Lavengro in Spain

What about the Gurkhas?

Amid the general rejoicing about the Gurkhas, it might be interesting to mention that when, fifteen years or so ago, Spain abolished conscription and moved to professional armed forces, it found that it could not recruit enough volunteers, even with serious reductions to the physical and intellectual criteria. The answer was to recruit in Hispano-America and Equatorial Guinea, and about 5% of Spain’s armed forces now are non-nationals, mostly Colombians and Ecuadorians (BBC Mundo (Spanish), June 2007), with a limit of 9%; some non-Spaniards have died in action. They are fully integrated into the military units, unlike the Gurkhas; and, also unlike the Gurkhas, after five years of satisfactory service they are given Spanish nationality. This is a considerable benefit as it passes to spouses and children with residence benefits, I think, for siblings and parents. (This is why Spanish nationality was given posthumously to the non-Spanish victims of the Madrid bombs, most of whom were immigrant workers from Hispano-America.)

Photo: Wikimedia commons

I am indebted to Lord Bonkers for the title of this message.

Being a minority

There was a political sensation in London the other day when the British government lost a non-binding vote in Parliament.

There was a certain amount of comment in Madrid the other day when the Spanish government lost a non-binding vote in Parliament.

The British political and constitutional system presupposes that there are only two parties and that one of them will have a majority in an elected assembly, though that majority may suffer the attribution of by-election losses. These parties will them proceed to wage unmitigated class warfare with a strongly ideological base.

The Spanish system presupposes that there will be a number of parties in an elected assembly, though the list system means that (barring defections, which do happen but are rare) a party’s number of seats is secure for the length of the parliament. While these parties have interests and beliefs, they know that trimming their sails to suit the winds of potential alliances is the only way to proceed if they wish to exercise any power or influence.

Spain has a minority Socialist (PSOE) government. Until recently, it could rely on other parties, particularly the Basque and Catalan nationalists (PNV and CiU respectively) to give it a majority. But the recent elections in the Basque Country led to a situation in which the PNV received most votes and won most seats but is unable to put together a majority in the Basque parliament, and after a month of spectacular whingeing and forcing through of nationalist legislation by a moribund government it has accepted that it will move to opposition and that a Socialist will be the new lehendakari (Basque president). As a result, they have withdrawn their support from the government in Madrid. The Catalans (who are cross about the amount of money they will get from Madrid next year) and all the others have joined the opposition, so that the other day, on a formal vote to abolish one (unspecified) ministry the Socialists found themselves with no support from any other party at all. As a result, they will find it harder to govern. They will have to take even more notice of other parties than they have in the past. There will be lots of horse-trading and little talk of ideological purity. As a result, most decisions that are taken will necessarily command a majority representing disparate points of view.

How curious that la pensée unique, that French term that is often thought to be untranslatable into English, should so well represent the British way of having a party that closes itself around a position that it supports against all logic and morality. And yes, I am thinking of the Labour Party in general and Iraq in particular. And yes, I know that a lot of Labour people opposed their party’s line – but, forgive me for asking an embarrassing question, what did all that fulminating, blustering opposite actually achieve? Absolutely bugger all would seem to be the answer.

But I am also thinking of Spain’s PP; it is a party with a number of factions: Thatcherite, centre-right Liberal, Christian Democrat, right-wing Christian fundamentalism, and in Aznar’s first term, when it had to do deals with other parties, it was surprisingly sane. But when it got its absolute majority in 2000, it closed solidly like a pine cone (in the Spanish expressing) and went mad, trying to reverse Spain’s foreign policy overnight and cosying up to Bush and the American neo-cons.

For me, the moral of all this is that the more input from different directions that goes into political decision-making, the better – or at least more acceptable – will be the end result.

PS The ineffable Esperanza Aguirre, President of the Community of Madrid, has announced that she will cut one ministry from her government; not surprisingly, she has chosen to abolish culture. She is rather like Margaret Thatcher; she would really like to abolish all government completely – provided that she could remain firmly in charge, of course.

PPS One problem with the list system became apparent in Catalonia the other day. The only Nationalist (CiU) member of a town council has apparently been trying to sell his seat to the number two on the list for €30,000 as payment for his resignation. He was recorded clandestinely by the father of the potential replacement, presumably on a mobile phone or mp3 device.

Corruption

What do politician corruptly sell themselves for? Sex, travel, houses, bath plugs and so on in Britain. Spain, famously, is different, and personal appearance is highly regarded here. Francesc Camps, President of the Valencian Community, is in trouble for receiving 20,000 euros worth of … suits!

He says that he hasn’t got the receipts because he paid cash, as his custom.

Taking photos

When I arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1982 I took some photos to send back to Britain. Saudi Arabia is, well, Saudi Arabia and I didn't think the photos were very interesting, but they were better than nothing. When I mentioned this to some British friends a few days later, they were horrified. I had put myself at considerable risk; the Saudis were very sensitive to security, and I might be a spy for the Nameless Zionist Entity. I thought that this was silly, but in a country like that you don’t argue. I was careful what I did after that.

Now it seems that taking photos of buses in Britain is just as risky as doing so in Saudi, with El País wondering whether it is publishing a banned photo after Klaus Matzka, a 69-year-old Austrian tourist had his photos of London buses deleted from his camera by the Met’s finest.

As it happens, on a recent trip to Merseyside I took this photo for nostalgic purposes, the Liverpool-Southport railway line having been an important part of my life at one time. Fortunately, I got away with it.

