Spanish Shilling

Gracious me, I’ve been posting articles here at Eye on Spain more or less weekly since October 2020: most of which come from editorials and content for a news bulletin I send out to subscribers called Business over Tapas since January 2013. Some of them political, others useful, and then there were a few comic ones too.

Right now, it’s a fresh new year and hopefully our friends Bibi, Donnie and Vlad (and various others, needless to say) will make appropriate resolutions to reign in their evident enthusiasm for death and destruction.

Here in Spain, we see that none of our political parties are doing particularly well, with scandals emerging from the woodwork: normal I suppose when one is in the public eye for a spell.

I think Feijóo will be the first to go, but we shall see.

I was in Granada over Christmas, staying with the in-laws. On the Thursday, Christmas Day, a group of fourteen of us from three generations found ourselves enjoying a noisy lunch in a gigantic hanger of a restaurant located in the suburbs and filled with families. Me and the Spanish granddad, both of us stone deaf, smiling and winking gamely at each other over the fish as the rest of the comensales helped to contribute to the ambient cacophony.

Granada remains my favourite city, and I am glad that one of my American granddaughters will be moving there to study from this Easter. This will give me the perfect excuse to drive up the motorway now and again to visit.

New Year’s Eve in a noisy affair here on the coast, with fireworks, the regular explosion of champagne corks and an occasional screech as someone is pushed fully dressed into the pool.

The best place for me to be on these merry occasions is safely in bed with a good book. 

My best wishes to all this New Year.

From CBS News: What is Antifa? ‘In the USA, the right-wing media blames antifa members for rioting and looting. Democrats have also condemned such violence, but many on the left say the rhetoric about antifa (i.e., anti-fascist) is greatly exaggerated, and that it's less of an organized movement than just something of "an idea."

Swiss Info says: ‘Antifa, designated by US President Donald Trump as a "domestic terrorist organization," is a diffuse "anti-fascist" movement of left-wing activists that experts say is more of a political ideology than an organized group…’ We read: ‘Antifa, from the word anti-fascism, was already in use in Germany in the early 1930s, where "anti-fa" socialist groups tried to oppose the rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazis…’ 

For some reason, perhaps to escape the obvious point that our fathers and grandfathers fought, precisely, against fascism in the 1940s, the American right pronounces it ‘antee-fuh’ rather than ‘anti-fah’!

But much of what politicians say about antifa isn't quite true. Here's what antifa is and what it isn't.

Antifa is not a highly organized movement, nor is it merely an idea. Antifa is a loose affiliation of local activists scattered across the United States and a few other countries.

‘In general, people who identify as antifa are known not for what they support, but what they oppose: Fascism, nationalism, far-right ideologies, white supremacy, authoritarianism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia…’

Flag shaggers, antifeminists and fake-news merchants.

Some of us don’t like cockroaches either.

Here in Spain (where no one had ever heard of it until now) La Razón recently ran a piece titled ‘Antifa: the masked figures who want to stifle public debate. The United States is pushing to outlaw them, Spain to welcome them’.

Apparently, if you believe La Razón, which you most certainly shouldn’t, the country is swarming with them. The Spanish ABC posted in October: ‘Trump orders foreign anti-fascists to be designated as terrorist groups. A Trump advisor tells him to look at who belongs to these groups in Spain’.

No one - is the short answer to that, because it’s an opinion rather than an entity. 

Nevertheless, because it’s worth a shot, the Trump-admirer Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, has recently called for antifa to be declared as a terrorist organisation in Spain: the proposal to be debated in the National Parliament in February.

Perhaps, on sober reflection, what we really need to do is to ban the anti-antifa program.

And so we come to 'Polarisation'.

According to Google AI, ‘Political polarization is the growing ideological gap where political groups and individuals move away from moderate views towards extreme ends of the spectrum, creating deep divisions, increased hostility, and difficulty finding common ground…’ 20Minutos says ‘The scar of polarization: five million Spanish people have broken with family or friends due to political motives’. Their recent questionnaire asks if it’s happened to you. And then along comes Campofrío (the ham people) with their Christmas advert: Let’s get together and bury our differences (video)…

(I think they could have maybe dropped Ana Rosa Quintana from the advert).

