Working Eight Months A Year

Carlos Herrera is a journalist. He has a large following on a radio show that goes out on COPE, one of the most listened to broadcasters in the country. By way of background, it is of interest to note that COPE started out life as an essentially religious broadcaster. It has become very much more general in its output, though it would appear that it is owned by the church in that the Spanish Episcopal Conference has 50% of the shares of the company to which COPE belongs. Dioceses and religious orders are other shareholders.

This does perhaps need bearing in mind, as it suggests that COPE might not be rabidly left-wing. Its politics and its ownership are, however, of only passing relevance to today's theme, which is one that Carlos has offered. On his show there is a slot, the title of which lends itself to alternative translations but which I shall call "fools' defibrillator". Carlos and co-host pick up on particular stories and offer to defibrillate those who have uttered foolishness or nonsense. And so it was that he held up to ridicule Laura Camargo of Podemos.

The travel magazine and website Preferente highlighted her inclusion on the show last week, noting - and this may or may not have been ironic - that Camargo is the only person in Podemos in the Balearics who has the capacity to think. She may be, but then what she thinks and says ended up being the target for Carlos.

This was specifically to do with her views on workers in the tourism industry who, after eight months' work, are knackered and shouldn't be expected to have to work through winter and therefore all year. In fact, she said this before Christmas, so the story is an old one. On 23 December I drew attention to her remarks, wondering why it should be deemed acceptable for workers to do no more than eight months.

Still, better than late never the Camargo eight-month opinion surfaced on Carlos's show last week and also became the focus of a set-to between Podemos and Ciudadanos (C's). Carlos found it hard to understand, given, for instance, that radio journalists work all year. They are not the only ones. If anyone is interested, I work twelve months a year, usually seven days a week and not untypically up to eleven or twelve hours a day. Am I knackered? All the time.

Ah but, this is just sitting down and typing, is it not? Generally, yes. But there is being physically knackered and there is being mentally knackered. Neither state is particularly ideal, but suffice it to say that I tended to agree with Carlos's observation.

Camargo came out with this eight-month business in the broader context of tourism policy. We don't want more tourists in the winter, she said, and used the knackered workers as a reason why not. What of course she was really getting at was that we (Podemos) don't want more tourists, full stop. In fact, we'd prefer that there were fewer of them. Camargo and Podemos are highly suspicious of government attempts to erode seasonality and therefore make the tourism season ever longer. The workers, it can seem (and probably are), something of a smokescreen.

Which is not to deny that there are workers in the tourism industry who put in long hours, day after day over a several-month period with few breaks (if at all) and don't get particularly well paid. Camargo has a point, especially when it comes to exploitation, but only up to a point. Politically, she is very much on the side of the workers and has made her feelings about hoteliers well enough known, and the politics were partly where Carlos Herrera was coming from, as most certainly also was the leader of the C's, Albert Rivera. He tweeted the other day that Camargo is a deputy with a party which proposes gifts of income paid for by the state.

Rivera's tweet brought differing responses. Some accused him of demagoguery. Others took issue with the Podemos view of work and supported him. In the latter camp was a tweet which read: "Some consider work to be a punishment and being on the dole a fiesta."

In addition to stirring up the political ill-feeling between Podemos and the C's (not that it needs much stirring), the Camargo remarks served not only as a statement about her party's views on tourism but also to reignite the whole issue of the unbalanced nature of work and employment.

She was essentially saying that the situation which has been created because of seasonality is as it should be. Tourism is not the only industry affected by seasonality, but there are others which are not. Would she advocate everyone working no more than eight months a year? Police, nurses, firemen just to take three examples. Defibrillate away, Carlos.

An Agreement For Prominence

It was the Sunday of the last big summer weekend. Everyone should have been at the beach or preparing to head home. Mariano Rajoy and Albert Rivera were not. They watched as the parliamentary spokespeople for their parties - the Partido Popular and Ciudadanos (C's) - put pen to paper and signed an agreement under which Rajoy is assured of the support of the 32 C's deputies in Congress for the investiture votes this week. It was a curious ritual. Neither leader had wanted to give his signature.

