Spain

Thursday

Harry Mount

The rock of ages past

How lazy, snobbish and wrong it is to mock Gibraltar for the lager and fish and chips clichés. Yes, you can get lager and fish and chips there; nothing wrong with  that. The pint of lager I had in a pub in Gibraltar Main Street was excellent. And the funny thing is that, unlike consciously ‘British’ pubs in Rome or New York, there was no ersatz feel to it. It was exactly like a pub in Britain, down to the two middle-aged office workers in shirtsleeves, exchanging dull office chat, breaking off occasionally for low-level, awkward flirting with the barmaid, who was in her twenties. That’s what’s so gripping about

Thursday

Martin Gayford

Shock and gore

Last year my wife and I were wandering around the backstreets of Salamanca when we were confronted by a minor miracle. The iron gates of the convent of the Agustinas Descalzas — generally chained and padlocked — were ajar. Quickly we slipped through before they closed again. Inside was a vast 17th-century church, slightly dusty and completely deserted. On the high altar and the walls of the transepts were paintings by Jusepe de Ribera, a great master who is today half-forgotten. His art has seemed perhaps too gory, too dark — in short, too Catholic — to appeal to British tastes. But that may be about to change: next week,

Saturday

Mark Nayler

How Spain’s socialist leader is winning over reluctant voters

Spaniards didn’t ask for their new prime minister, but it seems that they’re starting to like him. The most recent polls reveal that Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists, who now make up Spain’s minority government, are the most popular party in the country. Less than a month ago, the PSOE slumbered in third place, behind the then-ruling Conservative Popular Party (PP) and centrist Ciudadanos. The Socialists have leapt two places up the rankings, even though their seizure of power was seen as illegitimate by many Spaniards. What’s gone so right for Spain’s Socialists?   Sánchez’s surge in popularity can perhaps be partly explained by the diversity of his cabinet; made up of eleven

Tuesday

Mark Nayler

‘We demand our right to vote’: what Spaniards really think of their new socialist PM

Spain has a new prime minister, but Spaniards are not happy about it. A WhatsApp message is circulating across the country at the moment, saying: “We Spaniards demand our right to vote. We demand the right to decide who is the president of Spain. ‘No’ means ‘no’ to Pedro Sánchez. If you’re in agreement, pass this message on until elections are called” The message refers to the leader of the Spanish Socialists (PSOE), Pedro Sánchez, who sneaked in as the country’s leader last Friday after his predecessor, Mariano Rajoy, lost a no-confidence vote. While that vote had disastrous consequences for Rajoy, for Sánchez – who tabled it in the first place –

Monday

William Cook

Denying the Catalans a vote may well do more harm than good

Barcelona’s Barri Gotic is ablaze with banners. Virtually every balcony in the gothic quarter seems to be adorned with some sort of flag. Some people fly La Senyera, the state-sanctioned flag of Catalonia, but far more fly L’Estelada, the rebel flag of independence. Eight months since Catalans voted for secession from Spain in an unofficial referendum which wasn’t endorsed by the Spanish government, Madrid and Barcelona have never been further apart. Wandering the narrow alleys of Barcelona’s labyrinthine city centre, it’s easy to be swayed by the populist, separatist mood. As David Cameron discovered during the Scottish referendum, independence campaigners have all the best tunes. ‘Free all political prisoners!’ declare

Friday

Mark Nayler

The Catalan secessionists are back

After almost five months without a government, Catalonia finally has a new leader. Quim Torra won a second-round investiture vote this week to take the helm of the region’s separatist government. Unfortunately for Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, Torra’s pledge is the same as his exiled predecessor’s: to pursue an independent Catalonia. The Catalan secessionists are back.     Yet Torra’s appointment also raises problems for the pro-independence movement. He nurses an apparently visceral hatred for Spain, which sullies a cause that likes to describe itself as “progressive”. The man now leading the secessionist charge has described Spaniards as “scavengers, vipers and hyenas”. He has also said that speaking Castilian Spanish

Tuesday

Mark Nayler

Carles Puigdemont’s arrest flares tensions in Catalonia

Remember the Catalonia issue? Up until a couple of days ago, you would have been forgiven for supposing it had all just magically been cleared up. But on Sunday, former pro-independence Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was detained by German police while on his way back from Finland to Belgium, where he has been in voluntary exile since last October. German courts now have a couple of months to decide whether to return the secessionists’ poster-boy to his home country; if they do, he faces charges of rebellion and misuse of public funds in connection with the Catalan independence referendum he organised last October – a vote that was declared illegal

Tuesday

Mark Nayler

Mariano Rajoy must go

Spaniards want a new prime minister. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the latest opinion poll carried out by Metroscopia for the Spanish daily El Pais, which revealed that 85 per cent of the electorate think someone else should have a go at leading the conservative Popular Party. Long-time supporters of the PP are deserting it too, with 62 per cent of respondents who have previously voted for the party saying Mariano Rajoy should go. Clearly the days when the Conservatives enjoyed a virtually-unchallenged hegemony in the national parliament are gone. Benefiting from Rajoy’s demise is the country’s new centre-right, in the form of Albert Rivera’s party Ciudadanos (‘Citizens’).

Friday

Mark Nayler

The stage is set for the Spanish government’s worst nightmare

It’ll be a tense Christmas in the Spanish’s PM’s household this year. Yesterday, in an election called by Mariano Rajoy last month, Catalan pro-independence parties gained a slim majority in the region’s parliament: Together for Catalonia, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the Popular Unity Party (CUP) look set to have jointly won 70 seats in the 135-seat congress. Rajoy’s conservative Popular Party, meanwhile, posted its worst result ever, losing eight of its previously-held eleven seats. The stage is set for the Spanish government’s worst nightmare: another attempt by Catalan secessionists to divorce Spain. Rajoy had been hoping for a return to normality in Catalonia after a tumultuous few

Sunday

Jake Wallis Simons

Catalonia’s ‘silent majority’ does not want independence from Spain

Barcelona I was roaring through central Barcelona on the back of a motorcycle, in the midst of a pack of unionist riders adorned with Spanish flags, all sounding their horns with reckless abandon, when it hit me: this was the voice of the silent majority. Catalonia does not want independence from Spain. But let me begin at the beginning. Yesterday afternoon, the word was put out on Twitter that a group of unionists were intending to parade through Barcelona on two wheels before riding out to the port, where a battalion of national police were barracked in a ship. There they planned to serenade officers and shower them with flowers

Saturday

Philip Sime

European press on Catalonia: “Suddenly, Brexit doesn’t seem so bad”

“Look on the bright side…Brexit no longer seems so serious” Chappatte in Le Temps, Switzerland The events in Catalonia dominate Europe’s press this morning, seen as the biggest political crisis to hit the country since the attempted coup d’état of 1981. The Madrid-based El País says the invocation of Article 155 was done so ‘legally and transparently’ and does not constitute an act of aggression against Catalan self-government or the rights of Catalans. Rather, El País views Madrid’s response to the crisis as ‘legitimate and necessary’ in the face of the challenge posed by Catalonia’s ‘irresponsible and reckless’ political leaders. It calls a ‘quick, legal and legitimate’ return to self-government

Friday

Jake Wallis Simons

In Spain, the words ‘civil war’ will now be on everyone’s lips

It was the option that had long been threatened, but few people imagined that the Catalan leader, Carles Puigdemont, would actually have the guts to follow it through. A few weeks ago, when I stood outside the parliament building in Barcelona after Puigdemont had apparently backed away from the brink, the mood was despondent as thousands of separatists, wrapped in Catalan flags, saw their dreams going up in smoke. Today, however, they were punching the air and partying after Catalonia’s regional parliament voted to declare independence following the referendum earlier this month, in defiance of the consistently aggressive dialogue from Madrid. But their jubilation may very well be short-lived. There

Diego Zuluaga

The damage is done in Catalonia. Now it’s time to restore the rule of law

If you have seen images from earlier today when the rump Catalan parliament – vacated by the non-separatist MPs, about half of the chamber – voted to unilaterally declare independence, you may have wondered about the serious look on parliamentarians’ faces. Why the sombre visages, if this is the defining moment in their careers: the birthday of their long-craved republic? Perhaps they are worried about the uncertainty of what comes next, and the expectation that it will not be good. The Spanish government has, after all, just obtained a mandate to enforce constitutional provisions by which it will temporarily take control of the Catalan administration. The aim is to restore

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Britain back Madrid for the sake of Brexit?

Theresa May’s official spokesperson has just issued a statement on Catalonia’s declaration of independence that will please Madrid. It makes clear that the ‘UK does not and will not recognise the Unilateral Declaration of Independence’. It says that the declaration is ‘based on a vote declared illegal by the Spanish courts’. It concludes by saying that ‘we want to see the rule of law upheld, the Spanish constitution respected, and Spanish unity preserved’. What is telling about this statement is that it doesn’t even included the kind of diplomatically phrased call for restraint that Donald Tusk’s tweet did. Now, you can say that the UK statement is not that dissimilar to

Thursday

Jeremy Norman

Catalonia deserves independence as much as any other state

Few, if any, commentators have seen fit to discuss the wider issue and the underlying morality from first principles. The instant reaction in all quarters has been to back Spain over the plucky little Catalans. The principle of national self-determination was laid down by Woodrow Wilson after the First World War and accepted by the colonial powers who unwound their empires, if somewhat reluctantly, over the next half-century. Both the League of Nations and the United Nations were founded partly to advocate for this principal. In the case of Kosovo we actually attacked Serbia for refusing the Kosovans this basic human right. What is so different about Catalonia and the

Simon Courtauld

Trains in Spain

The first railway line in Spain, from Barcelona to Mataro a few miles up the coast towards the French border, was built in 1848 by British workers and with British expertise. I was reflecting on this, and the huge difference today between the services provided by our two countries’ railways, as the train passed through Mataro on the way to Girona. The 90-minute journey, for those of us of a certain age with a tarjeta dorada, cost five euros. The return journey to Barcelona by express train took 38 minutes and cost less than ten euros. Train travel in Spain is not only amazingly cheap; it is comfortable, efficient and

Tuesday

Jake Wallis Simons

Franco’s fascism is alive and kicking in Spain

Barcelona After the demonstration in Barcelona on Sunday, I happened to walk past the city’s main police station. A unionist crowd had gathered to praise the officers who had so brutally suppressed the Catalan referendum the previous week. Wrapped in Spanish flags, they were chanting Viva España and throwing flowers. Then they started performing the Nazi salute. I hung around to report on it (a video that I shot on my phone was retweeted many thousands of times). The fascists, I realised, had based themselves in a pub next door. I went in, filming on my GoPro, and saw police drinking with far-Right thugs, smiling as they were serenaded with

Monday

Diego Zuluaga

The conservative case against Catalonia’s separatist narrative

Daniel Hannan has written, compellingly and eloquently as usual, about the constitutional crisis taking place in my country, Spain. In his piece, he invokes the celebrated Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno who, as Spain plunged into civil war in 1936, admonished the anti-intellectual, anti-liberal nationalist rebels that they would ‘vanquish, but not convince’. Unamuno was of course right: after three years of bloodshed, Spain endured nearly four decades of dictatorship, punctured by the deprivations from autarky and international isolation well into the 1950s. But today’s Spain is a much different place. Following Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, the country underwent a peaceful democratic transition which elicited admiration the world over.

Saturday

Ines Rivera

Catalonia: the other side of the story

As a Spaniard living in Britain, it has been strange to read the coverage of Catalonia in recent days – most of the commentary being pro-separation. There has been no sense as to why most people in Spain feel so strongly about keeping the country together. Britain has been a democracy for generations: Spain has not been so fortunate. I was born in the days of a democracy and my grandmother would proudly take me to her weekly meetings at the Conservative party headquarters. She taught me about the four pillars of our Constitution: freedom, justice, equality and political pluralism. And it’s the last pillar, pluralism, that’s now under threat.

Thursday

Daniel Hannan

Spanish practices

In October 1936, on the anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World, a ceremony was held at Salamanca University, in the heart of the nationalist Spain, to celebrate the ‘Day of the Race’. The Bishop of Salamanca, who had recently offered up his episcopal palace to be Franco’s headquarters, stood in the great hall next to the founder of the Spanish Foreign Legion, General José Millán Astray, a one-armed and one-eyed thug of a man. Also present was the university rector, Miguel de Unamuno, an eminent Basque philosopher who had supported the nationalist coup when it was launched four months earlier, but had since become disillusioned with its viciousness.