The Church’s Latin liturgy and humanist devotion to classical antiquity hardened this self-portrait, leaving little room for Islamic or Jewish voices. By aligning itself with antiquity rather than the multilingual, multifaith worlds of al-Andalus and the Levant, Europe chose a story of continuity over complexity.

Yet this narrative concealed a deep contradiction — how could a civilization claim universality while denying the traditions that sustained it? This tension, between selective inheritance and suppressed hybridity, set the stage for German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s radical critique of what he called life-denying civilization.

Christianity’s famine of life

For Nietzsche, the moral revolution of Christianity marked the moment when Europe began to starve its instincts. In (1888), he accused the Church of destroying “the whole harvest of ancient civilization.” What began as a transformation of Jewish ethics into Roman law soon became, in Nietzsche’s eyes, a moral economy built on guilt and repression. Power became sin; pleasure became shame; suffering became virtue.��

In his , Nietzsche diagnosed this as the psychology of ressentiment — a world where the weak define “good” by condemning the strong. “Man would rather will nothingness than not will at all,” he wrote, describing how the will to life was replaced by a will to denial. Ascetic ideals turned vitality inward, away from creation and toward salvation.��

While Moorish Spain celebrated philosophy, architecture and sensual beauty, Christian Europe retreated into metaphysics. Nietzsche’s critique, though aimed at his own century, looked backward in search of worlds that had once embraced existence. This hunger for vitality, this famine of the spirit, would drive him southward, to the civilization he saw as the embodiment of life-affirmation.

Moorish Spain and the lost East

To show what Europe lost, Nietzsche invoked the memory of Moorish Spain, calling it “a wonderful culture … nearer to us and appealing more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece.” For him, al-Andalus was the model of a life-affirming civilization — one that “said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life.” 

Its achievements were not metaphors but monuments. By the 10th century, Córdoba housed over 400,000 manuscripts, far surpassing any European city. Scholars like Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) preserved and expanded Aristotle, pioneering rationalism centuries before René Descartes. 

As historian notes, translators in Toledo transmitted Arabic philosophy, optics and medicine into Latin, laying the intellectual foundations of the European university. This pluralism extended beyond knowledge. The architecture of the Alhambra, by María Rosa Menocal, fused geometry, calligraphy and poetry into a sensual celebration of beauty.��

To Nietzsche, such refinement born of strength exemplified what he called “noble and manly instincts” — not patriarchal domination but the courage to live without guilt, to turn instinct into art. In contrasting this Moorish feast with Europe’s Christian famine, Nietzsche was not idealizing Islam; he was diagnosing Europe’s amnesia. Al-Andalus, he believed, was a mirror of what Europe could have been: confident, worldly and joyous in its creation.

Orientalism and Nietzsche’s mirror

Nietzsche’s admiration, however, came filtered through Orientalist romanticism. Scholar Ian Almond it as “rhetorical Islamophilia” — a fascination less with Islam itself than with what it symbolized: vitality, sensuality and affirmation. Nietzsche’s Islam was drawn not from theology or travel but from the same 19th-century sources that nourished German writer and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West–Eastern Divan and French philosopher Ernest Renan’s racialized Orientalism.

Like many Romantics, Nietzsche saw “the East” as everything Europe was not: instinctive where Europe was cerebral, passionate where it was ascetic. The difference was that Nietzsche inverted moral polarity. For him, the “sensuous East” was not decadent but noble — the antithesis of Christian weakness. In that inversion, he both challenged and reproduced Orientalism: the East remained Europe’s reflection, not its equal.

Yet this mirror cracked the old binary. When Nietzsche could say the Moorish world was “nearer to us,” he implicitly questioned the idea of a pure, bounded Europe. His rhetoric of life-affirmation became, unintentionally, a bridge toward what post-colonial thinkers would later call entanglement. Nietzsche’s mirror may have been distorted, but it reflected a Europe uneasy with its own reflection — a civilization that could admire the vitality of the Other only after destroying it.