Maybe neither wanted to bind himself to anything long-term. The agreement is short-term as it is. If Rajoy fails to gain the support of 176 deputies in either of the two votes (one tomorrow, the other on Friday), the agreement will be ripped up. Albert Rivera will be free to come to an accord with someone else. He's making a habit of this. He had one with PSOE's Pedro Sánchez until Sánchez failed so drastically with the two investiture votes in March.

Added to the PP's 137 deputies, the 32 C's deputies give a total of 169, to which one more can be added - the vote of Ana Oramas of the Coalición Canaria. She had given Sánchez her backing in March. Like Rivera she has switched sides. Where will the remaining six come from? Anywhere? If they do not, it looks like a Christmas Day election.

Rummaging around among other regional parties might produce something. The conservative nationalists in Catalonia and the Basque Country have thirteen seats between them. While there wouldn't be formal support for Rajoy, could there be abstentions? Given Rajoy and the PP's attitudes towards Catalonia in particular, it might seem odd that this could even be a possibility. But the C's Inés Arrimadas was aware enough of it to have warned Rajoy last week that the C's could withdraw their support if there were nationalists' abstentions "in exchange for something".

Rajoy was talking to Sánchez yesterday, trying to convince him to get PSOE deputies to at least abstain. The painful truth for PSOE is that whichever way it goes, it cannot win. To be seen to be allowing Rajoy in would bring accusations of the "casta" at work - the two-party system of the PP and PSOE, so despised by Podemos (and once upon a time by the C's). Sánchez would receive nothing in return. His party could lose a lot if he did. President Armengol in the Balearics will have been reminding him of this; Podemos have been making warning noises about the Balearic pact of government if PSOE enables a Rajoy investiture.

None of the four main parties, with the possible exception of the PP, can afford to have a third election. PSOE lost seats in June, so did the C's. Podemos in effect stayed as they were, regardless of the alliance with the United Left. Who's to say that the PP wouldn't add to the fourteen seats it gained in June? A third election might just make it even more inevitable that the PP will finally carry on, though the C's cannot guarantee losing more than the eight seats they did in June.

The left, unless there were to be an unexpected rebound by PSOE and a leap for Podemos (also unlikely), would not be able to form a government, just as they were unable to after the December and June elections. Rajoy and the PP are, in truth, the only game in town. Sánchez may as well select six sacrificial names at random and get them to say sí rather than no.

If Rajoy were able to somehow drum up the 176 votes, what would it mean for Rivera and for the C's? The point to be made is that the agreement does not mean that there would be a coalition; it is only one to facilitate the investiture. It is possible that there might be a coalition, though this seems unlikely. Rajoy and Rivera don't like each other; the chemistry would be all wrong.

The PP would therefore form a minority government, with policies determined by the agreement. The C's have pressed for and obtained acceptance in respect of, for example, social policies, but Rivera has not got all that he wanted regarding anti-corruption measures: both the C's and Podemos have these at the heart of their respective agendas.

For Rivera, the agreement is designed to show the electorate that the C's are the only party capable of and willing to negotiate with both the left and the right. It might also demonstrate they are a party of vacillators; Rivera will prefer the positive spin. And he badly needs to get that across. The slump in the C's vote in June made it imperative that the party was not sidelined and so might undergo a decline as rapid as its rise. Prominence, more than anything, is what Rivera gets.

Francina To The Spanish Governmental Rescue

"Five. Four. Three. Two. One ..." "Cut! Cut!"

Nothing's going. Shot in Supermarianoation, the latest in the fantasy franchise that is "The Government Which Forgot It Was A Government" is undergoing yet further re-scripting. On Tracy Island the lights were flashing on the portraits at Governmental Rescue in the presidential HQ at the Consolat de Mar. "Take Pod 4, Virgil, the Nationalists Mole." "Yes father, er I mean, F.A.B. mother." Francina Tracy, the matriarch founder of Governmental Rescue, had decided that the time had come for all good Pedros to come to the aid of the PSOE party by combining with nationalist parties and Podemos (just like on Tracy Island) in order to stop the evil Super Mariano.

