Galicia Lessons: The End For Sánchez?

Regional elections in Spain, because they are not all held at the same time, can be viewed as a test of a public opinion about the national government. In Spain at present, however, there is only a national government by default, one that is nine months on from when it should either have been confirmed as re-elected or ousted. Are, in these circumstances, the elections in the Basque Country and Galicia relevant? Do they say anything about the national government?

They most certainly do. More importantly, they say a great deal about the pretenders, one of whom is PSOE; the PSOE that Pedro Sánchez leads. This is not the PSOE of the whole country, however, and the results loosen his grip - already tenuous - ever more. The knives of Andalusia, in the hands of Susana Díaz, are being sharpened on the stone. How long can Sánchez carry on?

Consider the numbers. In Galicia the regional version of PSOE suffered its worst ever result. It ended up with fourteen seats in the regional parliament with slightly less than 18% of the vote in a four-way fight. En Marea, effectively Podemos by another name, also gained fourteen seats but with a higher share of the vote - just over 19%. Both were eclipsed by the Partido Popular. Alberto Núñez Feijóo will continue to govern with an absolute majority.

In the Basque Country, the socialists suffered major losses - seven seats gone, leaving them with nine. The PNV, habitual leaders in the region, have insufficient seats for an overall majority, but could hook up with the PP (or PSOE) and establish a parliamentary majority.

While Feijóo's win in Galicia will be taken as enhancing Mariano Rajoy's moral right to remain as national prime minister, it needs reminding that Galicia is very firm PP territory - and Feijóo territory. The loss of one PP seat in the Basque Country places a rather different spin on things. Perhaps the strongest message to come from the elections, where the PP is concerned, is that Feijóo has strengthened his case for replacing Rajoy.

Rather than a test of public opinion for Rajoy, the elections were a poll on the ambitions of Sánchez and PSOE to attempt to form an "alternative" government of the left. These are surely dashed, if indeed they have ever truly been realistic. Díaz had made it clear that they weren't, given the fact that PSOE have only 85 seats in the national Congress.

A surprise with Sánchez is the fact that he's still in charge. Reflect on the charge sheet. A failed attempt, an awfully failed attempt at investiture, followed by a second election at which PSOE lost more seats in Congress. Yet he still believes he can form a government, seemingly egged on by the likes of Balearic president Francina Armengol into adopting a model of government akin to that in the Balearics - one that quite plainly isn't functioning. Armengol is deluded and so is Sánchez. With the batterings in the Basque Country and Galicia, his time must surely be up.

If this proves to be the case, the PSOE "barons", marshalled by Díaz, will manoeuvre a situation whereby there is a pact with Rajoy and the PP (or possibly with Feijóo and the PP; this may be the price Rajoy has to pay). For Francina Armengol, who must have been observing the results coming in with increasing horror and alarm, such a national manouevre would be terminal. Podemos wouldn't stand for it, while Més seem ever increasingly alienated from Armengol.

If PSOE were the big losers in these two elections, what about Cuidadanos? This party is more and more like an annoying terrier, snapping at the heels of others. It is shooed away but keeps coming back, yapping and yapping but never getting its way. Its leader, Albert Rivera, had been looking at the prospect of a post-election alliance with the PP in Galicia. They failed to gain a single seat. A share of the vote that was little more than three per cent ensured that they would fail, just as they also did in the Basque Country.

What may now dawn on the C's, whose support has been eroding, is that their aspirations to be a national party run up against nationalist interests in specific regions. Even the conservative nationalist instincts in Galicia and the Basque Country appear disinclined to embrace a party which started as a regional Catalonian organisation (with avowed anti-nationalist sentiments) and has attempted to become a national force. Regional parties aren't supposed to behave like this. The C's have got above their station. They are liked less and less. Their time may well have come and gone, leaving Podemos, with its internal divisions, as the genuine "alternative".

Díaz, Feijóo and others will make damn sure it never is.

* This article was written before Sánchez announced that there are to be "primaries" for electing the secretary general, i.e. that he is putting his position to the test.

This Is Not Galicia: Politicians' holidays

Mariano Rajoy has suddenly come out as a man of the people: cycling people and people of Galicia at any rate. Despite being on holiday, the prime minister found time to send a telegram to Alejandro Valverde to congratulate the Spanish cyclist on having come third in the Tour de France. Which was very nice of him, but ... . But isn't there something wrong with this? He sent a what? A telegram? Such a thing surely no longer exists. Does it? Perhaps parts of Galicia have been preserved in a manner that a fellow Galician - Franco - would have approved. None of this internet carry-on. Keep the communications infrastructure as it was. In the dark ages.

It is doubly strange because Mariano has recently taken to having selfies done. One fancies that it is not he holding the selfie-stick, but there he has been, grinning inanely for the mobile, surrounded by the likes of the Nuevas Generaciones: Young Conservatives in other words. The Mariano grin, rarely produced in public, does have an unfortunately and inherently inane quality to it. He can't help it, as it is a grin of which he is not entirely certain. Mariano is not comfortable within his own facial muscles.

So, though he has embraced the technology of the modern age, he sticks stubbornly to an ancient one - the telegram. Maybe it's prime ministerial protocol. Or maybe Alejandro had blocked him on Facebook.

But to come back to the holiday, yes, even the prime minister of Spain can find time for a holiday, and in this new age of making Mariano appear vaguely human, there he was, doing what many a human does. He was taking a dip. Not that this was a dip in the sea at a resort (do they have such things in Galicia?), it was in a river: the Umia in a place called Meis. Yes, that's Meis and not Més. Mariano had gone for a refreshing cool down with friends. Locals, it is said, were surprised to find they were sharing their river with the premier. The rest of the country was just surprised. Mariano doesn't do things like that. Or hadn't until the PR people suggested it might work in his electoral favour.

