Society Is Sick: Corruption in Spain

There was a time when I paid comparatively little attention to politics in Mallorca or indeed to politics in Spain. What made me take far greater notice was what happened on 27 November 2006. The mayor of Andratx, Eugenio Hidalgo, was arrested, as was the director-general of land planning at the regional government. The trail from the corruption case which exposed Hidalgo was to lead to Jaume Matas, then the president of the Balearics. More or less all the corruption investigations since had their origins in Andratx. Investigators and judges began to make links; Urdangarin, Munar, Matas, you can trace them all back to that day eight years ago.

It is conceivable that fewer cases might have cropped up had it not been for the former attorney-general, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, seeking and appointing regional prosecutors to root out corruption and later creating the anti-corruption and organised crime prosecution service. In 2004 the Balearics got the first regional prosecutor, Juan Carrau, who instigated the case against Hidalgo, by which time he had been joined by the second prosecutor, the more celebrated Pedro Horrach. There are now four prosecutors in all.

As we are all too well aware, new corruption cases still arise with regrettable frequency. The prosecutors have greater powers, but they can't prevent corruption, only investigate it. Nevertheless, maybe these greater powers have had some deterrent effect or at least helped to improve the perception of corruption in Spain. The latest survey of corruption in 175 countries by Transparency International (TI) shows that Spain has improved three places since last year; it is ranked 37.

A director at TI, Alejandro Salas, has suggested that when economic times were good, corruption was hidden. Economic difficulties have brought about greater awareness and willingness to pursue the corrupt and a more open public and political debate about corruption. Hence why, one might suggest, Mariano Rajoy has been talking about the subject, but then Rajoy's pronouncements have tended to be reactive, as was the case with the now infamous "Spain is not corrupted".

Rajoy didn't actually say that "Spain is not corrupt". It was "is not corrupted". The semantic distinction is important, as it implies a corruption of recent times. But this is a view with which Alejandro Salas disagrees. "Corruption is not new in Spain. It is an historical phenomenon." "What strikes me is that corruption in Spain is very structural, very systematic. It is not just one party, not one government, not one province. It is impregnated into different sectors of society." Rajoy might be advised to take note of what Salas says, just as he might like to consider words that were spoken in 1993. "It is not politicians who are corrupt, but it is society that is sick." Who spoke them? Jaume Matas, who, in addition to having twice been Balearics president, was a colleague of Rajoy's in Aznar's national government. Matas was quoting a Spanish philosopher, José Luis Aranguren.

Gabriel Garcias is a professor of law at the university in Palma. He has said that "so long as there is no ethical or moral transformation in society, the law will solve nothing". I used this same quote in an article from 2010. The prosecutors have been prosecuting since then, but have they really had a deterrent effect? Maybe, but at the time I was quoting Garcias I was also quoting the Balearics spokesperson for the UPyD party, Juan Luis Calbarro: "The Balearics have the highest number of people who are corrupt or allegedly corrupt per square metre in Spain." Calbarro explained the link between politics and society thus: "businesspeople who are friends of certain politicians, businesspeople who assemble companies in order to receive adjudications decided by their political friends, as well as the wives, husbands, cousins and nephews of politicians".

Since the emergence of the Hidalgo affair in 2006, I have written some 70 articles with corruption as a central theme. The society-politics nexus has been a not uncommon aspect of these articles. Some might aver that politics are divorced from society at large. In terms of general society's distance from the political machinery and from decision-making, this is probably so, but society and politics are most definitely not separated in other ways. They are one and the same when it comes to corruption. Garcias and Calbarro said so in 2010. Salas now says so, and even Matas implied this twenty-one years ago.

The historical phenomenon of corruption to which Alejandro Salas refers can be found over the centuries. For example, the Inquisition was inherently corrupt on account of the need to fund and perpetuate itself, while the sham democracy from the later nineteenth century run by the local political bosses, the "caciques", was so corrupt that no one even sought to hide the fact. "Spain is not corrupted." It's a semantic error.