I suppose - as Vox appears to be gaining support - my main worry is this:

Is Ol’ Santi planning a Spanish version of ICE (the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement) where lump-heads get to wear combat gear and a mask as they round up anyone who looks like he didn’t come over in the Mayflower; maybe make it a more Spanish version, something like Franco himself would have approved of?

He'll need the approval of whoever will be running the PP when Spain next goes to the polls. 

I’m writing this while sipping on a Marzipan brandy, a slightly peculiar cordial that comes in a tall and skinny bottle from the local Aldi supermarket.

It makes me think of the old days, when one’s Christmas preference was a bottle of El Gaitero, a sweet cider which is sold in a champagne bottle – because the *pop* as the cork is released is an important part of the seasonal celebration.

Also, it was cheap – indeed, it still is.

Good too, even when you’re drinking alone.

Long before they built an Aldi on the other side of the hill from where I’m living, my parents would have to take the cuatro latas (as the Renault 4s were known) along the coast to our market town – Vera – which in the early seventies had opened the area’s first supermarket: Emilio’s – which I am glad to see is still going, fifty years later. You could wander around and push exciting stuff into your basket: ‘impulse shopping’ had arrived (‘What on earth is this?’ my mother might ask as she eyed something new).

Locally, we had a few groceries. The best known was in the village square: Juana’s place. She ran the shop – you would point at the shelves and say in your best Spanish ‘uno por favor’, continuing until you (and Juana) were content. Later, and Juana would catch on fast to her new market, she nailed a sign outside the store which read ‘Foodings’. 

There was a fellow known as Tea-cosy Roger who lived in the back of the village, and one could drop by to ask him to pick up this or that in Almería (an hour and a half away) where he would go on the bus once a week. He always wore a colourful woolly hat, obviously knitted by his adoring mum. His front room had a single tin of mock-turtle soup on a shelf to underline his commercial spirit.

Later, a local eccentric called Ian would offer an even more interesting service – driving up now and then to a suburb of Benidorm in his BMW and trailer to pick up British sausages and other goodies, to be mobbed on his triumphant return.

Supplies also arrived by air, as friends flying out from the UK remembered to bring bacon and teabags mixed in with their luggage.

A shop in the local port of Garrucha would regularly be talked into ordering strange products by a salesman that only a foreigner could possibly like. Diego would mournfully say as I enthusiastically picked up his final carton of johannisbeersaft, ‘Well, thank God that’s gone, I’m never buying that again’. Next week, he’d have a special on Irish butter biscuits.

For proper meat, my parents would drive down to the nearest decent butcher, a German in Torremolinos. This would take several days for one reason and another.

And thus, we survived. The local milk came in a tall returnable bottle fitted with a metal bottle top (like a beer). It was slightly blue in colour thanks to the added formaldehyde. On the bright side, it never 'went off'. Butter came in a tin from Belgium. Pork, goat, chicken and eggs were easy to find in the local markets. When the fridges began to appear in the shops, we found Spain’s excellent yoghurts and ice-creams – although the milk would take a little longer to arrive, waiting for the twin inventions of UHT and Swedish tetra-brik packaging.

Simple times. One paid in pesetas and got one’s change either in small coins or sweets.

But these days, as our area shyly joins the 21^st Century, we can now lay claim to several small supermarkets and four large ones, including the recently opened Aldi.

They are all playing Christmas music in their stores right now, which sort of explains how I ended up with a bottle of Marzipan brandy.   

I made a little joke the other day and put it on Facebook. Contemplating my mortality, I noted that I was nevertheless younger than Trump, Bibi and Putin (at 79, 76 and 73 respectively), and with a bit of luck, would outlive the three of them. Although, it’s true that they probably enjoy better medical attention than I do.

None of the three above-mentioned gentlemen appear to have any love for Spain. 

I’ll leave it to The Gentle Reader to agree or disagree about those three leaders – and perhaps a few others (Kim Jong Un springs to mind) who are jostling for position behind them for the Planetary Ogre Awards – and attempt instead to focus here on their enmity with Spain and indeed Europe. 

