the activists, especially in the unions.
The Communist Party dug its own grave by attempting to compete with the right-wing leaders of the Socialist Party to present an image of moderation and respectability to the electorate. By moving sharply to the right, they rapidly demoralised their own rank and file without convincing the electorate that they represented a better option than Felipe González. One commentator points out:
As the PCE increased its efforts to emphasise its moderate image, it appears to have become less and less obvious to voters why they should choose the communists at the ballot box rather than the more credible governmental option of the PSOE. The PSOE’s impressive score at the first democratic elections (given its absence during the Franco years) meant that any prospect of a left-orientated government increasingly lay more with the socialists than the communists.1
By this time all the illusions of the PCE general secretary were in ruins. The Suárez government had reneged on many of its promises at Moncloa. As for Carrillo’s proposals of a concentration government including all pro-democratic parties, that idea disappeared from view. The PCE leader’s ambition of being a major figure in government evaporated in the air like a soap bubble blown by a child. The situation of permanent crisis within the PCE found its expression in an endless succession of resignations and splits.
The crisis and decline of the Communist Party, which became acute towards the end of 1980, contributed to the weakening of its allied union confederation, although the CCOO was able to avoid the complete collapse of the PCE. The Communist Party continued to lose ground in the electoral field to the Socialist Party. The PCE suffered a series of splits, a loss of membership, prestige and support and entered into an irreversible downward spiral of decline.
In the end, this once-powerful party, built through the heroism and self-sacrifice of a generation of working-class militants, who risked their lives in the clandestine struggle against the Franco dictatorship, was virtually dissolved into the United Left (Izquierda Unida).2 The party that had been the backbone of the anti-Franco resistance did not quite manage to win ten per cent of the vote in June 1977. By October 1982, that figure was down to 3.7 per cent: its members were leaving in droves, its prestige among intellectuals had evaporated, and it was shaken by the biggest internal crisis in its history.
Parliamentary Cretinism
Karl Marx long ago wrote about what he called parliamentary cretinism, a fatal disease for which no cure is known to medical science. Wherever this disease affects the brains of the leaders of the workers’ movement, it always plays a most negative role. Those who succumb to it rapidly forget their origins, their ideas and principles and the reason why they entered the workers’ movement in the first place. They become ‘realists’ and ‘statesmen’, who have turned their backs decisively on ‘utopianism’, by which they mean that they have rejected any idea of fighting for the socialist transformation of society and embraced wholeheartedly the status quo.
Unlikely as it may seem, even in conditions of underground struggle against the dictatorship, parliamentary cretinism can thrive and spread in the leadership of the movement. Obsessed with the idea of pacts and consensus, these leaders forget everything they ever knew about class struggle and socialist revolution. Although their conditions of life may still be relatively hard, they are corrupted by a vision of future prosperity that they anticipate will come from a reasonable agreement with the other side. The history of Spain in the last forty years shows that this perspective was not an altogether unreasonable one.
We do not mean by this that the leaders of the PCE and PSOE were entirely guided by the prospect of personal advancement (although in many cases one has a reason to believe that that was the case). The reason for their conduct is rather more complex than that. No traitor likes to believe that he or she is in fact a traitor. Rather, we are dealing with men and women who have completely lost all faith in the ability of the working class to change society, always supposing that they had such a faith to begin with.
González and Carrillo were prepared to lean on the masses to strike blows against the regime but had no intention of overthrowing it. They saw the mass movement, not as an alternative power in society, but only as a lever to force the regime to grant sufficient concessions that would guarantee them a place in the sun as political leaders in the new ‘democracy’.
The political careerist is attracted by the mouth-watering prospect of ministerial office as a fly to a pot of honey. Such people, therefore, earnestly desire peace and an end to storm and strife as the prior condition for attaining this highly desirable objective. And they fiercely denounce anyone who proposes to continue the struggle to the end as reckless demagogues and enemies of the cause of liberty.
One might ask the question: is it conceivable that González and Carrillo were such cynics? To this question it is impossible to give a precise answer. Science has never yet invented an instrument capable of accurately measuring human sincerity. It may well be that they were quite sincere in their beliefs. They probably convinced themselves there was no alternative, that they alone possessed the truth and they were the only political realists.
Yes, it is quite possible for some people to be sincere even in their insincerity. Even before a thief or a murderer stands before the judge, in the privacy of his thoughts, he must find some justification in order to live with his crimes. Although we do not wish to place the reformist leaders in Spain in the same category, we believe that the same psychological defence mechanism will apply, and therefore we have no reason to believe that they have ever experienced the slightest qualms of conscience in relation to their conduct. But this spiritual tranquillity is a very poor consolation to the Spanish working class.
Victory of the PSOE
After six years of ‘centre’ rule, the people had enough time to understand through experience the false character of the centre. In May 1981, a cooking oil scandal had broken out: thousands of working-class families, primarily in Madrid, were poisoned due to the consumption of adulterated oil. As a result of the oil business owners’ actions in collaboration with the administration of the UCD government, which did not try to control the scam of these unscrupulous capitalists, more than 2,000 died and 12,000 were afflicted. This scandal deepened the sense of a general crisis in Spanish society.
In the same month, three young people were viciously murdered by the Civil Guard in Almería. The Almería Case caused such popular outrage that the assassins had to be sent to prison, if only for a few years. In March 1982, two young day labourers of Lebrija (Seville) were killed by Civil Guard gunshots in Trebujena (Cádiz). All of the people of the region immediately declared a general strike, and the funeral was attended by more than 8,000 labourers of the whole region.
This was the prelude to the Andalusian elections in May 1982. The PSOE won an overwhelming victory, but it was an electoral disaster for the UCD, which accelerated the decomposition of the ‘centre’. The UCD was now completely discredited. Its collapse was inevitable, and it reflected a new process of polarisation within Spanish society. A series of splits to the right and left in the UCD forced Calvo-Sotelo to call an early general election in 1982. The UCD, the main party of the Spanish bourgeoisie, ended up disintegrating altogether.
The general election of 28 October 1982 was a landslide victory for the PSOE, which won 48.5 per cent of the vote. After winning the 1977 and 1979 elections, in 1982, the UCD slumped from 168 seats to just twelve. The party was disbanded the following year, and few people mourned its passing. With the collapse of the UCD, the bulk of its forces went either to AP or PSOE. Spain was left with Alianza Popular, which morphed into what is now the Partido Popular – PP. It was precisely the lineal descendant and ideological inheritor of Francoism as it was founded by seven Franco ministers.
