Spanish
life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
-
Christopher Howse: A
Pilgrim in Spain.
If
you've arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra,
see my web page here.
Life
in Spain
- Cataluña: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard sees the utter mess there as being an existential threat to the EU. See the first article below this post for his rationale. Which seems accurate to me. As you can see, like everyone except the idiots on the PP party's right wing, AEP thinks the Spanish president, Mariano Rajoy, has made a complete pig's ear of the challenge. To everyone's cost. An interesting weekend ahead.
- This is an excellent review of the Spanish economy, in video form. It emphasises the macro/micro divide I bang on about regularly.
- I mentioned yesterday the (individualistic) Spanish attitude to rules. Basically: If a rule inconveniences me, it doesn't exist. Later that morning, I was walking along the riverside path toward Pontevedra's old quarter when I was confronted by a mother and her young son on their bikes, she on the parallel cycle path but he beside her on the pedestrian path. Even when I gestured (politely) that he move onto the cyle path, he didn't. Just looked at me, bewildered. His mother said nothing. Spaniards learn early to ignore people to whom they have no duty of care/consideration. Basically, everyone they don't know . . . In Germany and Holland, by the way, you will be mown down, if you're dumb enough to walk on a cycle path. Here, no one cares. A different universe.
- For Spanish speakers, here's an article from El País about Spaniards in the UK who back Brexit. And here's the English version I've just noticed . . .
Talking of the EU . . . For those readers who don't understand
my aversion to it, I offer the 2nd and 3rd articles below. The first of these is as close to an encapsulation of my views as you're likely to get. It's the
vision of the future thing, as some US president might have said. Sweet FA to do with backward-looking hankering for a restored empire, or with racism - the rather pathetic calumnies of those - in the UK and elsewhere - who oppose Brexit. Of course, the Catalan situation addressed by AEP in the first article does nothing to undermine my belief that the EU is an over-ambitious dream of out-of-tune technocrats which is doomed to failure. And that it is already dying under the weight of its internal incongruities. But that's just my view. Everyone is free to differ. Time will tell . . .
Here in
Galicia,
La Crisis has led to a pile of '
regularisations' - measures aimed at ensuring that rules are followed and tax revenues maximised. We've had the municipalities using drones to check on property improvements and now there are inspectors in the fields checking on who's involved in the wine harvesting, and how. The peasants are almost revolting against this campaign to ensure the payment of income and social security taxes.
Finally . . . After they were fined almost a million euros, the
ferry operators found guilty of taking too many people to the Atlantic Islands off our coast are complaining that they're being 'criminalised'. It seems they need course 101 in the operation of the law.
Today's cartoon:
The Times' view of Jeremy Corbyn's reception at the Labour party annual conference in Brighton. It's a play on a famous poster of the 1930s:-
ARTICLE 1
Spain
threatens to break up the euro unless Catalonia comes to heel: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
While
the EU watches in disbelief, a remote threat has mushroomed suddenly
into an existential crisis. It is even more intractable than
Brexit, and certainly more dangerous.
The
volcanic events unfolding by the day
in Catalonia threaten
the EU project within its core. They pose a direct threat to the
integrity of monetary union.
Former
French premier Manuel Valls – son of a celebrated Catalan
painter – warns that if this
weekend’s banned vote on independence goes
ahead and leads to Catalan secession, it will be “the end of
Europe” as a meaningful mission.
Those
old enough to remember the Spanish Civil War can only shudder at
TV footage of crowds across Spain cheering units of Guardia Civil as
they leave for Catalonia, egged on with chants of “go get them”.
As
matters stand, 14 senior Catalan officials have been arrested. There
have been dawn raids on the Catalan
Generalitat,
including the presidency, the economics ministry, and foreign affairs
office.
Officials
preparing for the vote have been interrogated. The Guardia Civil has
been deployed to seize ballots sheets and to prevent the referendum
from taking place, if necessary by coercive means.