The irony Nietzsche intuited has since unfolded with eerie precision. The very civilization he saw as “life-affirming” came to be branded as “fanatical”, while the Europe he described as spiritually impoverished reinvented itself as the bastion of liberal reason. 

In the 19th century, Romantic writers such as and turned the Muslim world from a landscape of sensual freedom into one of moral excess and irrationality. After the colonial encounters of the 20th century and the geopolitics of the 21st, this image hardened into the stereotype of “Islamic fanaticism.”��

Meanwhile, Europe’s Christian famine — its moral rigidity and guilt — was secularized into a liberal order that prized tolerance yet struggled to embrace the vitality it once condemned. AsTalal Asad argues in , secularism did not erase the Christian inheritance; it refined its moral discipline under new banners. The result is an inversion Nietzsche would have recognized: the “lively, free” Muslim world recast as repressed, and a “life-denying” Christendom reborn as the world’s moral guide.

From inheritance to entanglement

Post-Orientalist scholars have since redrawn the map Nietzsche glimpsed only dimly. Said showed that “the Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture.” Historians like and philosophers such as trace how Nietzsche’s writings later circulated through Arab intellectual networks, influencing debates about modernity and secularism.

These exchanges reveal that knowledge never moved in one direction; it was reciprocal, sustained by translation and critique. The city of Toledo — where Muslims, Jews and Christians once translated each other’s books — embodies this truth. 

Civilization advanced not through isolation but through contact zones: Baghdad’s Bayt al-Hikma, Sicily under Frederick II and Córdoba’s academies. Each was a site where languages met, and worldviews merged. The myth of a self-contained Europe collapses when viewed from these crossroads. Nietzsche’s “life-affirming” Moorish Spain thus prefigures the post-Orientalist insight that vitality arises from mixture. His “life-denying” Europe warns what happens when cultures mistake purity for power. 

Today, as Europe grapples with pluralism, migration and memory, the philosopher’s metaphor acquires new urgency: civilizations survive only by affirming the fullness of their entanglements. When they forget, the feast turns once again to famine.

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The budget battle that broke the camel’s back

Scholz is scrambling to save face amid approval ratings that have plunged to an unprecedented low of 14%. The SPD’s own approval ratings are similarly abysmal.

Polls of voting intentions show the party now tied with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at around 16% — a dramatic drop from the SDP’s 26% support in the last election. The FDP faces even bleaker prospects, polling around 3–4%, just below the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament.

While tensions within the coalition were no secret, the breaking point came when a proposal by Lindner leaked. The 18-page “Turnaround Germany – A Concept for Growth and Generational Justice” suggested cutting financial aid to low-income families and refugees, which panicked the SPD and Greens.

The election of Donald Trump as the next US president has raised fears the US will soon cut its support for Ukraine, forcing Germany to pick up the tab or risk the defeat of Ukrainian forces. Lindner claims he was pressured to agree to another suspension of the debt brake. He refused, afraid of embarrassment by the constitutional court. Scholz floated the possibility of new elections, which Lindner leaked to Bild while parties were still deliberating. This was the final straw for Scholz, who asked for Lindner’s dismissal. 

The economic headwinds Germany has been facing only add to the drama. Budgets crafted on the assumption of GDP growth that never materialized have left government departments strapped. Austerity measures have strained even the nation’s soft power as cultural icons like the Goethe Institute have been forced to close German schools abroad.

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The crux of the budgetary deadlock is Germany’s “debt brake,” a constitutional limit capping new debt for structural deficits at 0.35% of GDP. While this debt brake was suspended temporarily during the pandemic and the Ukraine invasion, it has since snapped back into force, severely restricting the government’s freedom of action.

Who stands to gain?

With elections likely in early spring, Germany’s political map could shift drastically. The center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), currently polling at 33%, are poised to regain power, though their numbers fall short of a parliamentary majority. A coalition with the Greens remains unlikely due to ideological divides, and the SPD’s recent failure makes it a dubious ally. That leaves the CDU/CSU with only a handful of feasible partners — including an intriguing, if controversial, one in the newly-formed Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW).