He, Super that is, was oddly enough having similar thoughts. He was emitting evil ones from his bunker in Madrid. "Catalonia, Catalonia," he mysteriously intoned. Would the Catalan half-brothers of the Spanish nation succumb to his evil thoughts? Despite several years of plots and intrigues to deny independence, Super Mariano was now prepared to give houseroom to the CDC in Catalonia in a Congress carve-up designed to secure his investiture as president (prime minister).

Away from all of this, Dec (Albert Rivera of the C's) was revealing what many had suspected: that he is a vacillating and opportunistic little C. The double act with Ant (Pedro Sánchez of PSOE) seemed well and truly to have been annulled. Instead, Dec was being led by the hand of Super Mariano to face the tests of the political jungle. Together they would gain celebrity for governmental rescue. On Tracy Island Francina was having none of that, having trademarked the name.

But then Super Mariano began transmitting those evil nationalist thoughts. Albert, immune from birth to such brain interference and equally immune to any notion of Catalonian independence (or anyone else's for that matter), was scandalised. There will be no investiture, Super. Not if you get into bed with the nationalists. Mariano, meanwhile, merely cackled. Either it's me or no one. And if it's not me, there'll be another election.

In next week's episode of "The Government Which Forgot It Was A Government" the King will have to undergo another round of those excruciating photo opportunity moments, shaking hands with all and sundry Spanish politicians, none of whom will have the slightest possibility of being able to contribute to forming a government. The King will smile politely and benignly while thinking more about arrangements for the family hols on Tracy Island. At Governmental Rescue, meanwhile, Brains Jarabo of Podemos will be imploring Francina to blow all the tourist tax revenue on an eco-friendly agrarian heritage sun-and-beach tourism alternative spacecraft to orbit the Earth.

Fantasy franchise? Oh yes.

Panto Season In Spain

"He's behind you!" "Oh no he isn't!" "Oh yes he is!" It's panto season in Spain. We know this because one of the great dames has decreed it thus. Mariano Rajoy has said there's a panto. Oh yes there is. It was a peculiar observation by Mazza. The Spanish, as with most of the rest of the non-British world, doesn't get panto. For the Spanish it's doubly confusing. Why would you actively seek out audience participation? Ah, you see, times they are a-changing and even Mazza has got the citizen participation bug. Which part of the pantomime horse should he be? The question needs to be posted on to the Official Bulletin. At present, Mazza is firmly in the rear. But who knows? The pantomime is such that he could become the front and double up as Widow Twankey.

Mariano's panto will take place this week when the boy Pedro Sánchez of PSOE attempts to get himself voted in as prime minister (president). There are other words and expressions that one could call on to describe the current state of non-government in Spain, but Mazza has opted for pantomime. How about total farce? Here's any one of the Brian Rix-style leaders of the four parties racing around the stage of the Whitehall Theatre with his trousers round his ankles. More tea, vicar?

Just to remind you, it is now over two months since there was an election. This coming week, there is the remote possibility that the boy Pedro might actually become prime minister (president). But it is only remote on account of the pantomime nature of the whole farrago. He's tied a pre-nuptial agreement with Ciudadanos, a party with two many syllables that is referred to more easily as the C's, and a right bunch of C's they are in some politicians' estimation (Pablo Iglesias of Podemos for one). Its leader is Albert Rivera, a youthful politician who, were he to trim his name down to Al Rivera, would sound like some dreadful crooning act from the 1970s appearing for the summer season on Hastings pier under the Al moniker but in reality being Les Reeves from Warrington.

But back at the panto, and who was it that the boy Pedro chose to reveal was behind him in a YouTube video designed to persuade the party membership that Al would make a suitable partner for a progressive and reforming government with Pedro at the helm? Yes, it was none other than Pablo Iglesias. But not that Pablo Iglesias. The Hairy One from Podemos may be able to boast facial hair and a great deal of hair full stop, but the Pablo behind Pedro was the one who founded PSOE in the days when socialists really were socialists, sported frightening moustaches, lectured everyone on Karl Marx and sang "The Internationale" and actually meant it.