The
Catalan security forces – Mossos d’Esquadra – have told the
Spanish authorities that they will not carry out orders to shut down
voting sites if this leads to civil disorder. Their higher duty is to
Catalan cohesion, or "convivència ciutadana". It is
defiance, a little like the British Army’s Curragh Mutiny in March
1914.
The
government of Mariano Rajoy insists that the Guardia Civil is being
sent to preserve the constitutional order and inviolable integrity of
Spain.
Catalonia’s
leaders call it fatally-misguided repression that risks spinning out
of control. “We will never forget what has happened. We will never
forget this aggression, this prohibition of opinion,” said Carles
Puigdemont, the Catalan leader. The contrast with the Scottish
referendum in 2014 is self-evident.
Markets
have yet react to this showdown even though the Spanish finance
minister, Luis de Guindos, has openly warned that Catalonia will
suffer a “brutal pauperisation” if it presses ahead. He said
the region would suffer a collapse in GDP of 25pc to 30pc, a doubling
of unemployment, and a devaluation of up to 50pc once it had been
thrown out of the euro.
This
is a threat, not a prediction. Such a collapse would occur only if
Spain chooses to bring it about by making life hell for the Catalan
state: by closing its economic borders, by using its veto in Brussels
to ensure that Catalonia cannot rejoin the EU or remain in monetary
union, and by blocking Catalan accession to global bodies such as the
International Monetary Fund.
The
problem for Spain is that if it acted in such a fashion, it would
bring a commensurate catastrophe upon itself. Catalonia is the
richest and most dynamic region of Spain – along with the Basque
country – and makes up a fifth of the economy.
Such
circumstances would entail a partial break-up of the euro, re-opening
that Pandora’s Box. The status of Spain’s sovereign debt would be
unclear. Why would the Catalans uphold their share of these
liabilities if subjected to a boycott?
Markets
would have to presume that the debts of the rump kingdom would no
longer be 99% of GDP but more like 120%. This burden would be borne
by a poorer society and one that would necessarily be in an economic
slump itself.
The
Bank Of Spain played down the crisis on Thursday, saying only that
Spanish borrowing costs would rise if tensions worsened. “It would
initially affect the sovereign risk rating, and afterwards spread
through other interest rates,” it said. So far the silence
from the rating agencies has been deafening.
It
is not for foreigners to take sides in a historical dispute of such
emotion, drenched in mythology, with the wounds of Franquismo and Las
Jornadas de Mayo raw to this day. Catalan nationalists date the
original sin to 1714 when Philip V abolished their institutions and
imposed Castilian laws – and absolutism – by right of
conquest.
What
seems clear is that Mr Rajoy and his Partido Popular have provoked
a Catalan backlash by
blocking enhanced devolution that had already been agreed with the
outgoing Socialist government. What the Catalans want is a settlement
on the Basque model with their own budget and tax-raising powers.
Mr
Rajoy then exploited the eurozone banking crisis to try to break the
power of the regions, forcing Catalonia to request a €5bn (£4.4bn)
rescue even though it is a net contributor to the Spanish state. He
has since hid behind mechanical legalism.
You
might equally blame the Catalan nationalists for charging ahead with
a referendum barred by the constitutional court, creating a mood of
division between ‘Remainers’ and ‘Leavers’. Yet they
were sorely provoked. Mr Rajoy’s heavy-handed response has since
been so inept that he may have created a majority for independence
where none existed before.
The
problem for the EU is that it is a prisoner to legal rigidities.
Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has had to back Mr Rajoy and the
Spanish constitutional order because that is how the EU system works.
This has made Brussels a party to alleged abuses in Catalan eyes.
Barcelona’s
mayor Ada Colau – who opposes secession – has called on
the EU to “defend the fundamental rights of Catalan citizens
against a wave of repression from the Spanish state".
“Europe
cannot allow itself to adopt a passive position over the Catalan
question, seeing that the events going on in Barcelona are affecting
Paris, Madrid, Brussels, and Berlin alike,” she wrote in the
Guardian.
We
will find out on Sunday whether or not the
Catalan people turn out to queue defiantly at locked polling
stations, manned
by the Guardia Civil. A declaration of unilateral independence is not
yet “on the table”, said Mr Puigdemont. Not yet.