BSW, led by former leftist Sahra Wagenknecht, has captivated voters disillusioned with mainstream parties but unwilling to embrace the far-right AfD. Known for her anti-immigration stance and advocacy for a negotiated settlement with Russia, Wagenknecht is a questionable candidate to offer the CDU/CSU a politically stable alliance. 

It should be noted that AfD came out as the party with the most votes during recent state elections in Thuringia (34.3%, slightly ahead of CDU 33.5%). It missed to reach that goal in Saxony, but only by a hair (34.0% compared to 34.4% for CDU).

Voter discontent in Germany, especially in the former East German states, has led to a surge in support for right-wing AfD. Due to Germany’s history, politicians are very aware of the danger of fascism, but they seem rather helpless in addressing the root causes (increased unemployment in rural areas, social anxiety, xenophobia, feelings of being second-class citizens).

Financial and global implications

The collapse of the German government sends shivers through markets already sensitive to geopolitical risk. Shares of Germany’s iconic automakers — BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen — have fallen sharply, anticipating the return of Trump-era import tariffs on European goods. With Germany’s political attention diverted inward, “budget sinners” like Italy, France and Spain may find relief, as former members of the hard-currency block, such as Germany, have historically pressured them to meet strict fiscal criteria under the Maastricht Treaty.

So far, little or no spread widening between German and other Euro-area government debt has been observed in reaction to the earthquake in Berlin. While the German 10-year government bond yield stands at 2.4%, France and Spain pay a clear premium at 3.2%, followed by Greece at 3.3% and Italy at 3.7%. Still, Italy (135% debt-to-GDP ratio) and Greece (162%) pay lower interest rates than the UK (98%) and the US (123%). Those yields only make sense if the political will to keep the Euro area together would galvanize politicians into further bailouts of countries should the need arise.

If no stable coalition emerges, Germany faces the prospect of another election, potentially plunging Europe’s largest economy into a period of prolonged instability. A caretaker government may limp along in the interim, but effective governance and ambitious legislative agendas will be on hold.

Internationally, the political crisis could have wide-reaching effects. As Germany becomes preoccupied with its own domestic woes, European allies such as Italy and France may gain breathing room in their own budgetary struggles, potentially facing less scrutiny from Berlin on debt under the Maastricht Treaty. However, any withdrawal from a Trump-led US could leave Europe drifting in the high seas without clear leadership, missing out on a potentially generational opportunity to determine the geopolitical direction of a future Europe unshackled from US dominance.

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Madrid’s political focus on Catalonia has intensified since 2017. After holding what was deemed by Spanish authorities an illegal independence referendum, Catalonia’s President Carles Puigdemont and other officials fled to Belgium, a diplomatic crisis. Spain then imposed direct rule over the region, with the EU backing its decision and citing the need for constitutional approval of referendums. In the aftermath, local support for Catalonia’s independence , offering Madrid a way in.

���貹����’s and autonomous movements are among Europe’s most well-known, and its management of them is watched closely across the continent. Many other European nations, particularly in larger countries, have autonomy seeking devolution, self-government or outright independence. The perceived of European-level efforts to resolve these issues has led countries to maintain their own policies. Although few movements are considered serious threats, attempts to assert themselves often provoke direct interventions by national governments — when these governments have the capacity to do so.

The struggle between nationalism and separatism

Many of Europe’s once-distinct regional identities have only waned in recent times. The rise of in Europe in the 1800s led to unitary states that integrated peripheral regions with the capitals, a trend known as “capital magnetism.” Additionally, increasing in other large cities weakened to local communities and support systems.

