As the summer came to an end and our politicians started looking at the beginning of a new political period, there has been a markedly different approach between the Socialists and the Partido Popular. If the PP has approached the oncoming season calmly with quiet expectations for success in the General Elections that are due in six months time, the same simply cannot be said for the PSOE. The PP has decided to base all its hopes on the not inconsiderable success scored by Francisco Camps in the Autonomous elections in the Valencian Community last May, where he once again trounced the Socialists led by Joan Ignasi Pla, who retired very hurt indeed for the summer season, with his leadership of the Valencian Socialists in some doubt. However, it does seem to appear that rather like the participants in the annual Tomatina Fiesta of Buñol in Valencia Province, Mr Pla is set on having more political tomatoes thrown at him in the form of yet another electoral defeat next March as he apparently is intent on standing once again. This despite some not inconsiderable Socialist talent buzzing around the honey pot, but without actually opting to take over the leadership of the Valencian branch of the Party. Names floated around included Carmen Alborch, fresh from her defeat by incumbent Rita Barbera as the Socialist candidate for the Mayoress of Valencia; former Public Administrations Minister Jordi Sevilla, who was freed from his ministerial job by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in the hope that he could shake some order into the Valencian branch of the Party, despite his stating he was not interested; and veteran Socialist Diego Macia, the former Mayor of Elche, who has long played a prominent role in the destiny of the Valencian Party. Others pointed to how former President of the Valencian Community Joan Lerma might be brought back out of mothballs to temporarily head the Valencians - at least up until the period following the General Elections.
As for the PP in all this, Party President Mariano Rajoy decided to kick off the political season by coming down to Alicante where along with Mr Camps, he visited the City of Light film studio complex, and had a look at the installations under way for the Volvo Ocean Race that leaves from the City in October next year, telling journalists that Mr Camps represented the future for the party as his calm and determined programmes for the Valencian Community have paid off handsomely, as indeed they have: a visit to Detroit when he was last in the United States has now led to Ford signing agreements clearly assuring the future for the factory at Almussafes, just outside Valencia.
Sundry Disasters
On the larger scene, the Socialists have had their ups and downs - but mostly they were downs – both nationally and internationally. On the international stage, German Chancellor Angela Merkel - the most powerful woman in the world according to a recent article in Forbes Business Review - has revealed that there is not to be the usual summit meeting between Germany and Spain this autumn as the Prime Minister has not been capable of presenting any subject of real interest. So the inexperience and lack of concern in international matters by the Prime Minister has once again managed to place Spain one rung lower in international importance. Equally, it could be said with some justification that this reaction from the German Chancellor is a form of revenge after the Prime Minister’s comment before the German elections, when he accused Mrs Merkel and her policies of being useless and outdated.
On top of that, Spain has suffered yet another humiliation when French Prime minister François Fillon stated in a television interview that the Mr Zapatero had told him the he regretted the mass legalization of immigrants, as it not only led to fresh waves trying to get in, but also provoked the anger of French President Jacques Chirac and a certain Nicolas Sarkozy, who happened to be Interior Minister at the time. All this has called into considerable question the point consistently made by the Prime Minister that he wants to be in the heart of Europe. He is hardly achieving that when the top representatives of two of the biggest powers on the Continent rather publicly turn their backs on him. As a result, it is more than evident that the relationship with France and Germany is going through the doldrums at the moment. Spain may well be a country of more than forty million inhabitants that grows at the rate of 4% annually, but all that counts for absolutely nothing if the people in charge of the nation are not really up to the task, and are incapable of undertaking any foreign initiative whatsoever other than signing agreements with two regimes that are desperate for respectability and considered outcasts and undesirables by the rest of Europe - Fidel Castro’s Cuba and the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez. France has also had the somewhat dubious privilege of meeting face to face with Pepiño Blanco, the quintessential representative of the current wave of Socialist thought in Spain. As a result, decades of hard work at building the image of the country internationally have by now come tumbling down like a pack of cards, thanks to the joint actions of the Prime Minister and his foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos. Meanwhile the other real face in the Government, Finance Minister Pedro Solbes, after leaving the European Union to