The
EU is in a horrible bind. It faces a rule of law crisis in Hungary
and Poland. It faces an East European revolt over migrant quotas. Its
relations with Turkey have turned hostile. Now Spain is threatening
to break up the euro unless the Catalans come to heel.
Brexit
is surely the least of their problems, and one that can be solved so
easily with an ounce of common sense.
ARTICLE 2
Emmanuel Macron’s
‘inspirational’ EU dream is actually an authoritarian nightmare: Allistair Heath
One of the great
pathologies of British politics, at least since the Fifties, has been
our strange refusal to understand European integration. We keep
telling ourselves that the EU is a transactional relationship, a
“trade block”, a means of boosting our mutual GDP, of making it
easier for British banks and German carmakers to do business. The
entire post-Brexit referendum debate in Britain has continued to be
conducted along such absurd lines.
Whenever bemused
Europeans tell us that we are missing the point, that EU integration
is a historic project to build a new civilisation, we cannot compute.
We laugh nervously, stick our fingers in our ears, and go back to
arguing about how the EU should focus on trying to semi-liberalise
the market for purple widgets.
French énarques, who
pride themselves on Cartesian rigour, have a theory for why Britain
is unable to face facts. They believe that, as befits a conservative
nation obsessed with evolutionary change, that hasn’t undergone a
proper revolution since 1688, we are overly practical.
We are accountants and
shopkeepers who cannot comprehend grand theories or abstract
concepts: in effect, Brexit was a rejection of a philosophy we never
understood. The French specialise in the general; we focus on the
particular, and neither side understands the other.
That is why anybody who
cares about politics should read Emmanuel Macron’s speech on
the future of Europe. His agenda is striking: he wants more new
bureaucracies, a centralisation of the setting of taxes, an EU-wide
minimum wage, European military integration and much else.
If you follow European
politics, you will know that its aims are mainstream among the
continental establishment. But if you still believe the EU to be
little more than a clever vehicle to facilitate tourism or cut the
price of phone calls, you may be jolted out of your complacency.
This is about politics
and nation-building, not commerce; economics only matters when it is
weaponised to promote political integration, as with the euro. You
may even come to understand that Theresa May was right to say in
Florence that “the United Kingdom has never totally felt at home
being in the European Union”.
On top of the European
military intervention force, Macron wants a substantially greater
European budget, and a drive towards tax harmonisation, starting with
corporation tax, the treatment of tech firms, carbon levies and
national insurance.
Macron has been forced
temporarily to tone down his support for a Eurozone finance minister
and debt mutualisation as a result of Angela Merkel’s humiliation
in Germany; but these ideas still lurk in the background. Macron also
wants a European public prosecutor, an asylum office, a border police
and a more integrated immigration policy.
The purpose is to build
a new country called Europe, with a common history and cultural
references. For this to work, old identities need to be downplayed
and eventually turned into historical curiosities. Hence the creation
of new European universities, the promotion of apprenticeships in
other countries and the adoption of pan-European lists and parties at
European elections.
It is usual to contrast
Macron’s vision with that of Jean-Claude Juncker, also outlined
this month. But the distinction is merely one of practicality: Macron
realises that an increasingly centralised European state will have to
be multi-speed. The hard core will integrate fastest; the more
reluctant Europeans will move more slowly. He even thinks the UK may
rejoin this slow lane.
Juncker, by contrast,
is more one size fits all. Everybody is “duty-bound” to join the
euro and European banking union; he wants a “fully fledged European
Defence Union by 2025”; a new economic nationalism which screens
“foreigners” (ie non-Europeans) from buying certain companies,
and a crackdown on Eastern Europeans who oppose a centralisation of
immigration policy. It’s all or nothing, with dissidents
crushed.
Both men are
euro-nationalists, inspired by the 20th-century ideology of Jean
Monnet and Robert Schuman; both share the same assumptions; both are
latter-day empire builders who want to “reunite” Europe and pit
it against other countries. It’s a “choice” between two shades
of grey that will end in catastrophe by unleashing populist demons
across the continent.
