“This British Expert Knows More About Spain Than Your Brother-in-Law: Rajoy’s Titanic After-Meal Experience”

In 1971, General Vernon Waltersspecial envoy of the president Richard Nixon, met with an aging Francisco Franco. Faced with the general’s direct question —”what will happen in Spain when you die?”—, the dictator did not back down, rather he broke down: “I am going to tell you. I have created certain institutions, nobody thinks they will work, but they are wrong Prince Juan Carlos will be King, because there is no alternative. Spain will go far along the path that you, the English and the French, want: democracy, pornography, drugs and what not.. There will be great follies, but none of them will be fatal for Spain. Because I am going to leave something that I did not find when I assumed the government of this country forty years ago: the Spanish middle class. Tell your president to trust in the good sense of the Spanish people, there will not be another Civil War”.

Chimpoon.

Franco said it as is. EITHER at least Walters would remember it that way in an interviewperhaps somewhat embellished by the passage of time, many years later.

This is one of the great historical moments that appear in Spain. The Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Countryessay by Michael Reid, former correspondent in Spain for The Economistabout the strengths and weaknesses of the Spanish political idiosyncrasy. The book will be published in Spain in 2024.

Although Not everyone turned to drugs and pornography after the death of the GeneralissimoIt is a fact that Spain changed its customs after Franco’s death. So much so that the slogan Spain is different has it expired? Or does our political polarization show that the Spanish goat is still pulling the mountain of singularity?

We spoke to the British journalist Michael Reid (1952).

ASK. I wanted to start by talking about some common places about Spain so that you can tell me what is true and what is myth. First: Spain is different. What remains?

ANSWER. Each country has its historical peculiarities, but the main argument of the book is that Spain is not as different as we have been told. Formerly, it was thought that Spain could not be democratic, who lived outside the main European political and philosophical currents, that things were as they were and could not change. Reality has shown that it was not true.

It is true that Spain has some peculiarities, such as the importance of peripheral nationalisms, Catalonia and the Basque Country, although their existence has geographical logic. Or the mixture between the complicated Spanish geography —as a brake on the economic integration of the entire territory, before the arrival of the plane or the highways— and the relative weakness of the State, which I compare with the strength of the French. In the mid-19th century, France had more regional languages ​​than Spain, but the French Third Republic imposed linguistic and cultural uniformity. The Spanish State, for better or worse, did not have the strength to impose this, but it did have the strength to coexist with peripheral languages, which have always mixed with Spanish culture, which perhaps explains why the secessionist attempts have not finished fruitful. .

That said, and going back to why Spain is no longer different: many of Spain’s latest ills come from the financial crisis of 2008, that is, although the crisis was especially harsh in Spain, its malaises are common to those of other Western democracies. .

Q. Another commonplace: Spain is one of the most polarized societies in Europe. It is?

R. My perception is that, happily, Spain is not as polarized as it is said. It is true that it was, around 2017, around the Catalan conflict, but that went down, Catalan is no longer a priority obsession in the rest of Spain, although it may return. Spanish political polarization is relative if we compare it with that of the US or England. What I do see, and it may be a vague echo of the Civil War, is that the trench between left and right is deeper in Spain than in other neighboring countries. The Spanish constitution It was designed so that the main parties, even if they competed with each other, would come to an agreement to grease the architecture of the system; that has been lost in recent years, although it may be recovered.

Q. Regarding the position of Spain in Europe, there is a commonplace that was used as a throwing weapon during the debt crisis: the Spanish, and by extension the citizens of southern Europe, are more lazy and anarchic than those of the north . We are?

R. The famous PIGS of the Financial Times. Spain suffered a lot during the financial crisis due to its excessive real estate bubble, which nobody stopped in time, neither the politicians nor the banks, and had a certain social complicity. When the bubble burst, the crisis was deeper in Spain. The problem was the financial system and, above all, the savings banks. Apart from that, in 2008, the Spanish public accounts were not so bad; unlike Italy, Spain had shown that, under normal circumstances, it could continue to grow. The idea that Spain committed moral failures that led to the crisis, therefore, had some distortion.

“Spanish political polarization is relative if we compare it with that of the US or England”

In that negative image of Spain, past stories intersected. From the black legend of Spain as an intolerant and authoritarian Catholic country to the romantic legend of the 19th century, spread by the French and British, of Spain as a sensual country.

As a Briton, the flip side of the image of lazy Spain that doesn’t do its homework is a country with an attractive philosophy of life: working to live, rather than living to work. There are many human qualities in that wanting to live life.

Q. In the book, you analyze a profound cultural change: in a few decades, Spain went from a retrograde country to the vanguard of civil rights, with its open-minded laws on homosexual marriage, euthanasia or abortion. From militant Catholics to liberated with the fury of the convert. Are there cracks left when one changes like this overnight?