Integration and assimilation pressure was also exerted on regional identities to create more national identities. At the time of Italy’s unification in 1861, for example, of Italians spoke the Tuscan dialect which began to be promoted as . Steadily, its use in public and administrative life, mass media and other methods led to a decline in the use of other regional dialects and languages. Similarly, French policies promoted the Parisian dialect as standard French, and the German Empire promoted High German.

Modern EU states face greater limitations on language suppression. The framework provided by the EU’s “post-sovereign” system implores member states to minority language protections and other rights. Nonetheless, national governments have modernized their approaches to establishing national uniformity. Proficiency in majority languages is often a prerequisite for education, media and employment opportunities, while immigration favors majority-language learners. As a result, dozens of minority European languages are on the of extinction.

Nonetheless, autonomous movements in Europe do wield political power. Political networks like the , a group of pro-independence political parties, operate in the EU parliament and serve as political outlets for separatist movements, using democratic processes.

Italy is constantly attempting to more effectively tie to itself its autonomous regions: the islands of Sicily and Sardinia as well as three northern regions. The 2018 of the regional political party Lega Nord into a national one, Lega, demonstrated some success. The autonomy movements, however, were similarly adaptive. Other northern Italian parties recently to vote to approve legislation approving them greater autonomy in June 2024. South Tyrol, Italy’s German-speaking region, brings the added challenge of receiving support from Austria. Austrian leaders have repeatedly proposed granting Austrian to German speakers, and, in January 2024, voiced support for , drawing a reflexive rebuke from Rome.

Hungary’s disputes with its neighbors are even more notable. The 1920 breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire left significant Hungarian communities across , and . Today, the Hungarian government supports these communities by funding cultural institutions, providing financial aid and fostering solidarity, which has sparked tensions with these countries. However, as a smaller nation, Hungary struggles to exert significant influence, especially in EU member states like Romania and Slovakia, and it has also found limited success in Ukraine.

Western European states remain resilient

Aside from cases like these, EU countries generally tend to avoid interfering in each others’ separatist movements. This has helped France to consolidate its rule over its mainland territory. However, it hasn’t yet done so over the Mediterranean island of Corsica, purchased by the French in . The rollback of the French Empire after World War II reignited historical tensions, further inflamed by the arrival of many French people and Europeans from to Corsica in the 1960s. Though violence largely subsided in Corsica after the 1970s, a ceasefire was not reached , and pro-separatist riots in 2022 show the situation .

the unrest, French President Macron raised the possibility of granting Corsica greater autonomy. Previously, , as tensions were building in neighboring Spain over Basque separatism, France raised the administrative autonomy of its own Basque territory by granting it single community status, unifying several local councils under one regional authority. Contrastingly, the merger of the region of in 2016 with two other French areas reduced its autonomy and integrated it more into the national apparatus. The different approaches demonstrate the diverse policies used by national governments to manage their regions.

Germany, the most populous country in the EU, administers several regions with aspirations for greater autonomy. However, its , which grants states greater authority over areas such as education and language, has helped temper separatist sentiment and reduced the need for management from Berlin.

A federal system has not resolved the challenges faced by Belgium. The country’s and French-speaking regions have sought greater autonomy, with some advocating for unification with a greater Dutch or French-speaking state. While increasing regional autonomy has been part of the solution, the regions remain interconnected through the capital, Brussels, and its wider role as the capital of the EU.

That has not deterred breakup advocates from proposing a similar “” between Belgium’s regions, like the peaceful split between the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992. a victory in June 2024 for Vlaams Belang, a party whose leader ran on reaching an agreement to dissolve the country or declaring Flanders’s independence. But their shock defeat ensured Belgium’s continuity and thus the stability of the EU.

Outside the EU, Europe’s autonomy issues are also in flux. In the late , the UK granted greater autonomy to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Scottish independence efforts were then disrupted after a failed 2014 referendum and the UK’s subsequent departure from the EU two years later. The Scottish National Party established a Brussels office to maintain EU connections, the European Friends of Scotland Group, founded in 2020. The Scottish Independence Convention plans to hold a in Edinburgh in October 2024 featuring more than a dozen European groups to coordinate their independence initiatives, though the participation of separatist movements within EU countries may limit the extent of EU involvement.

Brexit also reignited secessionist sentiment across the UK, particularly in , but also in Wales. Even within England, regional parties like CumbriaFirst, the East Devon Alliance and Mebyon Kernow for their own regions’ autonomy, and devolution within England has been increasingly in recent years. London has struggled to counter these movements since Brexit, but it has succeeded in preventing a resurgence in paramilitary activity since it ended it in Northern Ireland in the 1990s.

In Eastern Europe, separatism is a persistent threat

Western Europe’s relative success in reducing armed conflicts over the last few decades contrasts with its resurgence in Eastern Europe. The region’s fragile borders and the emergence of weak states in the wake of the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union have seen separatist movements gain increasing power.

The EU and NATO played a pivotal role in the collapse of Yugoslavia and the emergence of new states, often at the expense of Serbia. In response, ethnic Serbian separatism has surged across and , with supporters citing the EU’s and NATO’s support for separatist movements in the 1990s as justification for their actions.

Russia has also inflamed separatism in parts of the former and the former Soviet Union to counter EU and NATO expansion or to incorporate these regions into it. Beyond supporting Serbian interests in the Balkans, Russia has utilized, to varying degrees, separatist movements in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Russia has long performed to separatist movements in the West, including inviting representatives to like the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, though largely consisting of fringe groups. Russia itself has its own separatist and autonomy movements, however, including in Chechnya, Tatarstan and elsewhere. These have found support from Western actors, including through the launch of the . has also supported Russian separatist movements, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meanwhile the 50-year anniversary of the Turkish invasion of EU member state Cyprus in 1974 in support of local Turkish separatists.

Most separatist movements in Europe lack the infrastructure to become independent states without external support but persist in their pursuit of independence nonetheless. And European countries with territories outside of Europe, such as France with or Denmark with , must manage their burgeoning independence movements. Access to the EU may be influential in convincing them to remain, but , such as Azerbaijan’s recent support for New Caledonia’s independence, could potentially play a stronger role.

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A new concern for national governments may emerge closer to home. In the , the tension between Russian minorities and national governments remains evident, and the situation faces uncertainty amid the war in Ukraine. The rise of the Alternative für Deutschland political party in the former East Germany has in turn highlighted the enduring divides within the country less than 40 years after reunification, and how new political entities can emerge to exploit such sentiments.

Islamic separatism is a live issue in Western Europe

Yet the most pressing issue appears to be emerging in Western Europe’s major cities. French President Emmanuel Macron, aiming to address concerns over what French authorities describe as “parallel societies” of Muslim immigrants and their descendants, proposed a law in 2023 to the education, finances, and propaganda networks of radical Islam, often from foreign countries. Macron labeled this phenomenon as “separatism.” He was referring to marginalized communities on the outskirts of major French cities in the famed banlieues, which are increasingly beyond state control and driven by domestic grievances and dissatisfaction with French foreign policy. While France’s situation appears the most severe, such sentiment is common across Western Europe.

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The EU’s handling of autonomous and separatist movements has frequently faced criticism from nationalist governments, and balancing separatism with nationalism remains a sensitive challenge. However, major countries like Germany and smaller ones like Denmark demonstrate it is possible to manage these issues within national frameworks. Switzerland, a non-EU state, shows similar success in keeping itself together. Clearly, despite nationalist policies, centuries-old communities are resilient and difficult to absorb and erase, even without outside support. Managing these long-standing issues, as well as emerging movements, will require continual adaptation.

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In this hung parliament, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the Popular Party, tried to cobble together a coalition. He failed. Sánchez, a crafty political operator, smelled blood and seized his chance. On November 16, he pulled the rabbit out of the hat and became prime minister again.

