Saturday, February 02, 2008

Letter from Spain: The Popular Party and Some Other Popular Spanish Parties

This is the third in a series of letters from AMDG at La Yijad en Eurabia.


As indicated in my previous letter, while it is not evident that any conservative strategy will be able to count on the Popular Party (Partido Popular, PP) as the major party of the right, most of PP’s leaders are actually “libcons”. Consequently, the tactic proposed to confront that situation is to promote the advance of anti-immigration, populist parties that would keep in check the liberal leaning of the PP (I use liberal in the American sense, meaning progressive). The rise of those parties is expected to force the PP to act as a conservative party, even though keeping a certain amount of liberal rhetoric is acceptable, or even necessary.

I dedicate this post to investigating the parties better suited to implement that strategy, and I propose that they should focus on the local political level at this stage.

There are some alternatives to the right of the PP, all of them with a very reduced significance. The aim of the counter-jihad should be to help them to get at least one seat in Parliament, even if this is still daydreaming in Spain.

Which are those parties? I would divide them into moderates and radicals. The radicals follow in most cases a strategy that can only discourage sensible voters. The left must actually be very happy with them; does it actually operate them by proxy? If there is any hope, it would of course lie with the moderates. I have been able to spot only two of those Spanish moderate parties that oppose Islamisation: Alternativa Española and Iniciativa Habitable.

The first (AES) is a conservative Catholic party with some anti-libertarian whims (not really worth concern). They define themselves as “Catholics in politics” more than Catholic politicians, and they started in 2003 as a reaction to those progressive measures of the PP. They resented especially that the PP had then a majority in the parliament, yet the PP implemented many liberal policies (Spanish), and this is precisely the kind of party I am looking for.

AESI have only a few buts. Their insistence in some topics — i.e. abortion — is somehow tiring, even if extremely relevant both from an ethical point of view and from a plain political view in the current demographic situation of Spain. Their web site has a cumbersome navigation scheme and discouragingly lacks interactive possibilities. As far as immigration is concerned, they reject racism and xenophobia but also the current uncontrolled invasion. They propose to favour controlled immigration, prioritising those with a background that is “Hispanic and culturally close to ours”. I think this is fair enough if it is strictly implemented and not just a rhetorical statement.

Their results in the last national elections (2004) were disappointing, specially taking into account that they invested a reasonable amount of resources. Nevertheless, it should be taken into account that they had started only the year before, in 2003. They will have my vote next 9th March.

The second party I am focusing on is Iniciativa Habitable (Leefbar Initiative, so to speak). It is a more recent party; a real grassroots one. They have no past and a very discreet present; their future is a big question mark. You can see here the statistics of their web page, with an average of 50,000 pages visited weekly. They have translated some articles from the Brussels Journal. Look at this: IH proposes restricting the concession of Spanish nationality. Concessions as from 1985 should be revised (Spanish). As far as I know, no other Spanish party has a similar proposal. Only for that, they have my support (and my vote in local elections).

Habitable

The fact that they have no past can be an asset in Spain, to avoid being associated with the extreme right, the Franco regime, and so on. But their present is very discreet. They are actually a group of friends who decided it was the time to do something more than regretting the situation. I met the co-ordinator, Manuel Leal, and Alberto Grasa last Christmas. I saw honest, reasonable citizens concerned about the future of their children; I decided immediately to help them.
- - - - - - - - -
Habitable

The party has not any relevant infrastructure nor financial means to compete in national elections; they will not even try it. Still, they were successful in the last local elections (2007), even if they only participated in a few villages and small cities. Their name has started to be heard here and there. I am convinced that, in Spain, the local elections are the entry key for the anti-Islamisation and anti-immigration parties. At that level, they are immune to the accusations of “racism”, “intolerance”, “fascism”, etc. because the neighbours know the candidates personally in many cases.

There is a third interesting party, Plataforma per Catalunya (PxC). As you can guess by the name, their scope of action is just in Catalonia. They got a modest success there in the local elections in 2003 (4 concejales, representatives in a city council) that they multiplied to 17 concejales in the last ones (2007). It is just 17 concejales out of a total of 8,932 in Catalonia, but their influence can be measured by the hysteria generated among the mainstream parties. It was funny to see them all against PxC, a newcomer.

Their leader, Anglada, has a right wing neofranquist background. The Spanish entry in Wikipedia indicates that he was a candidate of Frente Nacional in the 1989 European parliament elections. This is sometimes agitated against him by the left, and even by the “moderate” right, but, as the results of the local elections show; this trick is losing the effectiveness it used to have.

This is the situation, and these are the conclusions: First, there is no anti-immigration or anti-Islamisation party with a seat in Spanish Parliament, nor is it foreseen in the near future. The strategy I would propose is to influence the policies of the Popular Party. The best tactic for this strategy is to promote the advance of anti-immigration parties at local level. I have found two that meet my requirements.

I am of course open to your comments and questions. My next post will be a status report on Spanish immigration.

— AMDG

8 comments:

Afonso Henriques said...