To legitimise this
power grab, European ideologues like to draw upon the work of the
sociologist Benedict Anderson. He claimed that contemporary national
identities are “imagined communities” forged out of disparate,
pre-industrial groups by national education systems and other forms
of top-down cultural moulding.
If “Frenchness” and
“Germanness” are mere political creations, then why not replace
them with “Europeanness”? Yet the logic is faulty: past acts of
extreme social engineering do not justify a project to remould
society.
That is not a “liberal”
vision but a sinister, authoritarian one. Seeking to replace
supposedly “fake” identities with new, carefully constructed ones
designed to lead to a particular political outcome is merely
replacing one kind of nationalism with another. The British
metropolitan Left is kidding itself if it does not see this.
Pro-EU ideologues may
argue that by forging a new coherent Euro-demos and holding elections
to determine who governs it, a genuine form of democracy will be able
to take root in the EU. But that will be a 100 year project, at
best.
In the meantime,
existing checks and balances will be eroded as power is handed to
nameless politicians and officials, and technocracy will reign
supreme. Far from saving the enlightenment values that almost
perished in the World Wars, European integration will have destroyed
them.
Britain never wanted
any of this. We joined the European Economic Community for
practical reasons: we thought it would modernise our economy and help
the West to defeat communism. We were wrong, and we won’t make that
mistake again. It will become increasingly impossible, as the years
pass and Macron and his allies get their way, for anybody to pretend
that the EU is merely a “free market” rather than an embryonic
state.
Once we leave, that
will be it: we will never rejoin.
ARTICLE 3
Theresa May's speech
was eminently reasonable. How could the EU reject it?: Norman Lamont
The Prime Minister’s
speech was never going to meet the artificially high expectations
that some people, especially her opponents and critics, had set
for her. But her words in Florence were thoughtful, eloquent,
well-constructed, and provided a vision for Brexit which will be
clear both to people in the UK, whether Leavers or Remainers, and in
Europe.
What was most striking
about the speech was how overwhelmingly reasonable it was.
Overwhelmingly reasonable in explaining that Brexit was not an act of
hostility by the UK to the EU. Overwhelmingly reasonable in the way
it outlined a new relationship, especially a trading relationship
neither Norwegian nor EEA, but one manifestly in the interest of both
sides. It was reasonable before she made her offer on money and even
more so afterwards.
It was so reasonable
that even the most stubborn or ostrich-like Eurocrats will
surely see that it is in their interest to accept something along
these lines. It is difficult to believe that the EU can be so
determined to harm itself that it will reject her vision of a deal.
Mrs May even curtsied before the idea that we cannot benefit from
the single market without being a member of it; many people don’t
accept this, and I suspect she does not either, but she nonetheless
made obeisance to it.
The transitional
period, which she quite rightly prefers to call an implementation
period, will offer reassurance to businesses worried about
the so-called cliff edge. There is some danger of sudden change in
regulatory regimes, but in the busy world of commerce and contracts
people will be quite capable of making the necessary adjustments.
Some people will wish
to pour cold water on the speech – both opponents of Brexit and
people in Europe. It was never going to break the stalemate (if
stalemate is what there is at the moment). But it would have been
wrong for her to intrude into the negotiations in a detailed way. You
cannot negotiate through speeches. She did not attempt to snatch at
some instant solution, and quite rightly so. Her speech was a
calm one, playing a long game.
Shortly after I stepped
down as Chancellor, in 1994, I made a speech at the Conservative
Party conference in which I said that one day Britain might have to
choose between remaining in Europe and going in a direction that
wouldn’t suit us at all, or rather awkwardly having to leave. I’m
not surprised we have finally reached that point. But I was always
confident that we would be able to secure a close, friendly, mutually
beneficial relationship with Europe befitting our status as a large
and strong country.
Today Theresa May has
set out what that relationship should look like in terms anyone who
wants the best for this country, whatever they voted for last June,
can understand.