Defenders Of Culture

It went very much under the radar, but last week the Spanish Government managed to slip in a small adjustment to the application of IVA. Having previously decided to reduce the maximum 21% rate for the sale of works of art to the 10% rate, commonly known as the tourist rate because it is the one which applies to certain tourist-related businesses, it said that it would be looking to possibly also reduce the 21% rate for other "cultural" activities. And last week it did just that. Final approval for these adjustments will wait until March, but there seems little doubt that the two activities so far identified as warranting the reduction will indeed benefit from it. And what is the second activity, the one that was quietly introduced last week? It is bullfighting.

When IVA was increased in September 2012, a number of activities which had until then enjoyed the reduced rate (8% before the increase to 10%) suddenly found themselves bracketed at the maximum rate. These included attractions, clubs, golf courses and many other activities which would probably not be defined as "cultural". The government, in reducing the rate for works of art, appeared to want to portray itself as defenders of culture, conveniently ignoring the fact that it, together with the banks, is the main collector of works of art in Spain. Nevertheless, and any possible vested interests aside, giving the art world some encouragement was not unwelcome. The same, however, cannot be said for the encouragement of the bullfighting industry.

Apart from its history, bullfighting qualifies as being of cultural importance (where the government is concerned) because last October Congress approved an initiative to have the bullfight declared as an example of "intangible cultural heritage of humanity" by UNESCO (this is the same award that was made to the Mallorcan Sibil·la chant). This initiative had been placed before Congress through a piece of "popular" legislation, which is the process whereby, if a required number of signatures are gathered for a petition, governments are obliged to consider legislative change or introduction. It is a process which can only be used for certain things, such as cultural activities, and the presentation of this petition to the national parliament (which required 600,000 signatures) was the same as the process in Catalonia which resulted in bullfighting being banned there (the required number of signatures was lower). Among those whose signatures appeared on the petition was Mariano Rajoy.

It shouldn't really need explaining that there was a huge chunk of politics behind the petition presented to parliament, just as it shouldn't really need explaining that the Spanish Government, i.e. the Partido Popular, has portrayed itself as the defender of the bullfight. As with art, so with the bullfight. Defenders of culture.

The announcement about the IVA reduction was overlooked because there was far more important parliamentary work last week. PSOE had attempted to overturn the introduction of the reformed abortion law. In a secret ballot in Congress, PSOE failed to do so. The new law will stand.

Reaction to confirmation of the reformed law in the Balearics led to some 80 gynecologists signing a letter calling for the law to be withdrawn; the 80 represent a majority of approximately 70%. Opposition to the reformed law has been widespread; even the Balearics health minister (Partido Popular) isn't fully in favour of it. And this opposition has centred on the lack of medical sense contained in the law. It has been condemned for having been politically motivated and politically motivated alone; a means of the Partido Popular nationally aligning itself with conservatives in the Catholic Church. It has also been condemned for being out of step with public opinion, and a Gadeso survey in the Balearics last week revealed that 71% of people were in favour of what had been a more permissive law before the government went ahead and made it that much more restrictive.

There is something rather perverse about a government which seems determined to return to the past and to ignore general public sentiment. Both bullfighting and abortion are symptomatic of that past. Franco liked nothing more than watching a bull get its ears cut off. He was of course also dead against abortion.

In The Pink: Catholic Church and the PP

Were you aware that in twenty years time half the world's population will be homosexual? This won't be as a consequence of some type of gender modification technique, but as a consequence of a programme set out by the United Nations.

Have I gone mad? No, not me, but the Bishop of Córdoba and Cardinal Antonelli of the Papal Government. In all seriousness, it would appear, the Cardinal has been telling the Bishop that UNESCO has a programme of ideology that will turn 50% of the world gay.

The claim would be hilarious (well, it is hilarious) if it weren't for the fact that the Catholic Church, or at least parts of it, seems to believe this nonsense. The Church has been fighting a losing battle in Spain and its best response is to parrot some complete drivel that the Vatican has dreamt up.

The wholesale global pinking that the UN allegedly has in mind is social-engineering manna from heaven for the Spanish Church as it eyes up its opportunity to reclaim territory lost during the Zapatero administration. With that nice conservative, Sr. Rajoy, now in charge, the Spanish Cardinals will be hoping for a return to the good old days of religious orthodoxy.

Spearheading the campaign is the tough guy of the Spanish Church, Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela, the Archbishop of Madrid, and president of the Episcopal Conference. During his year-end address he laid into the previous government and called on the new one to repeal the socially liberal legislation that Zapatero had presided over.

Zapatero and the Archbishop were not exactly on the best of terms. The former prime minister was the devil incarnate where the Archbishop was concerned, liberalising abortion, permitting same-sex marriage, all the sorts of things designed to bring Spanish and Western Christian civilisation crashing down.

Prior to the election in 2008, the Archbishop and the Church had gone into full propaganda mode on behalf of the Partido Popular. Not that the party was named specifically, but there was no doubt as to where the Church's sympathies didn't lie. Arguably though, the Church's intervention then didn't help the PP, indeed it may well have helped the PP to lose some support, while a similar pro-PP line before the 2011 election was wholly unnecessary given that the election was about one issue and one issue alone - the economy - and that the PP was bound to win in any event.

With the PP restored, the Church now has its opportunity, and the question is to what extent the Rajoy government will backtrack on Zapatero's liberal agenda. Rajoy is, as Rajoy has so far proven to be very adept at, singularly vague as to what he might propose. He has said that there will be a change to the abortion law that the Zapatero administration had brought into line with most of Europe, but he hasn't been specific.