Mariano, meanwhile, was sending a sort of love letter to Al. Convinced that the panto will descend into high farce, he was proposing a meeting after the boy Pedro fails to garner sufficient support in either of the upcoming Congress votes this week. "You know that I am always available," said Mazza, meaning that he is quite prepared (only prepared) to countenance any sort of link with the C's and PSOE if he's still prime minister (president). "A big hug," the letter concluded in the chummy way that letters are concluded in a Spanish style.

So, what can we expect this week? Well, let's ask the audience. Will Pedro become prime minister (president)? Oh yes he will. Oh no he won't.

The Four-Way Fight: Ciudadanos

In 2011, over the four days prior to the day of reflection (when campaigning and party political comment and opinion are supposed to cease), there wouldn't have been a case to have filled those four days with profiles of political parties. There were (and are) all sorts of parties knocking around, some of them regional, some of them more broadly based, but in 2011 there were only two which mattered - the Partido Popular and PSOE. The intervening four years have changed this. The number of parties which matter has doubled. The fight is not an even four-way fight - not where the estimations of seats in Congress are concerned - but it is a fight nevertheless, and it is one that is destined to change Spain's political scene, not just because two new parties could feature in the next government but also because these two parties represent a different type of politics. They are Ciudadanos (C's) and Podemos.

The first thing to say about the C's is that they aren't so new. As with other aspects of their existence, such as what they actually stand for, branding them as new is too easy. Initially moulded in 2005, they came from a movement called Ciudadanos de Catalunya - citizens of Catalonia - formed through disenchantment with established politics in that region. Within a year this platform had become a political party, adopting the name Ciudadanos-Partido de la Ciudadanía (C's for short). The party's first participation in an election was for the Catalonia regional election in November 2006. By then, its first president, who hadn't been one of the founders of the platform, was a 26-year-old Catalonian swimming champion and student of law who had briefly had a dalliance with the PP's Nuevas Generaciones. His name? Albert Rivera. 

That first election was to prove to be the making of the C's and of Rivera. Never before had a social movement or platform been able to convert itself into a political party and actually gain representation. It might not have seemed so at the time, but from the modest but nonetheless surprising gaining of three seats in the Catalonian parliament, Spain's new political age was being born.

The important point to be made about the C's is that they weren't in 2006 and nor are they now a radical party. Often lumped together with Podemos, they are done so through a misunderstanding that stems from apparent newness. Where similarity exists with Podemos is on issues such as inclusiveness (a more participative approach to the political process) and being adamant in a rejection of corruption and of the political status quo of the hitherto two-party system of the PP and PSOE.

Unlike Podemos, which was to grow out of an altogether wider and more vocal social movement and secure sudden and stunning electoral success, the progress of the C's has been more like a business which, once strong in its home market (Catalonia), expands into newer markets. The great achievement has been in not stumbling in a desire to grow.

Though they might not like to admit it, the C's have been aided by Podemos and by the intense focus placed on a new political age that Podemos have done so much to create. They have caught a wave, but it has to be acknowledged that, in their less vocal way, they (and the now forgotten Partido X) did the groundwork for Podemos to emerge so spectacularly.

As they aren't a radical party, where does the appeal lie? Partly, and this cannot be ignored, they have some attractive and youthful figureheads in the likes of Rivera and the now leader of the opposition in the Catalonian parliament, Inés Arrimadas. But good looks only get a party so far. The appeal comes from the assault on the corrupt two-party system and from policies of greater social justice and equality and probably also comes from the fact that, of the two parties taking on the PP-PSOE cosiness, they aren't as scary as Podemos.

Such an analysis reveals why the C's are described as both left and right-wing. Observers who draw these conclusions are again misunderstanding the party. It is a hybrid which can, on the one hand, hold firm views against Catalonian independence (a stance associated mainly with the right and one for which Rivera once received death threats) but which, on the other, can promote progressive taxation in a manner akin to the left.

