There was a meeting of the world’s main socialist leaders (well, the western ones anywa
y) in Barcelona late last week, with the presidents or prime ministers of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, South Africa and so on: President Sánchez the host.
As the Madrid leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso said cattily, a world meeting of narco-states. Having offended half of the planet, Ayuso then gave Venezuela’s María Corina Machado a golden gong during that worthy’s brief visit to Spain on Saturday to meet Feijóo and Abascal (Edmundo González, the old boy who either won or didn’t win the Venezuelan election last year and now living in exile in Madrid -at the invitation of Sánchez- couldn’t make the event down to an age-related illness).
Whether Ayuso’s medal plus a Golden Key donated to the Venezuelan leader by the Mayor of Madrid will both end up in Donald Trump’s massive trophy cabinet along with Corina’s Nobel Peace Prize and so many others remains to be seen.
Another story this past week was the regularization of up to half a million foreigners already living in Spain but without the proper paperwork. Mostly Latin Americans, but, yes, some Muslims and Africans too. Feijóo says he will go through them with a magnifying glass when he becomes president.
Since he can only reach that noble station with the support of Vox, one can believe that he means it.
Indeed, the share-out of the first of the regional elections – Extremadura back in December – has now been resolved following acquiescence over 74 points from Santiago Abascal’s party. Vox takes the vice presidency and two departments: social services and agriculture.
The reason to call the elections last autumn in the first place was to get rid of the Voxxers, but precisely the opposite occurred, and it’s no surprise to see that their benign support didn’t come cheap. Vox continues to deny gender violence and uses broad strokes in its denialist speeches against renewable energies or the green agenda. And then there’s the migrant issue (or ‘institutional racism’ to give it its correct title), where migrants (that includes us guiris as well), will be placed at the back of the queue for the doctor and any other public services guaranteed in the Constitution…
María Guardiola, the president of Extremadura, in 2023: “I cannot allow those who deny gender violence or who are dehumanizing immigrants to enter the government.”
That is precisely what she has just signed, after four months of increasingly frantic negotiations with Vox. As Groucho Marx said: ‘I have my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others’.
Foreigners in Extremadura are just 4.7% - far from the national average of 14%, indeed the total population of the region is shrinking, but the Voxxers are on a roll.
Short of obtaining Spanish nationality, migrants of course don’t have the vote.
So it’s no burkas in the streets (they are as rare as hen’s teeth in Extremadura, but one has a point to make). As for denying health to the foreigners – will that somehow stop them from sneezing on you? As the journalist Ignacio Escolar says, discriminating against the foreigners won’t make them disappear, it only makes their life harder.
There are two (rather larger) regions facing the same dilemna – whether to bow to the far-right (both Aragón and Castilla y León with PP majorities but needing Vox), and then the Region of Andalucía will be voting on May 17th (the PP is apparently a little short of a full majority there according to the pollsters).
If – let’s call it ‘the Extremadura Experiment’ – shows the PP prepared to submit to Vox on certain points which won’t cost them votes, then this will be the larger plan for when Spain goes to the polls next year. After all, there are no more frontiers against the far-right: ‘I am a democrat who respects election results’, says Feijóo.
They might be illegal, or bordering on the illegal, but a new PP/Vox government can (and will) change the laws it considers to be in error, granting ‘a national priority’ in social services to those with a DNI card.
Progressive voters must find what inspiration they can from Pedro Sánchez words last week at the Global Progressive Mobilization Summit of world leaders opposed to the policies of Donald Trump in Barcelona: "The far right and its lackeys make a lot of noise, a lot of tweets. But these extremists aren’t shouting because they're winning, they're shouting because they know their time is running out."
We shall see.