Wolf In Sheep's Clothing: the PP

The PP has delivered, thus bringing joy to a British expatriate community assumed to be, but far from exclusively, as tending to the right or a good deal further. Next year the PP will deliver unto Spain a new president, Mariano Rajoy. What, though, really is the PP? This is not an idle question, as it relates to how it is often perceived.

An old university friend of mine has lived in Barcelona since the late 1970s. Fluent in the languages, conversant with the nuances of language and of social and political life in Catalonia and Spain, he has also taught political theory - at La Salle University.

The other day, he asked me what I thought about the blue wave of the PP washing over the Balearics and then went on to give a perspective on the PP and on its treatment by the media. It's his, but it is not his alone.

Amongst other things, one paragraph stood out. I quote:

"I would take issue with the British press. They constantly describe the PP as a 'right-of-centre party', implying that it is some kind of benign, Disraeli, villa Tory outfit, when in reality it is easily the most right-wing mainstream party in Europe."

This isn't a simple matter of semantics. Delete "centre", and "right" on its own takes on a different complexion. A convention of using "centre-right" conforms with how we like to perceive the British Conservative Party, or how it, and most of the press, wishes it to be perceived. Whether the current version is, is a moot point, but within it do not lurk the issues that surround the PP and which are not of the centre.

The PP is a beast of immediate post-Franco times. Though it was founded in 1989, its lineage is clear; back to 1976 and when the Alianza Popular was created by Franco's former tourism minister. Manuel Fraga was considered a moderate in Franco terms. But all things are relative. The AP struggled for the first few years of its life because it was seen as representative of the old authoritarianism.

The PP still suffers from a hardline image, despite its portrayal as centre-right and despite Rajoy attempting to make himself appear moderate; elements within his party are anything but. It can't rid itself of its lineage. Indeed, it reinforces it. The neutering of the judge Baltasar Garzón has widely been seen as having been driven by the PP, with the Falange a willing castrator.

While this might all sound as though it is leading towards a paean for PSOE, it isn't. I can damn PSOE as well as I can the PP. But, although PSOE - Zapatero and Antich - have proven not to be up to the task of tackling economic crisis in Spain or the Balearics, the party has been responsible for a significant shift in social attitudes. It is Zapatero's one great achievement: one that elements within the PP would wish to reverse and destroy. And Rajoy has not convinced that he would be able to stop them, even were he to wish to.

To this social agenda, one can add the economic one. The Chicago school of slash-and-burn. Milton Friedman et al; Reaganomics, Thatcherism. I can already hear some voices cheering at the prospect. Spain needed and needs a dose of economic realism, but at what cost? And at what cost to Mallorca?

One of the criticisms levelled against José Bauzá is that he is merely an instrument of the bidding of the PP nationally. When Rajoy wins the next general election, a target for the PP will be the autonomous regions, of which the Balearics are one. A compliant PP president in Palma, and the agenda to slash dramatically the regions' spending, and one advocated by the IMF and others, will be set.

Bauzá, the PP, have enjoyed a good week. They have enjoyed a largely uncritical and non-analytical examination as to what is to come and as to the wolf that hides in the clothing of the sheepish Rajoy, who has been distinctly coy so as not to frighten the flocks of the Spanish electorate. And when the divisions that exist within the PP in Mallorca re-surface, ones related, for example, to the control by the national party and to anti-Catalanism, are grafted onto a national agenda of social illiberalism, the past week might start not to look so good.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.