The PCE arrived at the general election completely exhausted, dispirited and debilitated. With a shift to the right caused by the course taken after the fall of the dictatorship, it seemed impossible for anyone to comprehend the programmatic differences between the PCE and the PSOE. When the time arrived to cast their votes, the workers chose the larger party because they did not see any significant differences between the two. That is the real meaning of the so-called useful vote (voto útil).
While the socialists emerged victorious from these elections, the PCE suffered a crushing defeat. The Communist Party of Spain obtained a mere 3.8 per cent of the votes: 830,000 votes and four deputies, compared with 202 for the socialists. Carrillo’s obsessive emphasis on coalition government clashed with an insurmountable obstacle: neither the PSOE nor the UCD were remotely interested in the proposal. The overwhelming victory of the PSOE exposed the bankruptcy of the PCE’s strategy and fatally damaged the authority of the leadership.
This shattering electoral defeat was the last straw for many Party members. In the years that followed, the PCE saw its influence decline, its membership and vote slump. The party paper Mundo Obrero, built up with such enthusiasm and sacrifice by the PCE workers who collected 100 million pesetas for it to become a daily in 1978, went into crisis, reduced its periodicity to weekly and then became merely a monthly magazine. The Party rapidly lost its militant worker cadres and dwindled almost to nothing. It never recovered its former prominence.
Santiago Carrillo and the other leaders of the PCE believed that their policy of a ‘historic compromise’ between conservatives and communists would benefit them. In reality, it was the communists who lost everything. The PCE paid the price for the opportunism of its leaders. That was the result of the so-called realistic policy of Carrillo. And do you know why? If people want social democracy, what do they need the Communist Party for? For Social Democracy they have the PSOE! That is a lesson the leaders of Podemos today have yet to learn.
The Death of Carrillo
There was an inescapable logic in Carrillo’s subsequent political evolution. Having launched the Party in a sharp rightward direction, he soon fell victim to his own opportunist tactics. Now the demagogic appeals to democracy came back to haunt Santiago Carrillo. If he could criticise the Soviet leadership, why should other Party leaders not criticise him? Soon the internecine strife burst into the open, with the formation of factions, and groups and leaders splitting from the Party. Finally, Carrillo himself was deposed.
Carrillo’s resignation as general secretary was almost inevitable. In 1985, following a power struggle, he was expelled from the party. He remained an acerbic and astute political observer and writer to the end of his life, but he was reduced to the role of an impotent observer of the Spanish political scene. He founded a small party under the ironic name of Spanish Workers’ Party – Communist Unity. After crushing electoral defeats, the party joined the PSOE, though Carrillo himself stayed outside. The entry of his followers into the PSOE was the logical conclusion of his political evolution. He had been a reformist for a long time. Now his followers were joining a reformist party that had been in power for a decade carrying out counter-reforms and attacks on the workers.
When Santiago Carrillo died in September 2012, the liberal press excelled itself in publishing the most extravagant tributes to the man who saved their system. People who cursed him during his lifetime now regarded him as a kind of saint. The journalists fell over themselves in their haste to heap praises on his head: “He played an extraordinary role [in the Transition], showing political courage, a sense of state and that he was set in reality.”3
The Independent wrote:
Juan Carlos said after visiting Carrillo’s family to pay his condolences only two hours after his death, at ninety-seven, the communist leader was “a fundamental person for democracy” – almost certainly a reference to the key role played by Carrillo, as head of the Communist Party until 1982, in the period of political transition and reconciliation following the death of General Franco.4
That was the plain truth. There can be no doubt whatever that he was a fundamental person for the preservation of Juan Carlos and the continuation of core elements of the old regime varnished with the thin layer of ‘democracy’.
When the veteran German Marxist August Bebel read favourable reports of his speeches in the bourgeois press, he was supposed to have exclaimed: “What has old Bebel done wrong that they should praise me?” But there is no record of Carrillo ever saying any such thing. No doubt he was pleased that he was finally accepted as a respectable politician. However, this praise came at a very high price for the working class in general and the Communist Party in particular.
The PSOE in Power
By 1982, everyone recognised the inevitability of an electoral victory of the PSOE. After years of deep economic crisis in which the workers had suffered defeat after defeat on the economic front, they turned to the political front – in the electoral field – to finally place their leaders in government. The working class and broad layers of the middle class had high hopes in the PSOE as an alternative.
In Spain, the masses had never passed through the experience of a reformist government. They naturally looked with expectation towards the reformist workers’ organisations that they knew only from their names. They never read their programmes and manifestoes, or at least they never guessed what they would mean in practice. For that, a period of experience would be necessary. It would prove to be a painful one.
Felipe González duly became Prime Minister of Spain on 2 December, a position he held until March 1996. The more than 10 million votes the PSOE received then have remained unparalleled in any election in Spain’s history. Controlling 202 seats out of 350, the PSOE leadership was in the most exceptional position to begin the process of profound transformation of society craved by millions of workers and other oppressed layers of society.
The PSOE slogan in that election was “por el cambio” (for change), which, in a distorted way, represented the deep-rooted aspiration of the broad masses for real change and a break with the past. This was the first time that a workers’ party had obtained an overall majority in Spain. In the Second Republic, the PSOE was always part of a Republican-Socialist coalition. This also reflected a changed balance of forces since the 1930s.
The election of a socialist government rekindled the hopes and dreams of the early years of transition among millions of men and women. As late as December 1976 the PSOE approved a political resolution in its Twenty-Seventh Congress that included the “overcoming of the capitalist mode of production through the seizure of political and economic power and the socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange by the working class”.
However, very soon, the socialist leaders were competing with the PCE to see who would capitulate most in their eagerness to reach an amicable agreement with the powers-that-be. As the socialist leaders drew closer to government, so their desire to please the bankers, capitalists and army generals grew more intense. They discarded their old ideas with the same speed with which passengers on a sinking ship fall over themselves in their haste to throw suitcases overboard. The identification of the PSOE’s right-wing leaders with the state was now complete.