For those who seek to condemn them as being almost a PP in disguise, there is evidence from a strong pro-business bias as well as a commitment to language teaching that has distinct echoes of the PP's trilingual teaching system in the Balearics. 

A clearer assessment of the C's might be, however, that they are wholly of a modern age, minus any baggage, with a mostly intelligent programme. Success on Sunday should come as no surprise.

The Chaos Of Colour: Spain's election

In just over a week's time Spain will hold a general election unlike any other in its comparatively short democratic history. If there are those who still cling to the belief that Ciudadanos and Podemos are impostors, these are beliefs of denial: two-party politics in Spain is dead, long live quadripartite politics.

Life will be breathed into this four-party system for at least as long as the life of the next legislature (until the end of 2019). Whether it survives beyond this will depend upon what happens between now and then. The deniers may, in the long term, prove to be right. If they are for the PP and PSOE, they will hope that they are.

Unless the opinion polls are wildly wrong, a prediction can be made before the electorate heads to the booths on Sunday week. Spain's political scene will be altered. It will also be highly uncertain. The country's general elections would normally expect to demand the footnotes of mainly indifference outside the nation's borders, but not this one. It will be watched like a hawk, with the eyes of Brussels, among others, firmly trained on it.

Judging by the comparative turnouts in Palma this week, the Podemos bubble appears anything but burst. Pablo Iglesias fed the five thousand at Palma Arena, while a surreal gathering - a tenth this size - wrapped themselves up against a keen breeze on the Parc de la Mar and listened to Rajoy. The prime minister observed that this was a working day and a gathering during the day. He must surely have made this remark because of events some hours previously. Iglesias had chosen a holiday and the evening: the resulting difference was political PR heaven for Podemos.

Not that these two rallies hold a key to Sunday week. Podemos has not become the mighty force it once looked as if it might; according to the polls, at any rate. The rise of Ciudadanos may explain this. Or perhaps there was always going to be a plateau that Iglesias would not be able to surmount. But in a different sense they did hold a key. Iglesias, populism aside, can be mightily impressive. He is also different.

The four-party televised debate earlier in the week had been a curious prelude to the two Palma rallies; curious because of the absence of Rajoy. This had been known a couple of weeks in advance, the official reason being the number of requests from media outlets and schedule. It was difficult to avoid believing there were other reasons.

One survey of the performances of Iglesias, Sánchez (PSOE), Rivera (Ciudadanos) and Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, Rajoy's substitute, made Iglesias the winner. Had Rajoy appeared, he might have been a greater winner. The debate itself, minus Rajoy, was a winner. There was freshness in the relative youth of the participants and the presence of a woman. There were degrees of charisma as well.

An argument for Rajoy taking part was that his seniority would afford him gravitas in the eyes of the viewer when set next to the younger upstarts - Iglesias, Rivera and Sánchez - but in recalling the debate he had with Alfredo Rubalcaba prior to the 2011 election, any such gravitas might have been lost amidst the greyness. That debate in 2011 was excruciating. Conducted by two grey men, it might now be looked back upon as the moment when the two-party system condemned itself to the political waste bin. If that was Spain's politics, with two tedious and not especially sympathetic characters representing it, change could not have come soon enough.

The new politics expounded by Iglesias and Rivera is not simply an alteration to political party dynamics, not just an assault on the sleaze and the inherent corruption of the two-party state, it is also much closer to the "citizens" through personality. Spain could abide the aloof drabness of Aznar and Zapatero during the boom times. It could also accept, for a time, the unappealing Rajoy, if this was what it genuinely had to endure. Now, battered by austerity and the greyness inflicted on society, it looks for colour, ironically capable of looking forward to this because of the at least partially successful policies of the PP. As the charismatic González supplied a vitality to the youthful democracy in 1982, so the stage awaits a similar character to advance the rebirth of a country that has been kicked but not totally humiliated, unlike Greece.