Let’s see: Donald Trump is annoyed with Spain for not leading the re-armament of Nato, for failing to buy enough American military hardware and for letting in too many immigrants – particularly those of the coloured persuasion.

Bibi Netanyahu is crushed over our negative reaction to his country’s unwelcome presence in Eurovision, the issues over the Tour de España this past summer and also our unremitting anger against his genocidal activities in Palestine.

Vladimir Putin simply doesn’t like any country that backs Ukraine and he has threatened Europe with a ‘if you want war, I’ll give you war’. A nasty piece of work in my opinion.

As for his current occupation of as much of the Ukraine as he can obtain, it doesn’t appear that Donald Trump is as concerned as one might hope, as the recent American plan for the next two decades seems to suggest that they will be busy with their own back-yard, if one can so describe Venezuela and Columbia (and don’t forget Greenland), leaving Russia free to snaffle up bits of the old Soviet Union and presumably, allow Xi to absorb the lost province of Formosa, currently called Taiwan.

Meanwhile, the surviving bits of Europe can go play with our rigorously attached plastic bottle-caps.

Russia, too, is especially keen in manipulating the voting system in other countries to help the far-right, or (as in Catalonia in 2017) to divide the Europeans in any way that they can.

All these autocracies are actively trying to change our minds about this and that and they use fake-news, distortions, legions of preppy influencers, ample funding and false narratives to do so.

Europe, it would appear, has been having it too good, and we need to buckle down to the lofty ideals of our billionaires and pay more in taxes, take out private health insurance and keep working into our eighties.

We read that the Trump administration has just released its National Security Strategy, the blueprint for the next two decades. Trump, it appears, is against the influence of multilateralism – whether the United Nations, Nato or the European Union. ‘In recent days, the level of aggression against Brussels has reached an unprecedented level. Before, there have been many veiled attacks and insults, with malicious and condescending remarks, but now we are facing a full-blown assault, without any attempt at retraction, on the leadership and unity of Europe, because a divided bloc, where Euroscepticism grows, is better for them, just as it is for Russia. This way, we will be weak, and that leads to capitulation’, says El Huff Post.

That document announced the U.S. will back away from the global alliances formed in the wake of World War II and calls for making sure Nato, the organization that has opposed first Soviet and now Russian aggression since 1949, doesn’t continue to expand (so much for the Ukraine). The administration’s document calls for a world dominated not by a rules-based international order in which countries must respect each other’s sovereignty, but by a few major powers that control weaker nations in their sphere of influence.

The document also warns about Europe becoming less white, or as Trump says “Europe is facing the disappearance of its civilization” (unless we knuckle down).  The BBC adds: at the same time ‘…the document hails the growing influence of "patriotic European parties" and says "America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit".

"We want Europe to remain European," says the American plan. In a sort of far-right, anti-immigrant way.

And then there’s Elon Musk who is currently calling to 'Abolish the EU', for his own commercial reasons.

Russian officials appear to be happy with this U.S. foreign policy, and we read that ‘The Kremlin on Sunday welcomed US President Donald Trump’s move to stop calling Russia a direct threat and said his new national security strategy, which portrays European powers as in decline, largely accorded with Russia’s own perceptions’.

In short, it appears that a still disunited Europe is either on its own or must cozy up to the Chinese.

As the aggressive foreign powers attack us through fake-news, manufactured guilt, the Internet and Hollywood, we can only reply with our softer version of spreading our own culture through the Instituto Cervantes, the British Institute, the Goethe-Institut and so on.  

Pedro Sánchez is one of our better statesmen, and he said in Los Cortes this Saturday during the celebrations of the anniversary of the Spanish Constitution that “Europe will never be under the tutelage of anyone, nor will it be a vassal of any political power or any national power from other geographical latitudes”. On Monday, the President of the European Council, António Costa, stated that the European Union would not accept any "threat of interference in European political life". He also referred to the U.S. document’s text which criticizes the "regulatory suffocation" of the European Commission.

Meanwhile, as Trump joyously received the FIFA’s peace prize, Pedro Sánchez was awarded the Mario Benedetti International Prize for the Fight for Human Rights and Solidarity 2025, an award he shares with the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese.