In order to do so, Sánchez had to make a compromise. In ���貹����’s fragmented political landscape, either major party generally needs the support of minor parties to achieve a parliamentary majority. Like in Israel, the major political forces of the center-left and center-right are too fiercely opposed to work together. So, a grand coalition à la Germany was not an option. Instead, Sánchez had to draw on the support of far-left parties that have formed a platform called Sumar, which includes the Communist Party.

But the far left is not the only minority political force Sánchez needed to achieve a parliamentary majority and form the government. The wily Sánchez had to make a deal with Catalan nationalist parties. Some of these parties want greater autonomy for Catalonia, ���貹����’s richest region, and a few want outright independence. The Spanish right is so strongly nationalist that it could never work together with secessionists. For the left, however, although they do not support Catalan nationalism, working with secessionists is an option.

In 2017, Catalonia illegally declared independence by referendum. Spanish authorities arrested politicians who had organized it. The Spanish state is currently prosecuting many of them for misappropriating public funds to pay for the vote. Like many Catalan leaders, Carles Puigdemont, leader of Together for Catalonia, one of the two largest independence parties, fled Spain. He has been living in exile ever since. In order to get the Catalan nationalists’ support, Sánchez has promised legal amnesty to the leaders facing prosecution or in exile.

Has Sánchez’s gamble paid off?

Sánchez is a risk-taker and a consummate hardball political player. As a young politician, he broke up through the ranks of the Socialist party even though the old guard did not like him. He went from town to town canvassing until he had enough votes to force his way in. In 2018, as opposition leader, Sánchez championed an unprecedented no-confidence vote which brought down the Popular Party government headed by Mariano Rajoy. In early 2023, Sánchez’s approval ratings as prime minister were low, and the Popular Party’s fortunes in opinion polls were rising. But Sánchez cleverly declared an early election, catching his conservative rivals off-guard. Now, he is making a deal with secessionists in order to keep power. This has enraged the right and unsettled many Socialists. Yet, though his methods are questionable, they have worked so far.

Although Sánchez and the Catalan nationalists have struck a deal, the latter are not forming part of Sánchez’s coalition government. Instead, they will simply abstain from confidence votes. This allows the Socialists and their ally, Sumar, to govern by themselves, although they are a minority in parliament.

Typically, a minority government like this is a very unstable arrangement. The stakeholders have diverging interests, and, without a formal coalition agreement, any one of them could break the deal and walk away. But Sánchez’s arrangement is different. It will hold, because there is simply no other option for its members. Sánchez knows that he cannot govern Spain without the Catalan parties’ help. And the Catalan parties, as well as Sumar, know that they would have no say if the Popular Party succeeded. So, Sánchez is their least worst option.

So, in the short term, Spain seems to be safe from political chaos. But Sánchez is playing with fire. Pardoning secessionists may be very destructive in the long term.

What does this mean for the rest of the world?

Spain can be an anomalous country. It is a truism that every nation is different. But it bears repeating. Many observers have sought to draw comparisons between ���貹����’s political turmoil and that of Argentina, a former Spanish colony. In Argentina, far-right libertarian candidate Javier Milei won the presidential election despite being a political outsider. It’s easy to project these anxieties onto Spain, which also has a far-right populist movement, Vox. Yet the two cases could not be more different in terms of the mechanics.

In Argentina, like in the United States, individual presidential candidates contend for popular support. The winner takes all, since the president, who is directly elected, governs. Milei barely had a party at all. He won on his personal popularity and unique platform. ���貹����’s situation is much more typically European. The prime minister governs as the representative of a coalition in parliament. Each party’s political platform is firmly established. Here, the parties are jockeying for position by making deals with other parties, rather than competing in a contest of candidates. So we can read very little into superficial similarities between the two Spanish-speaking nations; what happens in Buenos Aires is by no means what will happen in Madrid.