A number of reforms were carried out by this government: free and universal education was extended from age fourteen to sixteen, university education was reformed and expanded with new universities established. The social security system was extended and a partial legalisation of abortion became law for the first time, despite opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. There were big improvements in the infrastructure, especially roads and railways. The pension system was extended to the poorest people and there were much-needed improvements to the health service. These were all steps that served to improve the conditions of the population.
But this was only one side of the picture. On the vital economic questions, the PSOE failed to deliver. Under González, the key Ministries of Economy and Finance were always occupied by right-wingers like Miguel Boyer, Carlos Solchaga and Pedro Solbes, men who had nothing in common with socialism and were really agents of the banks and big companies. They carried out a vicious policy of so-called reforms that included the sweeping privatisation of public companies such as Telefónica or ENDESA, liberalisation and deregulation, and ‘restructuring’ of whole industry sectors such as steel or mining, which resulted in wholesale destruction of employment.
In the election campaign, they promised to create 800,000 new jobs. But the government’s restructuring of the steel industry resulted in job losses. Their reluctance to take on the private bankers and capitalists meant that their hands were tied. In 1984, when they tried to tackle the problems in the dock industry with similar methods, they were met with a dockers’ strike.
On 20 June 1985, the Workers Commissions called a general strike in protest against social security reforms. In the same year, the González’s government began a massive partial or full privatisation of state-owned companies as well as hundreds of smaller dependent companies. This blatant pro-business and anti-worker policy alienated the working class and provoked the opposition of the trade unions.
NATO and GAL
Once the first step had been taken, the Party’s drift to the right became unstoppable. The shift to the right was made abundantly clear when González performed an undignified U-turn on the question of Spain’s membership of NATO. The Socialist Party had always been opposed to NATO. But González felt obliged to demonstrate his unswerving loyalty to imperialism. As soon as he got into government, he lost no time ensuring that Spain remained inside this reactionary organisation. González called a referendum on NATO in 1986, advocated staying in, and won.
As if to set the final stamp of approval on this new betrayal, Javier Solana, who had previously campaigned against NATO, ended up as its secretary general. In this detail the entire evolution of the PSOE and its leaders is very well encapsulated. Another general strike occurred on 14 December 1988, in protest against González’s swing to the right, which completely paralysed the country. This time, even the socialist union, UGT, was forced to join in with CCOO in calling it. The UGT general secretary Nicolás Redondo had resigned as a PSOE member of parliament a year earlier.
An even more scandalous example was the GAL affair. Already at this early stage, the right-wing leaders of the PSOE revealed themselves as the most abject servants of the ruling class, prepared to adopt the most reactionary policies and methods in order to defend the capitalist system. In order to prove their devotion to the interests of the state, top leaders of the PSOE actively collaborated with a murderous outfit known as GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación – Anti-terrorist Liberation Groups).
This shadowy organisation first came to the attention of the public between 1983 and 1987. It was engaged in a dirty war against ETA, involving assassinations, kidnappings, bombings and torture. Twenty-seven people are known to have been killed by this organisation, which was directly linked to the state security apparatus and the Spanish government under Felipe González. The records show that the right-wing leaders of the PSOE went far further than that. Some of them were actively collaborating with extra-legal murder squads.
Judge Baltasar Garzón exposed the secret links between the PSOE government and GAL. It was shown to be composed entirely of mercenaries recruited by policemen using public funds. It was, in fact, set up by the Spanish secret services. The former interior minister José Barrionuevo was jailed for ten years for his part in the GAL operation. Officially, Juan Carlos I knew nothing about this sinister campaign of state-sponsored murder. However, this is hardly credible, since the king had a reputation for being very well informed about the affairs of the nation and he received daily reports. Felipe González denied that he authorised these actions. Did anyone believe him? I have no idea. But anyway, he was never charged with any crime.
In the first Gulf War of 1991, González fully backed US imperialism. Although the PSOE won several elections in this period, the margin of success got smaller and smaller, as discontent with its right-wing policies grew. This prepared the way for the victory of the PP under José María Aznar in 1996.
Virtue brings its own reward, they say. González was generously rewarded for his services to the state, and went on to accumulate sufficient wealth to provide him and his family with all the pleasant comforts life can afford. Adolfo Suárez had an airport named after him. Felipe González has not yet had his name attached to any airport, but he did not emerge badly from the Transition, either.
How Felipe González Prospered
Felipe González has long since abandoned the first rank of Spanish politics. But he has never completely vanished from the stage. He has found a new role as one of the most prominent defenders of ‘democracy’ in Latin America. And by ‘democracy’ I mean the same kind of pseudo-democracy that he inflicted on the people of Spain: a regime where the big banks and monopolies continue to rule and plunder the people behind a hypocritical façade that conceals the true state of affairs.
Nowadays Felipe González claims to spend most of his time on what he calls ‘non-profit’ activities. But he is known to show considerable interest in making money, and indeed, he is rather good at it. Like all wealthy men, Felipe is naturally rather shy about revealing the extent of his wealth. After all, why encourage envy, which is a very unhealthy human trait? But despite this entirely understandable reticence, the diligent research of the journalist Javier Chicote has succeeded in casting some light on these dark corners. In his book Socialistas de élite (Elite Socialists) he writes:
The activities and assignments of Felipe González earn him around €600,000 per year. Since December 2010, he has been an independent director of Gas Natural. The company pays a salary of €126,500 which, divided among the eleven annual meetings of the Board of Directors, comes to €11,500 for each of them. This income is totally compatible with the annual allocation granted by Parliament to former presidents.5
González was awarded the highly lucrative position of a Gas Natural adviser for his knowledge of the Latin American market. This must apply particularly to the Mexican market.
One of Felipe’s closest friends, Carlos Slim, is the Mexican billionaire who was until quite recently the richest man in the world. His other partner in Spain is former Chilean Minister Fernando Flores, with whom he shares his company ‘Entrepreneurs’. Old Aesop informs us that a man is known by the company he keeps. If this is true (and I believe it is), we can learn a lot about Felipe from the circles in which he moves. And what is a friendship worth if it does not bring at least some material rewards? Chicote tells us that, according to his relatives, González also owns properties in Mexico. However, this claim is impossible to verify. He has many influential friends in politics and business that it would be a simple matter to conceal these investments.
