At
the service in Santiago, the President of the Galician Parliament –
Señora Pilar Rojo – publicly asked St James to intercede on behalf
of all Spaniards and make 2013 less painful than 2012. If this
were to happen, it certainly would
be a miracle and St James could justifiably line up with all the
others who'd want to take the credit. Possibly including Sra Rojo and
her PP Party. But, if it doesn't happen, what is this going to tell
us about St James? That he ignored the special pleading? That he
listened but couldn't get in to see any of the three Gods of the
Trinity? Or that he got in to at least one of them but had his
intervention quashed? I fear we'll never know.
The
other religious development of the last couple of days has been
Cardinal Rouca Varela - President of the Conference of Bishops of
Spain - using his pulpit to announce that we're witnessing the death
of marriage “by legal means”. What he seems to mean is that, if
you allow gays to wed, this will lead to the death of
marriage. Presumably because all straight folk with eschew the
institution once it's tainted by homosexuals. This, of course, is
nonsense. There certainly won't be the death of marriage. Though
there may well be the death of the Cardinal's personal concept
of marriage, which he assumes to be divinely blessed. My advice to the Cardinal is
to get used to the idea and to be a bit more, well, Christian
in his attitudes to people. And to stop saying things like “Without
true marriage, society will disintegrate.” 'False marriage' there
will be, whether he likes it or not. It's just a matter of time.
Talking
about hardship in 2013, the British historian, Antony Beever recently
published in, Prospect
magazine, a longish article entitled – Europe's
Long Shadow – Will a continent turn its back on democracy.
This is what he had to say about Spain - When
my book on the Spanish civil war was published in 2005, journalists
in Madrid asked me in all seriousness whether it could ever happen
again. I replied that thank goodness the same conditions simply did
not exist. The vicious circle of fear between right and left, which
had originated in the extreme cruelty by both sides in the Russian
civil war, did not exist. But
some things have begun to change alarmingly since then. We again face
the danger of a world depression and we are beginning to see mass
unemployment in some countries, especially in southern Europe. Last
year, the British ambassador in Madrid, pointed out how
remarkable it was that despite the terrifying levels of youth
unemployment in Spain, there had been an astonishingly low level of
social disorder. The demonstrations of the “Indignados,” the
young Spaniards who have taken to the streets to protest against
austerity measures and unemployment, have been passionate but not
violent. His theory is that the memory of the horrors of the Spanish
civil war is acting like a nuclear threat in the background. He may
well be right.
Right or wrong, Spain is going to see its unemployment rise from 5 to
6m in 2013, with no let-up in youth unemployment, currently running
at more than 50%. It's not difficult to predict a greater likelihood
of civil unrest. Perhaps this is why the government has
made it illegal to take pictures of the police. Beevor ended his
article with the following warning:- What
are the dangers and threats to parliamentary democracy in Europe? Can
the fundamental contradictions in the euro project be overcome? The
dynamic of the moment seems to be that political integration must be
drastically accelerated to make up for the flagrant paradoxes that
existed from the euro’s very foundation and were scandalously
ignored. One foreign minister argued to me last autumn that the
economic situation was so grave that Europe must adopt a presidential
system with direct elections. That idea is now becoming general
currency in top European circles. Economic and political control
would be drastically centralised with virtually no accountability.
This would be nothing less than an elective dictatorship bringing
with it the threat of nationalism, the very thing the European
project intended to avoid. See
the full article here.
But
anyway, and meanwhile, I wish all readers a good 2013. Indeed, a good
rest of your life. And I leave you with a compendium of great 2012 goals, dedicated to my very old friend, Rick, over in New Orleans. Enjoy!