With regard to ���貹����’s foreign relations, very little is likely to change. Sánchez is pro-US and pro-NATO. With regard to ���貹����’s relationship with the EU, he will continue to maintain the status quo. The EU is not an issue on which the Socialists and Popular Party differ. Instead of involving itself in the disputes that plague Europe’s eastern flank, Spain is more interested in expanding its influence in North Africa. So, while the developments within Spain have been dramatic, the rest of the world is largely insulated from them.

For now, things will be quiet. What is coming in the future, as ���貹����’s political ecosystem continues to evolve, is anyone’s guess.

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The conservative Popular Party (PP), which won the most seats in parliament, taking 136 deputies (33.05% of the votes). In order to gain the magic number of 176 seats, then, it would have needed to work with the far-right Vox, which won 33 seats. This would have been the first time a far-right party were part of a ruling coalition in Spain. But, even together, the two parties did not reach 176 seats, and the PP was unable to form a government.

By installing the new Sánchez government, Spain is resisting the global trend. Democratic decline, especially in Europe, has led to the formation of coalition governments between conservatives and ultra-rightists in many countries. The Netherlands, where the far-right Party for Freedom won a plurality of parliamentary seats, may soon become the next country to fall to this trend.

Sánchez has spoken of the need to create a “” against the right. Given troubling attacks against democracy in Brazil and in the USA, Sánchez has reaffirmed his commitment to combating any assault on ���貹����’s democracy.

Amnesty for Catalan separatists

Unlike the PP, the Socialists negotiated the support of Catalan separatist parliamentarians in exchange for an amnesty law. Amnesty would forgive those involved in Catalonia’s illegal independence in 2014 and 2017.

The main support for Sáchez came from two separatist parties — the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the conservative Together for Catalonia (JxC), — each party gave him seven valuable votes. The most sought-after support came from JxC, which hardened its secessionist positions during the Catalan independence process.

The leader of JxC, Carles Puigdemont, Spain in 2017, when he was the president of the Catalan region, so as not to respond to the numerous legal actions arising from the independence process. The amnesty law, negotiated in Belgium directly with Puigdemont, a fugitive from justice, forgives all his crimes and those of 400 people.

The Right is up in arms over amnesty

However, there is a notable contradiction in the amnesty bargain: Instead of promoting democratic coexistence, it is fostering further polarization. Puigdemont insists on acting in favor of Catalonia’s independence, despite benefiting from an amnesty, which is an act of forgiveness granted from the Spanish government. This inconsistency, instead of pacifying the political debate, sparked large-scale demonstrations led by the far-right Vox and the conservative PP.

The reaction of these parties to the amnesty was to mobilize their activism on the streets of large cities with Francoist symbols and chants. In parliament, deputies from these parties began to speak about what was already being said on the streets: that Sánchez’s government is illegitimate.

The Vox party classifies the agreements that led to the renewal of Sanchez’s government as a coup d’état. The mobilization also reached the internet. The PP launched a campaign with the hashtag #helpspain, and on an X account, a party councilor that Sánchez “deserves a shot in the back of the head”.

Misinformation regarding amnesty is the driving force behind the radicalized response. Contrary to what is speculated, amnesty is by the Spanish constitution and Spain has already had a amnesty law. Furthermore, pacts with secessionists have often been used in the past to elect prime ministers in the country.

The divergent opinions of voters on the amnesty deepens the division and distances Spain from a resolution of its territorial crisis. Within Catalonia, only of PP and 6% Vox voters in Catalonia favor the amnesty law, while 49% of Socialist voters are in favor.

Among voters from secessionist parties, there is a fear that Vox, founded in 2013 with a strongly nationalist, anti-secessionist platform, will eventually participate in a Spanish government. So, it is only natural that secessionist parties support a Socialist government. In Spain, Socialist-led governments, in addition to containing the ultra-right, have historically been more open to recognizing the idea of ​​the “Catalan nation” and granting autonomy to the various Spanish regions.