In addition to Gas Natural, Felipe has many other business interests – so many that it would be tedious to name them here. They can be found in the pages of Chicote’s book. Nevertheless, there is one great source of income that deserves to be mentioned: his earnings from speeches and conferences. It is estimated that the modest amount of €80,000 that he apparently charges for this kind of function, would provide him with around half a million Euros every two months, which, added to all his other sources of income, is a fairly respectable sum.
And what does he say in these speeches? Since I was never invited to any of these functions, I cannot say with any certainty. But one imagines that a frequent theme would be ‘The Secret of Spain’s Transition to Democracy’, or ‘How to Fool Thirty-six Million People into Believing That Black is White’. This activity today is extremely valuable to US imperialism. It was the clear intention of John Bolton to impose ‘regime change’ on Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, including the option of military intervention. But Bolton’s bellicose speeches did not strike a responsive chord with the generals in the Pentagon, who, having burned their fingers badly in Iraq and Afghanistan, are naturally cautious about getting entangled in any new military adventures.
If you cannot use force to defeat your opponent, there remains the option of fraud. And what better example of a political fraud could there be than the Spanish Transition? Thus, with his supreme grasp of timing, forty years later, Felipe has achieved something far superior to the childish attempts of the alchemists to transmute base metal into gold: he has transformed the Democratic Transition into a business opportunity.
Venezuela
One of González’s chief obsessions is to support the Venezuelan opposition in its efforts to overthrow the Bolivarian government and ‘restore democracy’. As some readers of this book may know, I have always been a firm supporter of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. During the last decade of his life, I formed a close friendship with the late Hugo Chávez, who I regarded as a sincere and courageous fighter for the cause of the people and a fierce opponent of the wealthy oligarchy that exploited and oppressed them for decades, and US and international imperialism that stands behind it.
It was therefore quite natural for all those with vested interests in the maintenance of the rule of the landowners, bankers and capitalists to oppose Hugo Chávez, and to blacken his name by every means at their disposal. The most extreme case of this was the scandalous coverage of Venezuela in the Spanish media. No insult was too gross, no lie so fantastic, no distortion so absurd that did not find itself repeated day in, and day out.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, used to say that if you are going to tell a lie, it is better to tell a big lie – the bigger, the most blatant and palpable, the better. Then, if you repeat this lie again and again, in the end people will believe it. Unfortunately, that has been shown to be true in the case of Spain, where the popular conception of the Venezuelan revolution and its leader has been very effectively conditioned by years of the most scandalous distortions imaginable.
Even people who consider themselves to be left-wing in Spain have allowed themselves to be deceived by this avalanche of lies. They really ought to stop for a moment and ask themselves a very simple question: if the right-wing press that fights against socialism and defends the interests of the rich and powerful in Spain and internationally present a negative image of a man like Hugo Chávez, there must be a reason for it. Whatever reason that may be, it certainly has nothing in common with the interests of the working class.
This is not the place to deal in detail with what has occurred in Venezuela. I have dealt with that at length in articles that everyone can find on the internet if they are interested. But one thing struck me very forcibly when Chávez passed away. Previously, the line had been that he was a dictator. But that lie did not resist even the most superficial examination. The fact is that during his lifetime, Hugo Chávez won more popular consultations – elections and referendums – than any other political leader in the world.
Nor is it possible to argue (although they tried to do so) that these elections were rigged. In fact, every election in Venezuela was thoroughly scrutinised by international observers, including people like former US president Jimmy Carter. If they had found the slightest proof of electoral rigging, you can be sure that it would have been published on the front page of every newspaper in the world the very next day. Nothing of the sort was ever reported, for the simple reason that no such proof existed.
So, when Chávez died, they had to change the line, at least to some extent. I happened to be in Madrid at the time, on my way to Caracas, and I read what was published in El País and other newspapers. Evidently, they were too embarrassed to repeat the old lie about Chávez the dictator. So, they tried another approach. They said that Chávez had “wasted the wealth of Venezuela”. But they never said precisely what he had wasted it on. In fact, Chávez “wasted” Venezuela’s oil wealth on such unnecessary things as health, education and housing.
At the time when thousands of Spanish families were being evicted by the banks because they were unable to keep up mortgage repayments, Venezuela was building hundreds of thousands of homes to house the homeless. This, from the standpoint of the bankers and capitalists, was a classic example of how socialists waste money. I was tempted to reply that, in Spain, of course, we do not waste money like that. We give it to the bankers. Unfortunately, nobody in Spain seems to have made that highly instructive comparison.
The purpose of this digression is to draw attention to the real motivation that lies behind the constant vicious attacks against Venezuela in the Spanish media. Big business in Spain is linked by a thousand threads to big business in Venezuela. And Spanish politics is determined by the interests of big business. That includes certain elements who are generally considered to be on the ‘left’. Felipe González is a case in point.
The relationship between Felipe González and the Venezuelan businessman, Gustavo Cisneros, goes back at least to February 1983, when the González government nationalised RUMASA, a big holding company belonging to José María Ruiz Mateos, a man involved in all sorts of dubious activities. This action aroused hopes in many socialists that the government would at last take action against big business. But those hopes were mistaken. As soon as it could, the state proceeded to privatise the companies contained in RUMASA.
Gustavo Cisneros was awarded with the huge chain of department stores, Galerías Preciados. The purchase price was 1 billion pesetas, and prior to the sale, the state invested 33 billion pesetas in the company in order to pay off its debts. Five years later, Cisneros sold the company for 30 billion pesetas, as José Bautista explains in his article ‘Felipe González y las Élites: Quien Tiene un Amigo Tiene un Tesoro’ (Felipe González and the Elites: Whoever Has a Friend Has a Treasure).6
This is a classic case of the social-democratic policy, which can be summed up as nationalising the losses and privatising the profits. Today Cisneros is a prominent figure in the Venezuelan opposition, which is backed by Felipe González and the entire Spanish establishment.
Chávez and the King
The sheer viciousness of the Spanish establishment towards Venezuela (and also their hypocrisy on the question of democracy) was shown on 11 April 2002, when there was a reactionary coup d’état to overthrow Hugo Chávez. All the forces of the old society were implicated in the coup: the landowners, bankers and capitalists (the new ‘president’ was businessman Pedro Carmona, the chairman of the Venezuelan Employers’ Association), reactionary police chiefs and army generals, the private mass media and the Church (Cardinal Ignacio Velasco played an active role, trying to pressure Chávez to resign).
