Politics of Spain

Garzón found guilty: I still love this stupid country

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Spanish magistrate* Baltasar Garzón was today found guilty in an illegal wiretap trial, one of three cases currently open against him. The Supreme Court has banned him from working as a judge for eleven years, effectively ending his career as a famed ‘crusader for justice’. The sentence leaves Garzón the only significant loser in the [...]

Tags: Baltasar Garzón, Politics, PP, Spain
Posted in Politics of Spain, Spanish judges | No Comments »

Spain elections: the view from the edge of the precipice

Saturday, November 19th, 2011

Mariano Rajoy’s PP will win tomorrow’s general elections in Spain. The size of the majority it achieves will shape Spanish and Catalan politics for the next few years. The prospect of seeing the PP in power again after 8 years is not a happy one. While I’m no fan of the PSOE (I think I [...]

Tags: Barcelona, Capital, catalonia, European Union, Izquierda Unida, Politics, Politics of Catalonia, PP, Spain
Posted in Congress of Deputies, Convergence and Union, Elections in Spain, European Central Bank, Government of Spain, International Monetary Fund, Mariano Rajoy, Occupy, Politics of Spain, Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, Spanish general election, United Left, electoral law, general elections | No Comments »

Is Gertrude Stein pulling the strings on the Balearics?

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

José Ramón Bauzá, in government but losing the power of speech.

Tags: Empires, rulers and warfare, Languages, Les bourgeois, Theatre
Posted in Islands, José Ramón Bauzà, People's Party (Spain), Politics of Spain | No Comments »

Langston Hughes in Spain

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Idealism vs realism as a Stalinist hack copes with the Italian bombing of Barcelona but struggles to explain why Moorish peasants are slaughtering Spanish workers in the battle for Madrid.

Tags: Barcelona, catalonia, Civil War, Empires, rulers and warfare, Falange, Film, Francisco Franco, Generalitat de Catalunya, Guerra Civil, History, Les bourgeois, Madrid, moors, nationalism, Poets, Russia, Spain, War
Posted in Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Carl Murphy, English literature, Federico García Lorca, George Orwell, Karl Marx, Langston Hughes, Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Natural history, Politics of Spain, Spanish literature, air raid, tree | No Comments »

Berlusconi and the wiseness of Mubarak

Friday, February 4th, 2011

“The wisest of men” line isn’t the former’s, but ben trovato it certainly is.

Tags: Berlusconi, Falange, France, Guardian, Italy, Les bourgeois, Spain
Posted in Egypt, Francesco Guarascio, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Karl Marx, Mubarak, Politics of Spain, Tim Pearce, biased reporting, propaganda | No Comments »

State of alert: How the PSOE used Franco’s strike breaking tactics

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

[I intended to write this sooner but I've been rather knocked out with flu since Saturday.] The press was full of it: on the evening of December 3rd, the Spanish military ‘took over’ air traffic control towers across Spain at the request of the government. Air traffic controllers (ATCs) had, we were told, abandoned their [...]

Tags: Capital, ETA, europe, Francisco Franco, Politics, Spain, Spanish State
Posted in Alfredo Rubalcaba, EUR, Franco's government, Francoist Spain, Politics of Spain, Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, Second International, Socialist International, Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, Spanish military, army, civilian infrastructure, flu, interior minister, public infrastructure | No Comments »