Now, if we could just resolve the Ukraine issue in a sensible way.

Two rather hectic weeks have just passed here in Spain. Will things settle down again?

Probably not. 

On the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death, last November 20th, the Supreme Court (five ‘conservatives’ and two ‘progressives’) abruptly announced, five to two and according to inclination, that they had found the Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz to be guilty of passing secrets (without any proof – the concept of innocent until proven otherwise having apparently failed its test). The written sentence to be published in due course (it would need to be creative). It turns out that, coincidence abounds, three of the five were imparting remunerative classes in jurisprudence at the same time to the Colegio de Abogados de Madrid: one of the private accusations against the Attorney General.

The AG promptly fell on his sword and on November 25th, the (single) day when violence against women is remembered, Teresa Peramato was chosen to take his place.

The word ‘lawfare’ might have appeared here and there in the lefty media in recent reports.

And so, on to the next crisis: The Government has been rocked by the accusations against two of their members of Saving Something for a Rainy Day: the previous Party Organisation Secretary José Luis Ábalos, and his successor in the same post Santos Cerdán. Ábalos is now in ‘preventative custody’ against a ‘risk of escape’, evidently having forgotten to nip outside the morning before to buy a packet of smokes, more fool he.

Indeed, since Ábalos is (still) a deputy, he must be tried by the Supreme Court, which is a lot faster – they have far fewer cases – than the usual National Audience (where Cerdán, having given up his parliamentary seat, and thus his ‘aforo’, will one day be tried – I mean, they are just starting now on Jordi Pujol -poor chap, he’s 95- eleven years down the line!) The problem for Pedro Sánchez is that he’s lost a deputy (Ábalos, while no longer in the PSOE, had remained loyal as an independent). This puts him in an even worse space than before, with one less vote in the Chamber – unless Junts changes its mind.

Since we last spoke, Carlos Mazón has quit his post, and a deal between the PP and Vox has given the presidency of the Valencian region to Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca (PP). Mazón, who still has his ‘aforamiento’ (about 250,000 people in Spain enjoy this parliamentary immunity), and most of his monthly income, is dancing around the current judicial enquiry into what he was doing (or not doing) that day last year when 229 of his loyal subjects were drowned.

Over in Almería, while I was away, the president and vice-president of the provincial authority known as ‘la diputación’, in the hands of the PP, together with the PP mayor of Fines, were arrested, accused of corruption. ‘Pillowcases full of cash’ says one report. They have all now been chucked out of the party.

And this brings us to the Sunday demonstration in Madrid (to date, the seventh called by Feijóo), for all those – less the crowd from Almería – who would like to see Sánchez throw in the towel and call for elections, prior, as Feijóo said in a speech to the Faithful, ‘to joining his pals Koldo, Cerdán and Ábalos in the (rather comfortable-looking) Soto de Real prison’.

What a time to be in the flag manufacturing business!

The error of the PP is to continually harp on bringing down the Government (without success) which breeds frustration for their supporters rather than confidence. They might be better advised in promoting their own program – if they have one.

The PP’s likely future leader, the increasingly eccentric Isabel Díaz Ayuso was there, and she warned in a speech, about the threat from ETA – the dead duck terror group who handed in their guns a number of years ago. Apparently, they're plotting something with Sánchez.

So far, the leader of the Opposition hasn’t found enough support for a parliamentary motion of censure, so he appears to be putting his faith in a popular uprising. Feijóo had been trying to get support from the Junts per Catalunya people – they have seven seats in the Cortes – but they think it unlikely that he truly wants Carles Puigdemont, the exiled party leader, to be forgiven for trying to remove Catalonia from Spanish control back in 2017.

The Guardian says that ‘Felix Bolaños, Spain’s justice minister, said the PP and the far-right Vox party – which did not take part in Sunday’s demonstration – were fundamentally the same and were competing to see which could say the most outrageous things about the prime minister’.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the written sentence – the full resolution – from the Supreme Court in the Attorney General case (these normally come with or before the conviction) to iron out a few remaining doubts.