But behind the whole thing (and behind every other destabilisation and coup in Venezuela) was the invisible hand of Washington. The leaders of the coup were closely tied to senior officials in the US government. The coup organisers in Washington were all involved in the ‘Dirty Wars’ of the 1980s, and were linked to the murderous activities of the death squads working in Central America.
One member of the Latin American triangle in US policy-making was John Negroponte, who was later made US ambassador to the United Nations. He was Reagan’s ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 when a US-trained death squad, Battalion 3-16, tortured and murdered numerous activists. But the crucial figure in the coup was Elliot Abrams, who gave the green light to the Venezuelan coup. He operated in the White House as senior director of the National Security Council for “democracy, human rights and international operations.” He was a leading theoretician of the school known as ‘Hemispherism’, which put a priority on combating Marxism in the Americas. Among its most noteworthy achievements were the coup that led to the bloody dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile in 1973, and the sponsorship of regimes and death squads that followed it in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and elsewhere.
During the Contras’ rampage in Nicaragua, Elliot Abrams worked directly with Oliver North, who was later convicted. Abrams himself has a conviction for lying to the US Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair. He was also one of the main figures in the more recent attempt to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro by US imperialism fronted by Juan Guaidó. These are the kind of people who allegedly stand for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela!
The Bush administration immediately endorsed the Pedro Carmona regime established by the coup in April 2002, presuming it to have succeeded. But they presumed wrongly. A spontaneous popular uprising and an army revolt sent the whole process dramatically into reverse in the space of forty-eight hours. More than a hundred people had died in events before and after the coup.
And what was the attitude of Spain to all this? The PP government of José María Aznar fell over themselves in their haste to support this reactionary coup. The Spanish embassy was involved in the plot. In fact, after the United States, Spain was the only other country in the world to officially recognise the Junta led by Pedro Carmona. But when the coup was soon overthrown by a spontaneous popular uprising, the Spanish authorities had nothing to say.
The Spain of Juan Carlos de Borbón was so deeply committed to the cause of democracy in Venezuela that it was quite happy to hand it over to the tender mercies of a counter-revolutionary dictatorship. In reality, their real motivation had nothing to do with democracy, and everything to do with Spanish business interests, which felt threatened by the nationalisations carried out by the Bolivarian government. Spain is the second largest investor in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez had already nationalised the local subsidiary of Santander Bank and other large Spanish multinationals also felt threatened, including Repsol, Mapfre, Movistar, BBVA, etc. Here we find the real reason for the undying hatred of Hugo Chávez and the revolution he led.
This same hatred surfaced in November 2007, during the XVII Ibero-American Summit, when Juan Carlos publicly attacked the president of Venezuela in a manner more associated with a bar room brawl than with the dignified aloofness of royalty: “Why don’t you just shut up?” This elegant phrase was met with a chorus of approval in the servile Spanish media, which tried to present the image of the king as a brave man, standing up to a foreign tyrant. Sadly, the truth was somewhat different. Whatever unfortunate character traits Juan Carlos may be accused of, conspicuous personal courage is hardly one of them.
Let us put the famous remark in context. The truth is that Chávez had annoyed Juan Carlos by pointing out that Madrid had supported the 2002 coup against his government: “It is difficult to believe that the Spanish ambassador would have supported the coup, or gone to the [Presidential] Palace, without the permission of his majesty.” The king was obviously unsettled by Chávez’s remarks, for the simple reason that they were true. Far from being a sign of bravery, the fact is that the King of Spain, stung by Chávez’s comments, momentarily lost control and blurted out the words that were subsequently so often repeated in the media.
Chávez later told me that he had not heard the king’s comments. I am sure that was the case, and that was fortunate for the king, because, unlike Juan Carlos, who was never noted for his linguistic skills, Chávez was very quick-witted and a formidable adversary in debate. If he had heard those words, he would undoubtedly have given Juan Carlos a lesson in good manners that the monarch would have remembered for the rest of his days. In contrast to Juan Carlos’ petulant outburst, Chávez calmly stated that he only asked for respect, recalling that, “like the king,” he too was head of state, “with the difference being that I was elected three times and he has never been elected.” That was a very appropriate reply, but the Spanish media ‘just shut up’ about it.
That little incident has no particular significance other than as a good example of petty-mindedness. But Juan Carlos’ interference in foreign affairs had far more serious consequences for the people of Spain. In 2003, Juan Carlos, in his capacity as Chief of the Armed Forces, decided to involve Spain in a criminal war against Iraq. In so doing, he ignored the will of the Spanish people who, by a vast majority, considered it an attack on a sovereign country whose goal was to control its own energy resources. By first dragging Spain into the reactionary military alliance of NATO, and then dragging it into an unpopular imperialist adventure in the Middle East, Juan Carlos demonstrated where his real allegiances lay: with Washington and himself. It is the last-named allegiance that has predominated all his life, and he has loyally stuck by it with a dogged determination, no matter what the cost. In the end, however, his pursuit of this noble cause, was to prove more costly than he could ever have imagined.
Hunting Elephants can Seriously Damage Your Crown
For decades, Juan Carlos was able to hide behind a solid wall of censorship through the Pact of Silence, which prevented the public from getting a real idea of the man, his ideas or his activities, whether political or personal. But no amount of censorship could disguise the fact that, already, support for the monarchy was falling away. The last straw came when it was revealed that he had taken a luxurious trip to Botswana in 2012 to hunt elephants. This was not the first time Juan Carlos showed off his expertise at big game hunting, as we shall see.
It is not generally appreciated that, during a hunting trip in Russia six years earlier, he shot a bear. Now bears – especially the Russian ones – are well known to be fearsome creatures, which only the bravest and most skilful hunters will venture to approach. Unfortunately, the Spanish king’s hunting prowess was somewhat dimmed by the revelation that the creature he shot was a domestic animal by the name of Mitrofan that had been fed vodka-laced honey to slow its reactions. A letter recounting the death of the unfortunate animal was leaked to the Russian press, and the governor of Vologda ordered an investigation.
Vyacheslav Pozgalev, the deputy head of the region’s hunting grounds conservation department deplored Mitrofan’s shooting in late August as “abominable”. “The party sacrificed a good-humoured and jolly bear who had been kept at a farm in the village of Novlenskoye,” Sergey Starostin wrote. “The bear was put into a cage and … the party made him drunk with vodka mixed with honey and pushed him into the field. Quite naturally, the massive drunken animal became an easy target. His Majesty Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with one shot.”7
After such bad luck with Russian bears, the king decided to try his hand at shooting African elephants instead. To avoid that terrible loneliness, which is the lot of all big game hunters, this most Catholic monarch, firm pillar of the Establishment and family values, was accompanied in Botswana by his sweetheart, the German aristocrat Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. This delightful holiday was paid for by the generosity of the Spanish taxpayer (who naturally knew nothing about it).
Under normal circumstances, this romantic assignation would perhaps have not attracted so much negative publicity. After all, is not a King entitled to an occasional love affair? What would magazines like Hola do without such important news to enliven the dreary lives of their readers? And while it is true that the elephant is an endangered species, past history suggests that they were in no particular danger, since the king’s shooting skills are notoriously poor. Unfortunately for the aging monarch, this little safari did not take place under normal circumstances but in the middle of the most severe economic crisis in recent Spanish history.
Only weeks before, he told a reporter that he was so upset about the growing number of unemployed that he was having trouble sleeping. Maybe this insomnia was what persuaded him to seek a peaceful night’s sleep in the African savannah. Or maybe it was the company of one of his girlfriends that provided him with the necessary conditions for bedtime. Either way, the story did not go down well with the Spanish public. In times of austerity when people are informed that everyone must make sacrifices to solve the crisis made by the bankers, the spectacle of the head of state enjoying a €10,000-a-day hunting safari was too much for even the strongest stomach to take.
One month after the hunting trip, it was the king and Queen’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. Needless to say, they did not celebrate the occasion. “It would have been a bit ironic,” said Jaime Peñafiel, one of Spain’s most influential royal commentators. “There’s nothing to celebrate.”
Abdication
Juan Carlos was eventually forced to abdicate following a series of scandals. A poll by El Mundo revealed that nearly two-thirds of Spaniards thought the king should abdicate. The contrast between the extravaganza in Africa and the collapsing living standards of the king’s subjects was rather more than could be accepted by even the Spanish Establishment. Seeing that not just the fate of the Spanish Monarchy, like that of the African elephant, could be endangered, they hastily threw Juan Carlos overboard and pushed his son Felipe, Prince of Asturias, onto the throne.
This operation was accomplished as smoothly as changing the sheets on the royal bed. No referendum was called. On 2 June 2014, Juan Carlos announced his abdication in favour of his son Felipe de Borbón y Grecia, who would become Felipe VI. On 11 June 2014, Spanish deputies passed a law allowing the abdication of Juan Carlos, and in so doing opened the way to succession.
The same day, popular demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people demanding a referendum on the structure of the Spanish state and the establishment of a republic burst out across the country. According to several surveys, more than sixty per cent of all Spaniards supported a referendum. Already in 2011, according to the official Centre of Sociological Research, support for the monarchy had fallen below the level of five (on a scale from one to ten), for the first time since this poll began in 1994. By the time of Juan Carlos I abdication, the institution’s ratings further slumped to just 3.68.
However, the opinion of the people was not consulted, except in the persons of their elected representatives, who, as could be predicted, fell over themselves to pledge their undying loyalty to the new King of Spain. Thus, the will of Franco was confirmed, sanctified and faithfully carried on under the false flag of democracy. In this royal farce we see the full meaning of the comically-misnamed Transition to Democracy. Announcing the king’s abdication, Rajoy praised Juan Carlos, calling him a “tireless defender of our interests”. However, he did not say exactly whose interests he was referring to. The abdication of Juan Carlos and the enthronement of Felipe was an attempt to contain the crisis of the regime of 1978, which had become widely unpopular.
Juan Carlos left ‘his’ country in a severe economic crisis with an unemployment rate of twenty-six per cent, one of the highest in Europe; more than 6 million unemployed; an unprecedented number of suicides – nine per day – since the economic crisis of 2008 began; and more than 3 million people living in conditions of “severe poverty,” that is to say, 6.4 per cent of the population live on less than €307 per month. But the rich had grown considerably richer, even during the crisis. The bankers were raking in the money, even as they threw innumerable families on to the street. This gives us a clue as to the real identity of the interests to which Mr. Rajoy referred.
The credibility of the royal family was further damaged by an embezzlement scandal in which the king’s own son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin Liebaert, Duke of Palma de Mallorca and husband of the Infanta Cristina, was put on trial for fraud and misappropriation of public funds. One would imagine that the royal family already possessed sufficient wealth as a result of the generosity of the Spanish people not to have to get involved with illicit money deals. But involved they were – and on a lavish scale.
Spaniards, particularly young people, began to draw dangerous conclusions from all this. They began to draw a connection between the lavish lifestyle of the king and his family and the economic and political interests that had brought Spain to the brink of an abyss. The very existence of the monarchy was in danger. The only solution was to sacrifice Juan Carlos and hand the throne to his son Felipe, who retained a level of support of around sixty-six per cent. On 14 April 2013, on the anniversary of the establishment of Spain’s last democratically-elected republic, thousands of people thronged Puerta del Sol, a central square in Madrid, in a demonstration against the Spanish monarchy, demanding a republic.
But to this very day, the people of Spain have not had the opportunity to participate in a referendum to decide whether they want a monarchy or not.
Corruption
As always happens, social democracy prepares the path for a swing to the right. In the final years of the González government, there were several cases of corruption, notably the scandals involving Civil Guard Director Luis Roldán Ibáñez. These were nothing in comparison to what followed under the PP governments, but they served to undermine support for the PSOE. In one of these affairs, Deputy Prime Minister Alfonso Guerra resigned due to the misconduct of his brother, Juan. At least he had the decency to resign. But later the ministers of the PP, up to their necks in scandals of all kinds, clung stubbornly to their posts as limpets stick to a rock.