And in a recent post here I published two photos of Barcelona buses, one of which fortuitously included a passing city police car. I do not expect to have my computer impounded by Barcelona City Council's agents of law and order.

Dealing with the police

On 22 September 2004 Carlos Viña Peña hanged himself with his jeans in a Guardia Civil station in Ateixo, Galicia. The three Guardias involved have been charged with illegal arrest, and the trial will investigate the circumstances that led to his death.

El País, 14-4-09

A Guardia Civil officer Antonio M. C. has been arrested (by the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra) for running a drugs gang. In all, they are said to have been involved with arms trafficking, drug-dealing, money-laundering, and forging documents and money.

A member of Spain’s Policía Nacional is remanded in custody after being arrested in a joint operation run by the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Guardia Civil. He is charged with belonging to a cocaine-dealing gang.

El País, 15-4-09

When was the last time a British police officer was arrested and charged with a criminal offence?

Meanwhile, it is looking increasingly likely that an army general in the medical corps will end up in prison for screwing up the identification of bodies retrieved from a plane crash in Trabzon, when 62 Spanish military personnel returning from Afghanistan were killed; thirty bodies were allocated identification at random and all of them were misidentified. It is to be hoped that the then Defence Minister, who ordered the rush job with the return of the bodies, will also be sent down but I fear he will get out of it somehow.

Child bride, update

I recently described the case of Selamha Mint Mohamed, a 16-year-old Mauritanian girl whose parents forced her to marry and have sexual relations with a man in his forties. The mother has been sentenced to seventeen years. The father has got eighteen months for threats; apparently he wasn’t present when the dastardly deed was actually done. The sentences are subject to appeal from both sides, but the prosecution want the mother in prison urgently for fear that she will flee, and because her presence with her family demonstrating outside the court is intimidating for the daughter. /(Update, they will remain at liberty.)

We only want justice

We respect you in our country, respect us in your country.

El País

Independent commission to hold independent inquiry – shock, horror, sensation!

From the Guardian’s report of the scandal surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson:

At first the City [of London] police investigating the death said only that he died of natural causes, but the video footage forced the IPCC [Independent Police Complaints Commission] yesterday to review their role in the inquiry. Deborah Glass, senior [IPCC] commissioner, said yesterday that as a result of the footage the watchdog was removing the investigation from City police and taking it over as a totally independent inquiry. (My emphasis.)

In other words, the top person at the IPCC (where  the I stands for ‘independent’, not that you’d know it after the de Menezes debacle) confirms that if the police had been able to keep the truth under wraps by blatantly lying, she and her commission would have done nothing.

In a similar case in Spain (and I am thinking of the caso Roquetas*, for example) all the officers present, including those who stood looking on, would have been suspended immediately and a judge would have taken over the investigation to look for any evidence of criminal action; the very idea that the police themselves should investigate a complaint made against them is laughable. A couple of weeks ago a singularly inept, badly-timed and heavy-handed action by the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police) in evicting a sit-in at the university led to riots in the streets (I was in a bar-restaurant in carrer Princesa at the time and saw what was going on); a couple of days later the head of the Mossos was sacked by the Catalan Interior Minister. The Mossos have an unsavoury reputation, which is why video cameras have been installed in their interview rooms. The problem is that some of them are so thick that they have failed to make the connection between the presence of these cameras and the inadvisability of beating prisoners up.

The British police practice of ‘kettling’ demonstrators (keeping them retained in a number of streets behind a police cordon for hours on end) was criticised on the internet by a retired British police officer (BS, for those who know him) at the time of the 2001 demonstration in London as a form of illegal arrest. There can be no doubt at all that it would be unconstitutional in Spain, for that reason and also as an infringement of the citizens’ rights of peaceful protest and assembly.

Today’s El País reports that a judge wants to interview diplomats, police officers and spooks who went to Guantánamo to question prisoners there, and he has asked the police and Guardia Civil for details of which officers went to the prison and what they did there; and a claim that diligent enquiries have failed to identify the people responsible (see here) will cut no ice whatsoever with the judge. Among the diplomats he wants to question is the number two at Spain’s Washington embassy at the time, who travelled to Guantánamo several times. He also wants details from the intelligence service about the illegal prison flights.

*In the town of Roquetas (Almería) in July 2005 a man was being threatened in his car by gypsies after a traffic accident. He sought refuge in a Guardia Civil station. They noticed that he looked in a bad way and was ‘uncontrollable’. He  pointed out that he hadn’t slept for three days and had been living on alcohol and cocaine. At that point two things happened simultaneously: the GC decided that they had some questions for him (he was known to them as a low-level local villain) and the man decided that he would take his chances with the gypsies after all. He was a big man by Spanish standards (1.82 m and over 100 kg if memory serves) and strong (a farmer), and he was hyped up chemically, so restraining him wasn’t easy. In fact, they sat on him and bounced up and down. He died of a heart attack; his sternum was broken and he was badly bruised all over. This happened in the doorway of the station and was caught by the security camera until they realised this and moved out of camera-shot.

All nine officers on duty in the station were suspended immediately. Eight were brought before a judge (the ninth was a trainee and thus not legally responsible). One (the senior officer present) was sentenced to twelve months for ‘recklessness (imprudencia grave) resulting in death’ and suspension from duty while in prison. He and two others were fined for causing injury. The man’s widow and son got €60,000 and €25,000 respectively in compensation.