R. Indeed, the depth of these changes in social attitudes is striking, faster than in any other country in Europe, with the exception of Ireland. I started coming to Spain when I was a student, in the early seventies, with Franco still alive. The boredom of the new middle classes towards the restrictions and hypocrisies of the Catholic national culture was more than evident.

The Spanish case highlights how society was anticipating the changes. The PP can have a tough speech at times, but it knows that, deep down, the majority of its voters will end up being in favor, first, of divorce, and then of abortion or gay marriage.

However, profound changes always leave cracks, no one would be surprised if a counterattack emerged.

Q. From where?

A. The Catholic Church may no longer play a relevant ideological role in the country, but it does play a cultural one. Just these days, we have seen the evangelical churches appear in Madrid politics, a phenomenon that has advanced a lot in Latin America this century. Could it happen in Spain? I don’t know, I would have to follow it.

Vox, which represents a resistance against these cultural mutations, reflects the discomfort of a social sector against the speed of these social changes, although they do not manage to grow, for the moment, beyond 15%.

Q. The acceleration of civil rights came from the hand of Zapatero who, at the same time, turned them into a political game, an American-style cultural war. It worked out well for Zapatero, but did it work out for the country that these issues became a constant cultural fray?

R. Zapatero brought both things. There were advances in civil rights (homosexual marriage, abortion, etc.) that, in my opinion, were positive for the country. But, at the same time, and without any doubt, Zapatero used it as a lever to destabilize his political rivals, to show that the PP was the enemy and cultural issues could not be negotiated with them. Zapatero forced the PP, ultimately, to fight in a field in which he calculated, correctly, that he was going to win. Generally speaking, I think the culture wars they leave a toxic residue in politics. For Western democracies, it would be nice if they were softened a bit.

“Ayuso is a born politician, but I am not sure that it would work outside of Madrid”

Q. In the book, you analyze with delight when Mariano Rajoy, after losing the motion of no confidence that put him on the street, locked himself in the private room of a restaurant with similarities and, in a moment of great drama and solemnity for the country , mounted the mother of all after-dinner meals: feast, drink and toothpick. Nice way to resolve a political crisis, right? What does this tell us, not just about Rajoy, but about Spanish culture?

R. So there was a lot of criticism in the Spanish press towards Rajoy’s attitude, as if he had despised the institutions from the restaurant, but, for me, that titanic after-meal was very Spanish and very human. Rajoy had given the battle, but he knew that everything was lost. Meals and after-dinner meals occupy a central place in Spanish culture, a pleasant and civilized custom in my opinion. Rajoy then went to Santa Pola. I saw a human quality in his acceptance of defeat.

Bluefin tuna for Rajoy and his team on his last day as president

marcos garcia

Q. That Sánchez speaks fluent English has been a presidential novelty in Spain. For this reason, and due to some international image successes, such as Sánchez’s closeness to Biden and other leaders during the stop at the Prado at the NATO summit, it has been sold that Spain’s weight in the world has grown thanks to the charm and to Sánchez’s English. Is it like that or is it just bubbles?

R. It is true that Sánchez is an asset, he speaks English well, it is good for him to deploy a more active diplomacy, he feels comfortable in these spaces. Now, sometimes we give too much importance to the photo, to sharing a table with the great world leaders, like Aznar in the Azores (photo that ended up being negative for the majority of Spaniards).

But the substance of what is achieved at those tables is also important, it is not enough just to be there. Spain is not yet a decisive player in the European Union. Is he a major player? Yes, and more in relative terms after Brexit. But the fact is that the design of the post-pandemic aid was made between Germany, France and the Commission. It is true that we had the Macron/Sánchez summit in Barcelona, ​​but it remains to be seen whether a decisive Franco-Spanish axis will emerge from there.

On the other hand, Spanish policy towards Latin America has not been very successful either. Regarding the Maghreb, there is a strategic imbalance that Sánchez has not managed to reverse. It is a very complex situation, true, but the opening towards Morocco has not yielded great results so far.

In summary, it is useful to have a Prime Minister who feels loose on the international stage, but things are sometimes more complicated.

Q. To end the show: Ayuso, the figure who has set the pace in Spanish politics for the last three years. How do you see from the outside a policy that went from undervalued to all-powerful in record time?

R. In his first year, Ayuso seemed very clumsy and limited, but he grew a lot. It is true that she has good advisors, like Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, but the story that the Ayuso phenomenon It is the work of these men, perhaps it hides a lot of machismo.

Ayuso is a born politician. During the previous campaign, in 2021, he reminded me a lot of Boris Johnson from his best moments, who had the ability to seem so authentic, so close to people, that even blunders played in his favor, people forgave him everything. because, after all, we all mess up. Ayuso’s authenticity is well liked by an important sector of Madrid society. Now, if you take it out of Madrid, that’s another story. Madrid is not Spain. It is not clear to me that outside the plateau, where the majority of the Spanish population lives, Ayuso would work.