Dawn

Dawn

Saturday, September 25, 2004

The titanic [and damaging] struggle in the UK between Right and Left – Capitalism and Socialism, Conservatism and Labour – has its echo in Spain in the fight between Church and State. The former was, of course, entrenched in its strong position by Franco and successive socialist governments have been hell bent on reversing this. Thus, the recently-elected Mr Zapatero lost no time in announcing liberal measures in respect of religious teaching in schools, divorce and homosexual marriages. And now we are told that the government has a ‘route map’ under which measures will be taken to remove the Church from its privileged position in a country where only 20% of the populace are regular churchgoers. These include reducing the funds paid by the state to the Church and removing from the archbishops the right to appoint the state-paid teachers of religion. As if this weren’t bad enough, the government is proposing to give financial assistance to Muslim institutions. I don’t suppose it’s much compensation to the Church that this time round the nuns are not being raped and the priests murdered.

By the way, the recent reform of the Spanish divorce laws means that you can, in the simplest of circumstances, get divorced in 8 to 10 weeks from submitting the petition. Sounds perfect for Britney Spears.

The opposition PP party has announced that it is changing its official colour from blue to orange. Turning itself into the Liberal Democrats perhaps. Meanwhile, up here in Galicia, the President of our local branch of the PP party – the octogenarian Mr Fraga – is facing some sort of revolt from his members in Ourense. The man behind this is thought to be his ex heir-apparent, who was ousted a couple of years ago when it was found that he owned the company selling [expensive] protective suits to the volunteers who swarmed here to clean the beaches after the Prestige oil disaster. El Mundo’s political commentator suggested on TV yesterday that the PP party might be better occupied in dealing with the image created by the shenanigans in Galicia involving a relic from the Franco era than in playing around with colours. Fat chance

No comments: