By Muriel Pilkington The Local Voice
There are growing signs that, politically speaking, the Spanish people are coming of age. For several months now, opinion polls show that more and more people see the politicians as one of the country’s main three problems – the other two being the economic situation and unemployment. This should not come as a surprise. We have just lived through six years of the most blatantly sectarian, and inept, government within living memory – the last one being during the Republican years (1931-36) and there are very few people around to remember them.
But all bad things eventually come to an end, just as the Franco dictatorship did, and while it would be too much to hope for a new Transition, I suspect the results of next year’s local and regional elections could make a lot of politicians realise that there is more to politics than just winning elections. Sr Zapatero’s latest obsession is to convince the Spanish people that the main opposition party, the Partido Popular, is only interested in winning the next general election while the Socialists only have the good of the country at heart. He kept repeating this during last week’s parliamentary debate which was televised live as his only answer to the accusations all the parties threw at him.
Opposition leader Mariano Rajoy dragged up every promise Zapatero had ever made – and broken. His reply – you’re only interested in winning the next election. As the other parties represented in Parliament took the stand and repeated Rajoy’s accusations – and throwing in some of their own – Zapatero’s reply was – the PP is only interested in winning the next elections. If you believe the Socialists aren’t interested in hanging on to power, then you’ll believe anything.
What Zapatero and his lot haven’t grasped yet is that their credibility will soon touch rock bottom. Incredible as it may seem, it’s the right-of-centre PP which is calling for fairer deficit cuts, while the Socialist government came up with the incredibly un-Socialist idea of making the little people pay for their unbridled social spending. The PP maintains that there are several areas where real savings could be made – such as reducing the top-heavy State bureaucracy – instead of freezing pensions – something the Socialists said they would never do – or reducing public workers’ salaries by 5%. This latter will hit the lower-paid workers – don’t forget PSOE stands for Spanish Socialist Workers Party – the hardest. (I’ve been saying for years that the PSOE should drop the word workers from its name and replace it with a “b” for bourgeois.)
The Madrid Metro workers have just shown the working class how to get round this one. A couple of weeks ago they almost brought Madrid to a complete standstill with a week-long strike. After talks between union and management to find a way to avoid future strikes, the Metro company has agreed to slash the wage cut from €100 a month to just €20. €100 may not sound a lot but it cuts deeply into a take-home pay which for most Metro workers is under €1,000 a month. Remember that the average salary for the majority of Spaniards is €900.
On a brighter note
One of the main national newspapers, the ABC, sent its reporters out into the streets of Madrid last week to talk 
to young people to find out how they feel about things in general. The result was an article titled “Generation without complexes” – the “ninis”, as the paper has dubbed them. Ni complejos, ni Franco (neither complexes nor Franco).
According to ABC, the ninis feel more Spanish than their parents and grandparents ever did. Forget nationalism, forget regional whingeing, we’re for Spain – as in the national selection that brought the World Cup home. I know many people think football is the new opium of the masses, but the national selection has shown a whole generation used to listening to endless political arguments between the Left, Right and a variety of Nationalists that when the Spanish set their mind to it, they can pull together and walk away with the prize.
This is the generation that sooner or later will end up governing the country and hopefully it will be the generation that eliminates dogmatism, petty nationalism and a yearning to return to the chaotic years of the Second Republic from the national psyche and concentrates on governing for the good of all Spaniards.
When mayors start asking their foreign residents for suggestions about how to make them happier, then you know that local elections are in the offing. Mayors up and down the Costa are going to jump on this particular bandwagon and foreign residents should seize the opportunity to get things done. Further down the line, The News will be opening its own Suggestions Box in an effort to draw up a comprehensive list of problems affecting the foreign community. Meanwhile, if approached by mayors making promises – get them in writing, preferably in stone.
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