The corruption that is endemic in modern-day Spain has its roots in the Franco dictatorship. Franco’s rule was deeply corrupt, with the dictator enriching himself, standing at the head of what his biographer Paul Preston characterised as “institutionalised pillage.” When Franco died in 1975, it is calculated that he had accumulated a personal fortune of 400 million Euros. Not a bad result for a man who was said by the official propaganda to have led a frugal life.
Simona Levi, an Italian artist says that Spain’s political parties and their incestuous relationship with banks and other institutions are one of the major causes of corruption in Spain, together with lawyers and judges who are exceedingly zealous in their persecution of rappers critical of the system and comedians who make fun of the Almighty, but inexplicitly blind to the systematic plunder of public money that goes on under their very noses.
Under the government of the PP, corruption was raised to a veritable art form. Its practitioners were brazen and insolent, openly flouting their ill-gotten wealth in the face of public opinion. If they were found out, they simply denied everything – like Rodrigo Rato – and refused to resign. That is how the Rajoy government succeeded in clinging to power for so long, even though it was besmirched from head to toe with the filthy slime of proven corruption.
The party had set up an illegal mechanism involving its national treasurer, José Luis Bárcenas Gutiérrez, regional leaders and businessmen. Private capitalists and companies would make cash donations to the party, which it would use to fund its election campaigns as well as to make under-the-table payments to party leaders. In exchange, regional presidents and local mayors would award contracts to these companies. These cases, involving the PP at all levels and in all regions of the country where they held power, cost the public purse billions of Euros.
An excellent example of this was the Palma Arena multi-sport pavilion in Palma de Mallorca. The construction, commissioned by the PP regional president Matas, overspent by double the initial budget. Involved in this corruption scandal was the Nóos Institute, a non-profit organisation run by Urdangarin, King Felipe’s brother-in-law, who had set up a network of money laundering and embezzlement using the monarchy as a calling card.
The Castellón airport was another example of extravagant public works and misuse of public funds. At the cost of 150 million Euros to the taxpayer, this pet project of regional PP leader Carlos Fabra Carreras, was inaugurated in 2011 when its runway had not yet been cleared by air safety authorities and with no scheduled flights. It was presided over by a statue of Fabra himself. Four years later, the airport was still idle when it was sold, at a loss of 50 million, to a private group. The runway had deteriorated so much it had to be rebuilt. Fabra was indicted for corruption regarding sponsorship contracts signed by the airport company.
Rodrigo de Rato y Figaredo was economy minister in Spain and a prominent figure in the ruling People’s Party (PP). This respectable gentleman was chairman of the Bankia bank for two years until just before its state bailout in 2012. Then he was promoted to the head of the world’s most important and influential financial institution, the International Monetary Fund. In 2017, Rato was found guilty of the misuse of credit cards. The cards were used to buy jewels, holidays and expensive clothes, according to documents filed with Spain’s High Court, but also to fund such trivial things as trips to the cinema.
The pettiness of this last detail shows that the corrupt Spanish politicians do not have much class, even as criminals. To steal large sums of money for jewellery and holidays in the Bahamas is at least something resembling the world of Al Capone, but to rob the public in order to buy cinema tickets shows a meanness of spirit that would make any self-respecting pickpocket go crimson with shame. The former head of the IMF was not going to take this lying down. He naturally appealed against this affront to his dignity, angrily denying any wrongdoing, and arguing the expenses he had incurred on the Bankia credit cards were “perfectly legal”. Unfortunately, the judges that day were not in a mood for jokes. The Supreme Court confirmed the jail sentences of between four months and more than four years for sixty-four former Bankia executives, including Rato.
The so-called ‘black cards’ case provoked widespread anger in Spain when the scandal first broke in 2014. At that time the country was recovering from years of recession, accompanied by mass unemployment, vicious cuts and austerity. Why was there austerity? Because there was a deficit in the public finances. But why was there a deficit? Because the government, in its wisdom, had saved the private banks by handing over billions of Euros of public money. In fact, the banking crisis was partly triggered by Bankia’s massive bailout.
Simona Levi concluded: “Corruption is an extractive system, like the landowner system, or slavery, there’s an organised group taking money”. This is very true. In a factory, if a worker breaks a machine, he is sacked. But if a handful of bankers wreck the financial system of the entire world, they are not sacked or imprisoned, but rewarded with billions of taxpayers’ money. The bankers pocket the cash without even saying thank you. They continue with their lavish lifestyle, increasing their personal fortunes by all kind of legal and illegal means. One or two, like the unfortunate Mr. Rato, are caught. Most are not.
The Cifuentes Affair, or How the PP Acquires Intellect
The Cifuentes scandal exposed to public view, not only the corruption that exists at the highest levels of government, but also the arrogance of Spain’s right-wing politicians, who are worthy inheritors of the mantle of Franco. They regard themselves as the only legitimate rulers of Spain. They cannot be questioned, criticised or removed from office. They are above the law and have a profound contempt for public opinion.
A laboratory specimen of these creatures is Cristina Cifuentes Cuencas, the former Madrid regional premier and leading member of the PP. Being in charge of Spain’s capital city was, in itself, a prestigious and highly lucrative position. Cristina was riding high. But not high enough, it appears. It was not enough to be an important public figure. Even the more than generous fruits of office did not satisfy her insatiable appetite for fame and success. Despite all her success in public life, there was something missing. She wanted to be regarded as an intellectual.
But there was one small problem. She lacked a master’s degree, which, as everyone knows, is what turns an ordinary citizen by art of magic, into an intellectual. But not to worry. Every problem has a solution. A master’s degree, when all is said and done, is just a scrap of paper. As everybody knows, scraps of paper may be obtained any day of the week – provided one has the necessary authority (and money) to obtain one.
So, without giving it a second thought, Cristina approached her contacts in the King Juan Carlos University (URJC), making the necessary application, to certain individuals who, apparently, specialised in the falsification of documents. She then found herself the proud possessor of a document certifying that she successfully completed a master’s course at the Public Law Institute (IDP) of said university. Abracadabra! The First Minister of Madrid was suddenly an intellectual!
Alas! While every problem has a solution, every solution has a problem. This lesson she was soon to learn. Unfortunately for the new Master in Public Law, even in post-Transition Spain, forgery of public records is a criminal offence entailing three to six years of prison. Had she paid attention to the teachers in the classes she never attended, Cristina might have been aware of this regrettable fact. But since none of the students on this course could ever remember seeing her in any class, she could hardly have learned anything at all.
