Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.

And, lo, has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light!

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable: Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain’

Cosas de España

I guess we must take them at their word and not assume the numbers have been fiddled in some way: The leader in the eurozone: Spain took the lead last month in reducing inflation in the eurozone. It’s the first country to drop below the 2% recommended by the ECB. Even core inflation, which doesn’t include energy and food, has fallen. Specifically, it’s a reduction in electricity and food prices that has allowed the Spanish economy to achieve this. Germany is going in the the opposite direction. There the CPI hasn’t stopped rising.

The Spanish (socialist) government has, of course, taken anti-inflation measures that might not have been taken elsewhere. Some of these are to be extended until later this year.

Pre-election politics: The Spanish PM has won back voters as his rivals get tangled in coalition deals. Spain’s conservative opposition party, the PP, has faltered ahead of the general election next month, as messy coalition deals with the hard-right Vox party have eroded his lead in the polls. The PSOE PM, Pedro Sánchez, has claimed that a right-wing alliance would turn back the clock to the Franco era. More here.

As for Vox, here’s a long article on them, in Spanish. A machine translation is below, showing all the problems machines have with converting Spanish into English.

Needless to say, Vox gets a mention in this BBC article on the rise of the Right in Europe

Poor María bas been summoned to be to be the president of the table of her local polling place. She’ll be on duty for 18 hours from 8am, in return for €70. Not enough, she says. With feeling.

Portugal

The Way of the World

How crazily bloodthirsty can a dictatorship get? North Koreans face execution for using South Korean idioms. By being shot out of a cannon, perhaps. The text of the relevant law would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious: The State shall treat anyone who imitates or spreads the puppet language as garbage contaminated with puppet culture and as criminals. It’s claimed that the country is really controlled by women behind The Fat One. Which is a seriously bad sign. If he finally explodes, will they become the leaders of this benighted country?

The North Korean government certainly has a way with words. A few days ago it marshalled his poor citizens into vowing to (tortologously) ‘pulverise the American empire into dust’. Poverty of ambition is clearly not his biggest problem.

Covid

Horrendous: Children were catastrophically affected by the lockdowns – they have withdrawn from the world. Tens of thousands of them are hiding in plain sight, in urgent need of mental health intervention. This relates to the UK but it wouldn’t be surprising if it were true of elsewhere as well.

Did you know?

You can learn more about the ‘clever’ antics of orcas here, where they’re incorrectly referred to as whales, when they’re really dolphins.

Finally . . .

To amuse . . .

For new readers:- If you’ve landed here looking for info on Galicia or Pontevedra, try here. If you’re passing through Pontevedra on the Camino, you’ll find a guide to the city there.

VOX

The “dangers” of Vox, explained without outbursts

It is very difficult to find criticism founded on Vox, that party commanded by Santiago Abascal. Raise or lower the intention to vote, they remain a force in Congress and in the different Autonomous Communities. I do not stop hearing more than three arguments about Vox: that of those who have their vote guaranteed for issues that I am going to try to analyze now; the one who despises them with all its soul because of the perception they have of them as fascists, sexists and homophobes; and the one who “doesn’t know/doesn’t answer”, who avoids talking about them (although he surely has its opinions), either because of a certain hidden sympathy or because he prefers not to “get into trouble”.

If we put aside all the noise, the partisanship, the “scare-oldies,” the emotions and the drives, the counter-propaganda, and we take a look at its history, its record, and its program, in a leisurely way and reasoned, without the need for insults and disqualifications, we will obtain that, indeed, Vox, like many other similar parties throughout the planet, are a “danger”. A “danger” that is very similar to that of previous times, but that is completely new in format and discourse. A modernized “hazard”. A “danger” that the conservative media treat with laxity, and that the progressive media treat with simplicity. A “danger” that conservative voters treat as complementary, and that progressive voters treat as “assholes.” And no, parties like Vox are not to be taken as a joke, nor to defame, nor to insult. Two hundred thousand pages of newspaper archives achieve nothing if we do not question the root and the essence. And that is what is missing when we analyze these political parties. So, at the risk of tits article being taken as something electoral (when it should be timeless), I will dare to list the risks.

1.Vox is an “eggshell” party

Or put another way, Vox is a party with a shell, but completely empty inside. Some political parties have a history, which has evolved over time; others are relatively new, but stem from eternally debated ideological postulates (and which are the ones that cause internal disruptions). Inside Vox there is nothing, except several totemic ideas, very conveniently chosen, but without development, experience or analysis. Among its ranks, beyond individuals who seem to adhere to pro-fascist postulates (which is what we usually know from the media) there are people unable to develop some basic postulates for which tits party is affiliated. And tits usually means two things: either they are extremely simplistic, or they only seek personal gain.