The Spanish political class is, for the most part, a bunch of stiffs, an affliction recognised by the Spanish themselves. When Dave came to Mallorca with the kids and was building sandcastles on the beach in Puerto Pollensa, the Spanish media looked on with amazement. A Spanish political leader wouldn't do such a thing. There is of course a danger with allowing a politician to vacate his comfort zone - or discomfort zone in Mariano's case - and to be seen enjoying a vacation in such a frivolous manner, i.e. a gentle breaststroke in a river. Caption writers can have field days if you are not careful. Hence, Mariano "swimming against the tide" of unpopularity (and I've checked, the Umia is tidal).

Nevertheless, this is the new age: of communications technology and for appearing to be in touch. Therefore, we have also recently had the president of the Balearics, Francina Armengol, laughing and prancing with the demon of the Algaida cossier folk dancers. Careful. careful. "Francina runs with the devil", and the face of Podemos's Alberto Jarabo will be Photoshopped onto the demon's mask by a miscreant media type.

Francina hadn't, according to a recent interview, decided where she would be going on holiday. If she does have a holiday, then it will be somewhere in Mallorca, she said. What are the chances, do you suppose, of this somewhere being the likes of Magalluf? Nil, one would think. There are respectable resorts for the political class, such as Puerto Pollensa with its Cameron seal of approval, but even its comparative tranquility would pose a problem. Let's be honest, there are simply too many damn tourists knocking around, littering the beaches and occupying the terraces. No, if it's Mallorca, then it will be a discreet pueblo in the interior where riotousness will be confined to the noise of a piper and the jumping of the little hops of the ball de bot.

And there Francina might bump into her political chums. The resorts are not for Biel, the tourism minister, or for Alberto either. The touristic new age requires promotion of all things heritage and environmental, but is there not something contradictory with the attitudes of the new left in Mallorca? It would seemingly happily see working men and women banished from the island in favour of the quality class (whatever that is). But wherever in the alternative touristic Mallorca of gastronomy routes and ethnology the island's now-of-the-people political leaders choose for their vacationing, one thing will be missing. Mallorca has no rivers. Of course not. This is not Galicia. This is sun and beach. Sea. The people's politicians would do well to remember this.

Gone Missing: Santiago's City of Culture

Santiago de Compostela is one of Spain's grand cities. It was designated as a World Heritage Site many years before UNESCO had ever even heard of Mallorca's Tramuntana mountains. It is the destination for 100,000 pilgrims who visit the shrine of Saint James, Spain's patron saint, whose remains are supposedly in the shrine. A city with centuries of history, culture and fine architecture, a decision was taken in 2001 to bring that architecture a bit more up to date. A project to build a "city of culture" was embarked upon. Twelve years and almost 300 million euros later, there are two ruddy great holes in the ground, and two of six buildings originally conceived as comprising this "city" are missing. They are going to stay missing, while the holes may well remain holes. The plug has been pulled on the project.

Before one gets all self-righteous about this being yet another example of a profligate vanity project in the name of a Spanish regional government, which it is, there is a distinct whiff of a dome about it all. When the first two of the six, now only four buildings were opened in 2011, so a mere ten years after work had started, it would seem that no one knew what to put in them. As it is, they have become a library and an archive, which should both get the pulses racing of tourists. Two more have since also opened, one of them the building that houses the services to run the damn project. What were going to be an arts centre and a theatre are not now going to be either, as they won't be built.

The city of culture, a title that is an affront to what genuinely is a city of culture, Santiago that is, was a project dreamt up by Manuel Fraga. Remember him? You should do. He was Franco's tourism minister.

Fraga was president of Galicia from 1990 to 2005. The city of culture was to have been one of his great legacies to the region. It was, though, a legacy conceived partly out of jealousy of what the Basques had achieved with the building of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Galicia wasn't going to be outdone. It has been and it has been left with considerable egg on its face. Far from creating a project to show off Galicia to the world and to be one of great prestige, the region has been made to look something of a laughing-stock. At least some of the other grand vanity projects that cost absolute fortunes, such as Valencia's fabulous City of Arts and Sciences, have actually been finished, though this does of course bring us to the small matter of a project in Palma that hasn't been finished either. Perhaps they could demolish the Palacio de Congresos after all, ship the wreckage to Santiago and use it to fill in the two enormous holes in the ground where holes shouldn't be.

The decision to definitively and once for all put the remaining part of the project out of its misery has been taken by the now president of Galicia, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Being Galician, it is small surprise that he is seen as a potential successor to fellow Galician Rajoy; there's nothing like having a regional dynasty to run a political party. But Feijóo, who might have been expecting only nods of approval because of the decision to ditch the cultural city, finds that there are nods of disapproval because of an apparently unrelated matter. Photographs of him on the yacht of a convicted drug trafficker that were taken in the 1990s have suddenly come into the public domain. Feijóo has known of their existence for years, as have members of the PP hierarchy, including Rajoy. Calls have been made for him to resign, but he says he won't, as he hasn't done anything wrong. He may have been less than assiduous in checking the background of Marcel Dorado, said to be a central figure in a Galician smuggling mafia and currently in nick, but there isn't any reason to believe that he has done anything wrong. Or that he needs to resign.

Feijóo has made an ambiguous statement about attempts to intimidate him. There is a good question to be asked about why the photos have come out now. What does he mean by intimidation? Who is he referring to? Perhaps there is some link to the city of culture after all. Who knows. But there is a definite feel of something fishy in Galicia, of something that's missing, and it isn't just two buildings at Santiago's city of culture.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.