Not only had she had never attended any classes, but she had not taken any exams either. It seems that a university employee altered her grades transcript to make it look as if she had completed her coursework. Cifuentes claims to have defended her final thesis before a three-member panel. But this thesis never saw the light of day, and no official records exist of any such event. When pressed to produce evidence, Cifuentes produced a university document signed by the three members of the examining panel. It later emerged that at least two of the signatures were forged, and, as we have seen, forgery of public documents is a crime that carries a prison sentence.
That proved a tipping point. Professors who had backed Cifuentes suddenly denied having examined her thesis and the director of the master’s programme admitted fabricating the document she presented. An internal investigation by the university concluded there was no evidence of her defending her thesis. Finally, the public prosecutor’s office stepped in.
Cifuentes kept silent while the evidence mounted against her but then doubled down: She filed a criminal complaint against the journalists from El Diario who broke the story. She published an incoherent narrative, which was immediately disproved. In the end the PP’s Madrid chief was publicly exposed as a liar and a cheat. But did she show humility or ask for forgiveness? Not at all! She appeared brazenly defiant, and she attacked the media. She had broken the Eleventh Commandment – the most important one of all: Thou shalt not get found out.
Cifuentes was not the only PP official to be caught up in the university scandal. El País reported that Pablo Casado, now the PP’s top leader, obtained the same master’s degree as Cifuentes, also in disputed circumstances. He admitted passing courses despite not having gone to class, and showed some of the essays he’d written. Let nobody ever tell you that the leaders of the PP cannot write!
‘A Criminal Organisation’
There were many other scandals, but to enumerate them would require a work longer than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Any other government in Western Europe would have collapsed long before, dragged down under the weight of shame, as scandal after scandal hit the headlines. But not that of Mariano Rajoy. There he stood, unflappable, impervious and unblinking in the eye of the storm, while the murky waters of scandal lashed the worm-eaten vessel of the Popular Party. Until, at last, one wave, larger and more devastating than the others, dragged him, kicking and screaming, from the quarterdeck.
Corruption played an important role in the final collapse of the PP government in 2018, when the National Court ruled that the Popular Party had benefited from a network of kickbacks and payments for contracts going back to 1989.
During the investigation of the Operación Púnica,8 the judge established that there had been a “criminal organisation” with the aim of carrying out embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion, etc., involving dozens of local and regionally elected officials of the PP, as well as businessmen.
The PP is currently on trial for another murky affair: the destruction of Mr Bárcenas’ computers. When the scandal about the illegal financing of the PP finally came out into the public domain, PP officials broke into the office of Bárcenas inside the party headquarters, seized his computers and erased all data.
What could have been the reason? They claimed that this was normal procedure when a handover of responsibilities occurs. Furthermore, they maintain that the computers contained no relevant information. But if that was the case, why would they need to overwrite the hard drives thirty-five times and then physically destroy them? Could it possibly be that party officials, fearing that the former party treasurer had kept a record of his illegal activities in funding the party, took the very reasonable decision to ensure that there was no evidence that could be used against the party by the simple procedure of destroying it?
We are unfortunately not able to provide a satisfactory answer to this mystery, which fortunately will finally be resolved in the courts. The judge decided that there was a case to answer. Nor is this the only case in which the PP used dubious, and flagrantly illegal methods to further its aims.
There is also the ‘Caso Kitchen’, which alleges that the Popular Party Minister of the Interior used his powers illegally to steal documents that Bárcenas had in his possession.
According to the prosecution, at a time when Bárcenas was in jail, police officers, acting on instructions from the Minister of the Interior, broke into Bárcenas’ home and stole the aforementioned documents. It is perhaps no coincidence that these documents contained evidence of the illegal financing of the PP. What we are talking about here is a case of officials of a political party using powers of public office to carry out illegal operations in order to protect the illegal activities of the party.
For the first time in Spain, a political party as such, not just an individual politician, was found guilty in a corruption trial. The judges have concluded that there existed “a real and effective system of institutional corruption by means of manipulative mechanisms for concluding public contracts at a central, regional and local level, in close and continuous relationships with key members of the party.”
Most people in Spain will have drawn the logical conclusion from all this: that the party that ruled Spain for decades is neither more nor less than a criminal organisation, the main aim of which is the personal enrichment of its leading members. In any genuine democracy, where the rule of law counts for something, such a party would be made illegal and its leaders sent to jail. But in Spain today, the People’s Party continues on its merry way, laughing in the face of justice. The court cases regarding corruption and involving the PP have not yet finished.
The question that is on many people’s minds is whether Spain’s rich and powerful are accountable before the law. True, Rodrigo Rato and a few others went to jail. But many, many more were never even investigated, let alone put on trial. The reason for this is not necessarily inefficiency on the part of the police. It is simply the product of a culture of impunity, which has been inherited, lock, stock and barrel, from the Franco regime, which was corrupt to the marrow of its bones, and carried over from the badly-misnamed Democratic Transition.
In June 2018, the Rajoy government was defeated in a vote of confidence, and replaced by a minority PSOE government led by Pedro Sanchez. To what extent this will signify a real change remains to be seen. The past record of the PSOE is not very reassuring. In any case, what all this proves beyond doubt is that what is required in Spain is not superficial tinkering but a root and branch change of the entire rotten system.
[1] Patrick Baker, The Spanish Transition to Democracy – A Missed Opportunity for the Left?
[2] Izquierda Unida (United Left) was set up as an electoral coalition in 1986 by the Communist Party and six other smaller parties.
[3] El País, 19 September 2012.
[4] Alasdair Fotheringham, 22 September 2012, ‘Santiago Carrillo: Communist leader who assisted Spain’s transition to democracy’, The Independent.
[5] Vanitatis, 4 December 2014, ‘La lista de propiedades y el sueldo millonario de Felipe González’.
[6] Lamarea, 4 January 2017, ‘Felipe González y las élites: Quien tiene un amigo tiene un tesoro’.
[7] Adrian Blomfield, 20 October 2006, ‘Bear “hunted” by King of Spain was drunk on vodka’, The Telegraph.
[8] A 2014 investigation into cash for contracts which led to the arrest of fifty-one politicians and businessmen.