From the Tea Party to the Carajillo Party

After having been a member of the European Union for a quarter of a century, the conviction that we are thoroughly European has been internalized in the conscience of Spanish citizens. We are at the point that when we see dissimilarities between ourselves and Europe, we take in this notion with evident incredulity. However, in some aspects our political culture has very little in common with Europe. With two big parties, one on the right and one on the left, the political spectrum is divided without extra room for anyone else to govern, which makes the situation very little like Europe and very much like the situation in the United States. From there the chaos is organized by the constitutional modifications agreed upon by said parties: The reaction of nationalist groups doesn’t have to do with the merits of the matter — if their communities had been independent, the EU would have imposed the same thing on them — but rather with the clearly undemocratic forms present in an issue of such importance.

The most obvious consequence of the gluttony of the bipartisan electorate is that the conservative party, including the extreme right and the progressive party, shows signs of radicalism. That Rick Perry, a distinguished tea party member who thinks that humans lived alongside dinosaurs and that women are the result of God taking a rib out of men, is set on track to be a presidential nominee seems incomprehensible, yet it is nothing out of the ordinary for the U.S. Republican Party. The demagogic fluctuations of Zapatismo are a good example of where satisfying the needs of the radical wing of a party can lead you, since it has dared to separate its political economy from the guidelines of the IMF. However, since the polls predict an electoral shift, I want to discuss here the danger that exists for the People’s Party, and above all for all of Spain, involving the dark side of the far right: the Carajillo Party headed by Saras and half Saros Peilin natives, that can hardly get through Genova Street.

Well what do you want me to tell you? Mr. Rajoy is no Helmut Kohl or Winston Churchill, but his conservative rhetoric sounds moderate and reasonable. I know already that a hidden agenda exists and that the economic cutbacks that he intends to apply in the event that he wins the election will be much more draconian than what he says. But this is inevitable in the present moment and I doubt that Rubalcaba could arbitrate less painful solutions if he rises with triumph. What worries me isn’t the economy, which in the end is imposed on us from beyond, but rather politics, a field in which, for better or for worse, the government that emerges from the elections will have to make decisions about as its exclusive responsibility. The PP has spoken clearly about what it plans to do in foreign policy, but it continues to cast too many shadows on its proposals for domestic policy. Without going any further, it is a matter that leans dangerously close towards neofranquismo’s language policy.

First, the obvious: This country is a multilingual state. Up until now, no one has responded to the challenge that this circumstance entails. One would expect that the conservation of linguistic heritage would be taken care of by the conservative party and that the progressives would be supporters of an international standard. This is happening in Europe, but it can be seen that Europe starts in the Pyrenees. Time is short. If the next government of Spain does not solve this problem or doesn’t solve it correctly, the territorial issue will blow up in their face. I’m not saying that this language issue is easy; Belgium has been without government for a year due to tensions between the Flemish-speaking and French-speaking communities. However, something must be done in Spain if we don’t want the language problem to be dragged out further.

I return to the Mr. Rajoy’s electoral program. He doesn’t say anything, save predictable generalities on this subject and, in principle, I would grant him the benefit of the doubt because, after all, he was born in a bilingual community. However there have been statements by some of his supporters that give off the unmistakable whiff of the Carajillo Party. To illustrate the point: In Aragon, President Luisa Fernanda Rudi says that they will change some aspects of the language act that the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party pushed for because it was assumed without the consensus of the other parties. It seems sensible; a law passed by the skin of your teeth can’t work out. But this is one thing, and another senior member of his government, which must apply the reformed law, affirmed his tweet after defending some strong remarks that “Catalan is not spoken in Aragon.” Bad start. I understand that this gentleman expressed irritation with some unfortunate maps where the Eastern fringe of Catalan-speaking Aragon is included directly with Catalonia, more or less like Hitler with regard to the Sudetenland. But the fact that he continues to insist that Santiago’s white horse is black is useless, and ultimately counterproductive. I wonder where they will hide if the fates dictate the need for an electoral pact between Mariano Rajoy and Artur Mas within a few weeks.

And although they do not do so, you can’t base governmental action on a falsehood. Of course Catalan is one of the languages in Aragon. Like it or not, it’s true, and we must act accordingly. It’s about respecting the criteria of the universities, for the same reason that in order to fix your car you would want to get the opinion of a mechanic and not his clerk cousin. But the fear of losing votes is usually a bad advisor and the easiest thing to do is to swim with the current, especially since in Aragon (though not only there) anything different is stigmatized. A cautious attitude of this kind may explain why some of the Aragonese of the Pyrenees, ruled by the PP with the support of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, want to instate an institute of peninsular languages supported by Spanish universities and unanimously approved by the previous administration. Are they afraid to declare that they speak Catalan in Aragon? Or worse: Are they worried that another controversy about the linguistic immersion in Catalonia that just erupted will lead the aforementioned body to rule in favor of it?

Here is another area in which the PP, and sometimes the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, flirts with radical positions. I am one of those who think that a language that is the mother tongue of almost half of the Catalan population cannot be treated as “foreign.” But this is to assume that minority languages can withstand the advance of majority languages with a strict bilingual equilibrium.

The economic upheavals from this summer have shown that the EU is not the whole solution and that it is better to belong to a big state in which diverse peoples live together than another tiny place like Greece, Ireland or even Portugal. The Spanish do not aim for more than stimulus for cohesion, and if we are going to have to continue to live in this inn that we call Spain, we’d better try and make it more comfortable to so our guests feel at home.

Three decades ago, the party led by Jose Maria Aznar began a voyage in which the conservative government’s attitude on these identity issues was much more modest than feared, probably because he was forced to enlist the support of nationalist parties. But that Spain of absolute majority was frustrated in its second term. I suspect that now the state would not tolerate a situation like that. Hence it is important to know the position of the PP and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party on these issues lest we end up getting cheated into being under the direction of the monolingual Carajillo Party.