2. Vox is a sickly conservative party

There is nothing wrong with being a conservative or a traditionalist. Most people, out of education, culture, or comfort, stick to what they already know. A rational conservative can be a very useful figure in society. The problem is that Vox’s conservatism is not rational. He who loves and enjoys traditions but at the same time maintains an open and democratic mind is open to analysis, criticism, and therefore, to variations and changes, seeking tolerance so that it is reciprocal. Vox, in tits case, is monolithic, practically immovable. There is no point in giving their support to homosexuality if, on the other hand, they make it ugly for two homosexual people to kiss in public. That they promote a plural nationalism if they restrict the use of the mother tongues of a large part of the population.

One of the most nationalistic countries in the world today, the United States (which, curiously enough, is, based on current policies, one of Vox’s examples) built such an idea of nationalism on the basis of freedom and respect. It took off when they stopped considering blacks as little more than sub-human, and when they offered their population (indigenous and migrant) values to fight for in exchange for an excellent quality of life and spirit. Vox is precisely the opposite of tits, because they have a fixed idea of what Spain is and you dare to leave it.

3. Vox is a party attached to social eugenics at an economic level

What the hell does tits mean? Simply pure and hard Darwinism, but on the economic level. Evolution, based on the capitalist system. Without half measures, without patterns of humanity. If you want something, you pay for it; if you think the price is high, fight it with whoever offers the product/service; if you can’t afford it, you’re screwed; If you have to fight a lot for something while others give it easy, it will be for something, it will come from a good lineage and you are below. The jungle law. Zero group consciousness. It is no coincidence that the politicians and biggest supporters of tits party are the most affluent in the capitalist food chain.

And tits is something that sells to the self-employed, to the businessman. To the uncle or aunt who works from sunrise to sunset. But they forget to mention one thing: tomorrow, if those who are at the top of the pyramid want to make a change to improve their quality of life and you are below, the law of the jungle wins. If you get kicked out, lose your job, or change the laws, don’t expect sympathy or solidarity. At most, expect charity. And if you can’t differentiate between solidarity and charity, don’t worry, you’re going to learn the difference.

4. Vox is a party with a tendency towards totalitarianism

Based on the “eggshell” and the absence of a minimally progressive character, any social manifestation that deviates from its patterns will be taken as an attack on the status quo, outside of any dialogue and, therefore, deserving of censorship and suppression. Of course, in the case of a modern and democratic formation, it will not take the usual paths of totalitarian regimes, but will be based on the democratic structures themselves to exercise such censorship, mainly the media and the legislative establishment. Or to put it another way: they will not take the military out onto the streets, but they will be in charge of surreptitiously modeling what is legal and what is not, what is acceptable and what is not.

And no, tits method would not apply precisely to minorities, which, with all due respect, are minorities. Minorities, despite what is being sold, have very little political power if they do not have the support of the majorities. It is precisely the majorities that worry the most. And there is an overwhelming majority, more than homosexuals, gypsies, Muslims, feminists… There is a majority of workers. And that will be, in the event that they come badly given, the first to which to apply the scissors.

5. Vox has the darkest connections to other similar politicians around the globe

Hey, tits is not bad per se. Each one is affiliated with those of its filia, white and bottled. The problem is when, based on itstory and current events, the parties with which they share affiliation have really touched the power of the executive. Poverty levels that have skyrocketed, marginalization for ideological reasons, censorship and rampant propaganda, and even wars with other sovereign countries.

There is a sector of the media right that associates Spanish progressivism with Bolivarianism and Castroism. And rightly so, because its bosses have aligned themselves and sympathized many times with those ideologies. They have built a parallelism Podemos = Venezuela, simplistic and mediocre, but effective. What is not publicized is the sympathy that Vox has with ideologies that, without having a specific name, represent authentic failures of economic and social growth. Call it Lukashenko, Orban, Putin, the Israeli Likud, or the hodgepodge of European parties that loosely resemble the NSDAP.

6. Vox has among its ranks intelligent people… socially, but who can deceive the ignorant

If there is something worse than a totalitarian who goes straight ahead, it is a totalitarian who goes backwards. In Spain there are a myriad of pro-fascist, Francoist and fascist parties. The old CEDADE (National Socialists) joined Democracia Nacional; Many other pro-Nazi, Falangist and other far-right groups have joined similar parties where they have achieved… a ridiculous number of votes.

