The Absence Of Compromise

John Carlin is a writer and journalist. The son of a Scottish father and Spanish mother, he lives in Barcelona, has been a regular contributor to the newspaper "El País" for several years and, in 2011, had a book published that was entitled "Rafa, Mi Historia": the Rafa in question was Nadal. His specialisms are sport and politics, and he is often well worth reading for views on Spain which retain a degree of non-Spanish, i.e. British, perspective.

On the "El País" English web page, there is an article* by him which, though it oddly seems to have been translated for him, applies that perspective to the nature of compromise in Spanish politics: or rather, its absence. A key point he makes is that there is no actual word for compromise in the Spanish vocabulary. There is the word "compromiso", but this is what the language-training fraternity like to call a false friend. It can mean agreement but it doesn't have the nuance implicit to the English compromise. It is more often used to mean obligation or commitment, both of which have a greater sense of finality.

John says that the words - verb and noun - which come closest are "pactar" and "pacto": to pact or a pact. But even these lack the subtlety of compromise, and this becomes evident when considering dictionary definitions. They are essentially the same except for the Spanish "pact" meaning an agreement which both parties are mutually bound to observe, while compromise means agreement through making concessions: give and take, in other words.

He then goes on to consider how cultural development prevented compromise from becoming the concept that the British (and others) understand. He attributes this to the Catholic fundamentalism that endured from the time of the final end of Moorish occupation in 1492 until the Franco era. There were periodic political disruptions to this, such as with Ferdinand VII's abandonment of male succession (which sparked off the various Carlist Wars) and during the Second Republic. But once Franco was installed, the fundamentalism thrived once more, courtesy of the Falange, a complicit church and Opus Dei, founded in Spain in 1928.

The point he makes, therefore, is that culturally Spain failed to discover the ability to compromise. The prevailing mentality was one which left no room for manouevre. There was right and there was not right. The Inquisition was key to this for centuries. It was a thought police in a way that the Falange was to become. And added to this was the Vatican. For as many centuries, it looked upon Spain as the true keeper of the faith, more so even than Italy, and this had a great deal to do with the "Catholic Kings" - Isabel and Ferdinand - who reigned when the Muslim occupation came to an end and who were (she more than he, or so it is reckoned) great supporters of the Inquisition.

The timeframe that John cites is important for another reason. Key moments in Spain's history started with 1492 (Columbus as well) and passed through the War of the Spanish Succession (with the consequent dismantling of the Crown of Aragon and the repression of the Catalans) to the quashed Liberal Constitution of 1812 (quashed by Ferdinand VII) to the humiliations of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century and finally to Franco. Through all this time, authoritarianism, absolutism and militarism generally prevailed: there was little room to brook arguments and so little by way of give and take.

All nations live their presents and futures through their pasts, but Spain does this more than most. The milestones of the centuries haunt the country, and there are constant reminders of them. And allied to the history is the thinking: there is one way and not another.

Recently, I compared German consensus politics with the desires, so often expressed, by current Spanish and Mallorcan politicians for consensus. I concluded that article by suggesting that talk of consensus was cheap. There may be honourable attempts at breaking the mentality of the past, but consensus comes with its inherent compromise. The German model is one by which politically it is accepted that there are boundaries that will not be crossed in breaking down the philosophy of consensus. In Spain at present, efforts at consensus are driven by motives of political power, and sharing power doesn't mean the same thing as compromise. The pacts are, because of the dictionary definition, agreements that are mutually binding. Until, that is, someone breaks them. Or until one of the ideologies contained within the pacts comes to dominate and is allowed to dominate by others who are desperate to have power, yet shroud this in talk of what the citizens have demanded.

John Carlin believes that Spain's politicians would benefit from learning the meaning of compromise. The question is: Can they?

* http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/18/inenglish/1453114524_537822.html

Talk Of Consensus Is Cheap

Konrad Adenauer, the father of post-Nazi democracy in Germany and one of the creators of that country's system of consensus politics, stood for re-election as Chancellor for his conservative Christian Democratic Union in 1957 under the slogan "no experiments". Any experiment that the (West) German people might have contemplated would have been to return the only other party of any note - the socialist Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Comparing democratic Germany with democratic Spain is to compare chalk and cheese. The former, once it had emerged from the privations of the post-war period, established enduring economic and social success that was based on a generally well-ordered and well-cared-for society, industrial power, its social market economy and moderate, two-party politics, the latter of which was to prove to be the bedrock for the consensus that remains to this day. Spain, post-Franco, has enjoyed little of the same, and economic crisis brought home the fallibility of a nation without such attributes and inspired the political crisis of disruption to two-party politics that was produced by December's general election.

Mariano Rajoy, Spain's conservative equivalent of Adenauer's current-day heiress, Angela Merkel, warned against experiments before the election. He didn't have PSOE and its moderate socialism in mind. He was talking about Podemos. The experiment may yet not be realised in that Podemos might fail in its objectives to be at the government table, but one experiment that has been realised has been the shattering of two-party politics.

This altered state has been styled as a breakdown in some long-established pattern. It does of course depend on how one defines a "long time", but Spain's two-party system is only some 25 years old: as old, that is, as the Partido Popular, which was founded in 1989 out of the wreckage of the Alianza Popular and its associations with Francoism. Germany's two-party system is much older, as also is Britain's and that of the USA.

Far from being an engrained, seemingly immutable state of two-party affairs, it could just as well be argued that the past 25 years have represented the type of experiment that Rajoy, for one, would be incapable of conceding. Spain has given the norm of others a go and questioned its appropriateness for a country for which instability had long been the norm. The election represents, therefore, a return to the state's state of flux, appended to which is the flux of the wannabe state of Catalonia, the great question Spain has singularly failed to reconcile for three hundred years.

The great irony, however, is that into this latest outbreak of chaos steps the political newspeak that chants consensus from every available soapbox or press release. Driven by reconstructed scholars of the works of, among others, Karl Marx, consensus is now to be the state to which the powers of the state - political parties both old (or oldish in the case of the PP) and new - are supposed to aspire. But let's ask questions. Do we suppose that, had there not been the necessity, Francina Armengol and PSOE would have gone anywhere near a pact with Podemos? It's safe to say that we can suppose that they wouldn't have. She, Armengol, can spout consensus for all she's worth, but it is being foisted upon her. It is a consensus of colliding forces and, as such, is not achievable. Only the rhetoric can claim its existence, the practice proving that it is a delusion to believe it does actually exist or indeed can exist.

And like Armengol, will PSOE's Pedro Sánchez, assuming he can survive a leadership contest, seriously wish to have Podemos as bed mates? He too can talk of consensus, but more likely would be the convenience of the three-way alliance with the PP and Ciudadanos (C's), something that would not be consensus but a means of making damn sure Podemos doesn't get anywhere near government. Advised to form an alliance of the left by Armengol - and she would hardly say anything else for fear of upsetting her government partners - he has nonetheless been handed slack by the very same Francina in his negotiations. He also has a Podemos get-out-of-jail card, i.e. Catalonia and the referendum, something on which there is at least consensus with Rajoy and the C's Albert Rivera.

In Germany, consensus became the political leitmotif for a country saddled with guilt and with a corresponding determination to not forget past evils and so forge a system that could avoid conflict. In Spain, there was no such catharsis. It has required King Felipe to remind politicians of the past but it has also taken the shock of crisis to bring a halt to the satisfactions enjoyed for much of the two-party generation. As those unravelled, so did the bipartite experiment. Talk of consensus replacing it is cheap.