take over the Finance Portfolio in Spain, now seems powerless or unwilling or both to give the touch necessary to the Spanish economy to prevent a very serious financial slump. Promises of free dentistry for children and a 2,500 euro bung to any new-born baby’s family, merrily given by Socialist ministers recently, has been met with poorly hidden gloom by the Finance Minister. By and large, he inherited what was left in place by his brilliant predecessor Rodrigo Rato, and whilst claiming the current success as his own - which it isn’t - he also should be aware that the loan, finance and interest markets of the country seem almost certainly set for some rather strict adjustments, and since election time is near, any sort of adjustment simply is not politically on the cards. [And should the PP get in, the financial mess will be well under way, with the Socialists who will now be in opposition will clamour See what the right has done to our economy? When all along the fault lay with the Socialists] {If there is a collapse it will be because borrowing money is very easy in Spain, and the banks have all been very forthcoming at financing real estate projects. However with a slump in the housing market almost certain, the real estate companies will have a hard time repaying their loans on time and may seek extensions, which in turn will call into question the liquidity and profitability of the Banks, and downhill we go}
Meanwhile on the home front, things were also not going exactly according to plan for the Prime Minister. Rosa Diez, who has been a member of the Socialist party for thirty years, and was a Euro MP in representation of the PSOE, announced in September that she was resigning from the Party and joining a new one to be founded by philosopher Fernando Savater. Rather like the Socialist party in France that is now in complete disarray after its defeat in the Presidential elections after the failed campaign by Segolène Royal, in Spain defections to other parties now seem the order of the day. Rosa Diez, however, is known for not exactly keeping quiet, and stated in a wide-ranging interview, that she was leaving the party as she totally disagreed with the plans of the Prime Minister for a confederal state. She also stated that she failed to understand why heads were not rolling within the party after the electoral defeat last May in the Madrid Community, yet when the Basque terror group ETA stated that the ceasefire was over, there was no change of approach by the Cabinet, and the attitude appeared to be Oh well, that’s it then - the end of an idea and yet no one was removed from any important position. Rosa Diez is now set to join the Basta Ya Party, whose membership has increased by 25% since Mrs Diez made her announcement. However, in this case Basta Ya seems to mean Enough [of the Prime Minister] Already, and not as was meant when it was founded - Enough [ETA killings] Already.
Then there’s the case of another Rosa - this time Rosa Regas, the head of the National Library, who was appointed to the job by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on May of 2004. A prize-winning author in her own right, and dubbed a Chevalière of the Legion of Honour in November of 2005, Miss Regas just seemed quite incapable of undertaking what she had been called on to do: supervise and preserve the national treasures in the Library. She announced that she was pulling out of her job, as her immediate boss - the Minister of Culture - had no confidence in her, which is not really surprising considering she managed to lose a Mapa Mundi that was in the Library dating from Roman times. Although she stated that she knew who had taken it, this did still not conceal the fact that as a general rule creative people and authors are amongst this sector, are usually not suited to take up administrative positions, no matter what the PR value may be. However, as the Regas Reign came to an end, she attempted by justify both her nomination and her position as a Socialist by making statements to the press such as The greatest thing that happened to Spain since the death of Franco was the defeat of Jose Maria Aznar in 2004, all of which seemed a desperate attempt to give some respectability and justification to her appointment.
In another disappointment for the government, Josu Jon Imaz, the moderate president of the main Basque party PNV, resigned from the party in mid September leaving the way clear for the hard-liners, including the Lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe, to champion (an unlawful) referendum, to seek independence for the region.
All this just adds fuel to the fire and further bears out the point of view of an editorialist in a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal, by writing: Under previous Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Spain took a lead in the Mediterranean and, following its investors in Latin America. Then along came the change of political leadership and the inheritance of international capital was fast whittled away. In a matter of days, Mr Zapatero took Spain from a front-line state to a backwater, with the new Prime Minister going out of his way to poke Washington in the eye. In return, Spain gets no hearing from the most powerful country in the world. Maybe the Prime Minister just fails to care, but opinion articles of this sort in respectable publications do nothing to reset the values of the country that Zapatero has so badly damaged.