Rajoy himself is cast as a moderate, but rather like a Conservative government in the UK has to bend to the right on the Europe issue, so the PP has its archly conservative element when it comes to socio-religious matters. The "theocons*" of the PP, as they have been described, are likely to bring pressure on Rajoy to undo pretty much everything that Zapatero did, and the Church will be there, egging them on, content in the knowledge that the Vatican, as has historically been the case, sees Spain as the great upholder of Catholicism.

The bizarre beliefs of the Bishop of Córdoba and Cardinal Antonelli are just a part of how the Church would now like the government to be thinking. They are so preposterous that one would hope that a sensible chap such as Rajoy can see through them. The trouble is, though, that Rajoy has not always been particularly sensible. He is, after all, the politician who said that there was no evidence as to global warming because his cousin had told him there wasn't. To base a case on one person's word (who, it just so happens, is related to you) is not really a trait one would hope for in a politician.

The Archbishop, who one could somehow imagine being played by Robert de Niro, as he looks as though he has stepped out of some of de Niro's flims, represents a still powerful force in the land despite it having lost support in recent years. The Church is desperate to reclaim that power and the theocons in the PP could well enable it to.

* "Theocons" was a term first coined by the newspaper "El País".


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Matters Of Life And Death

The anti-abortion rally that took place in Madrid on Saturday attracted, depending on whose figures you believe, anything between a quarter of a million and a million and a half demonstrators. The rally, as much as it was a pro-life proclamation, was also a direct attack against the liberal social policies of the Zapatero government. Since taking office, Sr. Zapatero's socialist administration has sought to slacken the shackles of conservative Catholicism by, for example, legalising gay marriage and now seeking to introduce abortion on demand and, moreover, abortion for 16 and 17-year old girls without their having to gain parental consent. Until now, abortion has been sanctioned only in extenuating circumstances, but it has also not been unknown, under these circumstances, for termination to be performed as late as eight months. The most usual justification has been the psychological or physical risk to the mother. The government wishes to see abortion on demand up to 14 weeks and no later than 22 weeks in certain instances.

As ever, this is a tough issue. The conservatism of the Catholic right makes it an even tougher one in Spain. The Zapatero government has sought to take on this conservatism - it is, perhaps, the single most important socio-political question that the country faces. Yet the power of the church has waned. Less than 20 per cent of the population now attends church on a regular basis. There are those who will quite openly denounce the obstructiveness of the church, while there are also those with memories of the church's role in the Franco era.

Nevertheless, abortion is a subject that goes beyond either religion or politics. It is, or should be, a moral issue, divorced from religious doctrine or political dogma. Personally, I struggle with it. Like, I would imagine, most people, I abhor the notion of abortion, but the moral argument goes further than the rights of the unborn child. Also like many people, I have had experience of abortion, if not directly but through the experiences of friends, such as one who terminated her pregnancy because the baby would have been born with Down's Syndrome. I also know people with Down's children, but was she wrong to have terminated? I don't believe she was. And one edges into the quality-of-life question. It is tough, and no-one can say that it isn't.

If abortion is a morally tough call, there is less agonising when it comes to assisted suicide. Or, put it this way, I do not have a moral struggle with it. This is also something that the Spanish are toying with. But it has been nuanced as a political issue, quite inappropriately in my opinion. In September last year, the health minister stated that a decision to opt for assisted suicide was in line with socialist ideology. The argument is laughable. The avoidance of "unnecessary suffering", the more humane justification that the ministry has proposed, is the key and not dogma.

I know someone who has a highly aggressive form of multiple sclerosis**. I will not name her, but there are many in Alcúdia and around who will know who she is. The disease has progressed rapidly; total incapacity and loss of control of functions are inevitable. There is no cure of course. Let me stress that I am not for one moment suggesting that assisted suicide is a solution that has been mentioned in her case. But it should surely be an option were she, or anyone else with such an awful condition to consider it, just as Debbie Purdy - also an MS sufferer - has fought for it to be in the UK. Any change to Spanish law to permit assisted suicide has yet to be agreed, but it is on the table. They should do it.

Inevitably, as with abortion, the assisted suicide argument runs up against the same opposition - that of the Catholic right. However much one may find repugnant or support abortion and assisted suicide, the decisions do ultimately reside with secular politicians. And it is this that traditional Catholic conservatism cannot accept. Politicians may make the winning of the arguments more difficult by styling them in terms of a particular political philosophy, but it is they who are the moral arbiters and not the church. Both issues will continue to arouse the passions of the traditionalists but, rather like Margaret Thatcher embarked on a change in British culture through her confrontations with the unions, so Zapatero has made this traditionalism his battlefield in advancing the cause of a socially liberal Spain and neutering the conservatism that historically has been the state's undoing. But there's a difference: cultural change in Spain is a matter of life and death.

No-one said this was easy.

** Multiple sclerosis is relatively uncommon in Mallorca, which may support a view that lower doses of sunlight can be influential in its development. In the case above, the person concerned is not originally from Mallorca and also has a condition against prolonged exposure to sun.


On a different health issue - breast cancer - I am grateful to Ben Grimley for the photo above. This comes from a short ceremony on the sports beach in Puerto Alcúdia yesterday at the end of a walk in aid of breast cancer charity. Alcúdia's mayor is on the far right in the photo.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Dusty Springfield, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEy3fhrDYNY.

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