"This is the situation, and these are the conclusions: First, there is no anti-immigration or anti-Islamisation party with a seat in Spanish Parliament,"

Now you are lying!

The National Basque Party is a pro Basque right wing prty who is anti-immigration and anti everything that is not Basque, for exemple, islam.
The party has massive support i the Basque Country and they are not terrorists or racists of any sort.
The same to the other European Hispanic Nations as Catalonia and others.

In Spain there are the State who does not care much about what means to be Spaniish and there are the Nations who have proud in being how they are and as so, they do not like much immigration or islam. Every National Right Wing Party in Spain is a party against Islamisation.

"They propose to favour controlled immigration, prioritising those with a background that is “Hispanic and culturally close to ours”"

Don't get to happy Americans! Mexicans will not go to Spain, you know why?
Well,
this is how
Spaniards treat non white Hispanics.
They will feel safer in L.A.

AMDG said...

I would not accuse a person of lying in the way you have done. You may say that in your opinion my analysis is partial, biased, even not correct… but the accusation of lying is not acceptable.

GoV readers, please have a look to these news (all links in Spanish):

The Ombudsman in the Basque Country has recommended the regional police not to inform on the nationality of criminals.

The Ombudsman in the Basque Country has recommended the city councils to facilitate the registration of illegal immigrants.

Foreign population in the Basque Country has grown 41% in the last two years (2006, 2007).

Catalonian regional Gov. opens an “embassy” in Morocco”. In order to favour immigration from that country. This was done when CiU, a nationalist party from the right, was in government. I will soon prepare a report on Spanish immigration.

Concerning the video, it made the headlines of Spanish media for more than one week. It is the most relevant case of pro-immigration media manipulation in Spain. We knew later that the aggressor had been under psiquiatric treatment for more than 10 years. It had neither injuries nor other consequences. There have been real aggressions by immigrants in public trasportation, but the videos have not been disclosed, as in this case.

Of course, anyone can understand that Mexicans will not go to Spain, because for them it is easier to cross the border to the US, where they can find a big Mexican community.

Baron Bodissey said...

Afonso --

AMDG is right. Your comment was out of line, and broke our rule that requires civility in the comments.

I don't like you referring to all of AMDG's hard work as "lies".

You may disagree with him, and he may be mistaken about something, but he is not "lying".

Such comments are uncalled for. If you call someone a liar in the future, I'll delete the comment.

Homophobic Horse said...

AMDG

"The Ombudsman in the Basque Country has recommended the regional police not to inform on the nationality of criminals."

This is happening all over the west. I wonder what has caused it? I hazard a guess that it may be "sensitivity training" - Frankfurt School developed mind control, that makes public officials behave this way.

Afonso Henriques said...

Well, I have to recognize I was not polite. Such amount of latin machism was perfectly unneeded specially with no ladies in the game.
It is my bad English fault, it was not literaly what I ment and I, as so, regret have said what I said.
I am sorry AMDG for being so rude and unfair. I apologise to all GoV community, Baron is right, it was out of line and unworthy of this blog level. I hope you can forgive my excesses. I used that word because my English is so bad I couldn't remember any word that would fill the gap in the sense I wanted, "lying" is too strong, I wanted something more temperate.
Maybe exagerating or being imparcial would be more acurate terms.

But Baron, you are being unfair when you generalise when you say that I refer to all of AMDG hard wor as lies. I agree with AMDG in much of what he said, I only questioned one sentence. It is very different.

ADMG, I am sorry for being so rude and I regret what I said.
Though, I still think I am right.
One thing I have to agree with you, the video was an isolated case and Spaniards are more mistreated by immigrants than the reverse.
It was highly publicised in the media while when the victims are Spaniards, the media stay silent. Deplorable. Maybe I should have not aired the video.

Baron Bodissey said...

Afonso --

I accept your apology. And you're right -- you didn't disagree with everything AMDG said.

And your English is improving all the time.  :)

AMDG said...

You are right HH, this is no news; I only wanted to show that the Basque gov. is not different, as Afonso states.

The apologies are accepted, Afonso. And, of course, difference in opinion is NOT a problem, especially on historical matters, but I have provided some evidence that the right nationalist parties in Spain are not different, as you state. Well, CiU has changed slightly, now that they are out of government…

Regarding the video, I am happy that you recognise this. BTW, the “moderate” anti-jihadists have used it to demonstrate that we are Nazis. Please note also that the second incident was a case of self defence. Several antifas attacked the soldier on the suspicion he was going to an authorised right-wing demo. Nazis, they say, with three exclamation marks!!!. Wow.

Afonso Henriques said...

AMDG,

Yes, the second incident was a perfect exemple of how parcial the Media really is.
It made, like the other, its way to the Media here too.

The headlines were "Spanish Neo Nazis brutally stab inocent young boy" and "The Nazis in Spain are gaining such terrain that now they kill at day light during manifestations".

One close look to de facto far right wing news agency Novopress show me the way.

I wouldn't cry for that innocent boy.

Sad when Neo Nazis are more reliable than the MSM.