In Vox it is difficult to find so much explicit sympathy on the part of its components to these totalitarian ideologies, but when one starts to “scratch”, it is found in spades. They have acquired a disguise to go unnoticed as a “right-wing option”, but below is the essence. They know how to camouflage themselves very well together with some of their peers, taking advantage of the “egg shell” and their ability to misrepresent social needs into populist postulates, but inside we find the same ideology that has brought censorship, misery and death to millions of people. . The biggest symptom of tits is when the party itself, which has kept them in the background for a long time, dares to upgrade them. Out masks. Let’s go little by little.

7. Vox is ultra-centralist

Tits is a bit absurd (like much of what was mentioned above) but it is worth commenting on. Vox tends to centralism, that is, to a government directed from a central entity. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you know how to do it. The problem is that Vox sells all kinds of non-centralism as harmful, taking advantage of some flaws in the health, education and tax systems.

The most curious thing is that the countries that Vox is trying to aspire to, that is, Russia on an ideological level, and the United States on an economic level, are tremendously fragmented countries. One might say that the very name “United States” should serve as a clue, but no. The United States is divided into several state subjects but united by a federal subject. Russia is divided into a bunch of state subjects of different categories (which I won’t mention so as not to bore the staff more). But it is that countries more similar to Spain, such as the United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark, are also similar. Germany is a federal republic; The United Kingdom and Denmark are kingdoms with large degrees of independence from their different constituents (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the first case; Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland in the second).

The biggest failures as countries (or failed states) today correspond to African countries that have tried a kind of nationalism when it was impossible due to ethnicity, culture or economic level. A country as diverse as Spain cannot be governed centrally for the same reason (unless, of course, it is done with a gun). Pretending to govern a country as if a grandfather from Ripoll had the same concerns and needs as a teenager from Ayamonte is nonsense that only the believer in the most absolutist ideologies could take for plausible.

8. Vox tends to religious dogmatism

Or, in tits case, ultra-Catholicism, but it comes to the same thing. Whether by tradition or culture, Vox members are often close to tits terrain. Be careful, it is not a criticism of faith; The problem is when that faith takes as immovable dogmas and precepts contexts that have been empirically shown to be flawed, imperfect, or prone to change.

One of the usual associations that Vox is made with Francoism is precisely because of tits. Concepts that are more than investigated go back a hundred years in the past (not to say two thousand) and cause stupefaction in anyone who has been educated in a minimally scientific climate or who did not agree with the treadmills of Francoism.

And from here, we go to the next.

9. Vox uses the base of unscientism to reinforce its policies

Climate change does not exist. Boys have penises and girls have vaginas. Spot. There is no worth arguing. There is no gray scale. There is no valid debate between the extent to which humans are responsible for climate change, or the difference between sex and gender. And if it arises, it is neutralized with various theories, such as that climate change is an invention of the UN, or that the difference between sex and gender is a Marxist idea.

Tits unscientific base and closed to debate is applied to a multitude of situations, giving rise to alleged conspiracies that deny any hint of analysis and that also reinforce group beliefs, on their simple and monolithic basis.

And, again based on tits, we go to the next one.

10. Vox simplifies its speech to make it as accessible and understandable as possible to the greatest number of people

In politics, tits is the biggest red flag, the biggest symbol of “danger.” In politics, the trick is to convince the largest number of people that your idea is the right one, but since we are not all the same nor do we all have the same interests, that idea must be aimed at the group of voters that you can convince the most and that it also has the force of electoral change.

One could argue that the PSOE is a party that addresses the working classes (which understand themselves as “middle classes”) with a certain progressive character; that the PP targets conservative voters (who see themselves as “middle class”); that Podemos/IU/Sumar addresses the working class, broadening the spectrum to women with the theme of feminism.

But it is that Vox addresses the whole world. To progressives and conservatives, to rich and poor, to “confused feminism” and “real women”, to heterosexuals and “decent homosexuals”, to Spanish Spaniards and Spanish Catalans, to the businessman and the laborer, to the one who has a career and the one who has not finished compulsory education, the meapilas*, the Moor and the lacking in faith, the Francoist and the polpotista, the one who likes tortilla with onions and the one who likes it without onions.

Well, forgive me for telling you that this is impossible. It’s like dividing a cake into exactly equal parts with a spoon. And the promise itself is a warning that what you want is to have everyone seated, controlled, expectant, at the same table, while you distribute the cake, distracting us with the smell of cake so that we don’t think what is happening in the kitchen.

* Un santurrón:

1. Exagerado en los actos de devoción. 2. Gazmoño, hipócrita que aparenta ser devoto.