But González was able to emerge as the flagwaver of the two-party system that resulted from the chaotic transition with its alliances of convenience. A new chaos of alliance now beckons because of its dismantling. Charisma might abound, but it will be enjoyed only by minorities of supporters and rejected by the combined majorities of others. Political colour is being supplied, but who's to be the artist?

Citizen Rivera: Spain's general election

He may no longer be part of the Podemos leadership, but Juan Carlos Monedero seems rattled enough to have made his implication of cocaine snorting by the leader of Ciudadanos (the Citizens), Albert Rivera. The C's are rattling along, a poll at the weekend giving them 23% of the vote at the general election on 20 December, four points behind Rajoy and the Partido Popular, three points ahead of Pedro Sánchez and PSOE and almost a whole seven points in front of Monedero's old chum, Pablo Iglesias, and Podemos.

The C's and Podemos are, in a sense, from the same mould, one with democratic regeneration stamped onto it. They both share a dislike of the old, established ways of the two-party dominance of the PP and PSOE. They both abhor corruption. But after these points of similarity, the two diverge. The C's are being cast by the mould as the sensible party, while Podemos can't claim to always make sense.

There is a further similarity. Both made and have made the general election their chief goal. Prior to the regional elections, neither seemed unduly concerned with grabbing power, though Podemos and its various splinter or similar elements - in Madrid and Barcelona for instance - made high-profile gains. In the Balearics we are by now well used to Podemos wielding its power in the wings, determining government policy while remaining out of actual government.

Nevertheless, the eye on the main chance was one that was turned towards December. May was a useful boost to credibility, but the general election has been the ultimate prize. For the C's, they didn't have the same May success in the Balearics. Or anything like it, but they are now running PSOE a close third in the polls, above Podemos.

Congress currently has 350 seats (one says currently as the number can, theoretically, decrease or increase to 300 or 400). What is clear is that no one party is going to form a majority after the election unless something truly dramatic happens (Rajoy promising yet more cuts to income tax might succeed in harnessing increased support but not enough). The poll suggests that the PP will lose around 70 deputies. It would still gain the greatest share of the vote and the most seats, but in order to remain in government, there would have to be a coalition.

The C's might seem the obvious partner. This is a party that is often misrepresented. It isn't left-wing but nor can it be said that it is right-wing. It borrows from both wings, and on one issue - that of Catalonian nationalism - it is firmly on the right. So on nationalism, it is in the PP camp in rejecting independence. It is also perceived as being firmly pro-business. Spain's hoteliers have been "wowed" by Rivera, who has intimated that he would give them the super-reduced IVA (VAT) rate they have been demanding of the PP.

Support for the C's has not solely come from disaffected PP voters, and an understanding of its support is reflected by Podemos: it is too simple to say that they grab from right or left, because they are both generating and have been generating followers across the political spectrum. This support does, though, give the C's its poll rating of 23% share of the vote and between 82 and 84 seats, around 30 fewer than the PP. A coalition between the two would be sufficient to form a government, but would Rivera accept this?

Xavier Pericay, the leader of the C's in the Balearics, consistently said that the party would not enter into a pact after the regional election unless it won the largest share of the vote. It didn't have a cat in hell's chance of doing so, and despite the rising popularity of the C's nationally, nor - at present - does Rivera. It isn't wholly inconceivable that a sudden wave of support would push the C's into first place, but this does seem pretty unlikely. As Rivera has said the same as Pericay, what then would happen?

Into all this, one has to consider Sánchez and PSOE. The poll suggests it would lose some 30 seats, which would represent a total disaster for it, even worse than PSOE. So diminished, it would have to accept any scraps offered, but the C's, even if Rivera were to change his mind, wouldn't be able to scrape together a majority with PSOE. The worst possible outcome, bearing in mind the Balearic experience, would be that Podemos (with a possible 45 seats) enters into a pact with the C's and PSOE. This surely won't and can't happen.

Never say never, should, I guess, be the maxim. Rivera and the C's hold the aces. It might not get the largest share of the vote, but with the PP it could form a government. And the reason for doing so? Step forward, Prime Minister Rivera.