Spain over the last 45 years has celebrated the diversity of its different regions. Spain is a unitary democracy, but its regions have significant autonomy. Today this territorial model of plurality is exhausted. Neither separatist ambitions nor the monolithic nationalism of Spanish supremacists are compatible with the current system. But ironically, it is left- and right-wing secessionist parties are enabling Spain to withstand the global democratic downturn. Such resistance, however, comes at a high price. Only time will tell how much Sánchez’s deal with the secessionists will cost.

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Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist party won 122 seats, two more than in the 2019 elections. The center-right Popular Party (PP) won 136 seats, up from 89 in 2019. The far-right Vox party would support the PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Yet it took only 33 seats, in contrast to 52 in 2019. This would leave Feijóo seven seats short of an absolute majority of 176 in the parliament.

Spain had two elections in 2019 because the first one failed to produce a government. It has had regional elections since, most importantly in Catalonia, Castilla y León and Andalucía. Now, it might have another election in 2023.

What is going on in Spain?

In Spanish politics, four main parties dominate. The Socialists, the PP, Vox and far-left Sumar are the main national parties. Regional parties in Basque Country and Catalonia form a fifth force. Their relationship with national parties and with Spain itself remains problematic. Both Basque Country and Catalonia have had issues with Madrid over independence. Carles Puigdemont, the leader of the Catalan Junts party, remains in exile.

In some ways, the regional parties suffered, particularly in Catalonia. The regions no longer seem to want independence. The far-right and the far-left declined too. Together, the two national parties were the big winners. Yet they are too ideologically opposed to come together in a Germany-style national coalition.

Many are calling for such a grand coalition. It would have the support of the majority of the Spanish people. However, party leaders fear that they will lose the support of their members if they negotiate with the other party.

Vox represents the legacy of General Francisco Franco, ���貹����’s brutal dictator who held power from 1936 to 1975. Its leaders split from the PP about ten years ago in disgust at the party’s softness towards separatists. If Vox supports the PP, there is a risk that no other party may join the coalition. The fall in popular support for Vox demonstrates that the far-right wave of Italy has not crossed the Mediterranean. The success of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia has not been replicated in Spain.

Spain is experiencing the same polarization that we see in democracies like the US, the UK and Israel. By European standards, the Spanish economy was not doing too badly. Apparently, Sánchez’s coalition failed to win not because of the economy but because of culture and identity.

Why do incumbents lose, and why is it so hard to form a government?

Until 2015, the Socialists and the PP were the two dominant parties. Charges of corruption damaged them with Podemos and Ciudadanos emerging as plausible alternatives. Vox did rather well in 2019, which might have led voters to back other parties to keep this Francoist party out of power. 

Yet the incumbents have lost power. According to Carlos Meléndez, people have voted out 85% of incumbents over the last five to six years. This pattern of negative voting has produced governments that are very fragile and have little popular support, existing only because voters opposed the alternative more.

In the Spanish context, another issue adds to the anti-incumbent phenomenon. As prime minister, Sánchez does not enjoy within his own country the good reputation he has abroad. He won the party leadership by upending the traditional establishment. In 2018. Sánchez convinced other parties to vote together against Mariano Rajoy, who was then the leader of the PP and prime minister. This has been the only successful no-confidence vote in Spanish history, and many Spaniards think of Sánchez as a Machiavellian for initiating it.

Political commentators and analysts criticized the no-confidence move widely. They take the view that fresh elections were the more appropriate means to address Rajoy’s alleged corruption. By working closely with regional parties, Sánchez became politically toxic. Many Castilian-speaking voters, who form the vast majority in Spain, still demonize the Socialist leader.

While people may have voted negatively in Spain, they have not gone for the extremes this time around. However, they have not voted in a manner that allows for a stable government to form. Neither the Socialists nor the PP are likely to get the votes to reach the magic 176 mark.

In some democracies, horse-trading or the return of Puigdemont might be possibilities. However, Spanish politics is too ideological to forgive members of parliament who jump ship, and ���貹����’s Supreme Court has issued a new arrest order for Puigdemont. Unlike the Italians, the Spaniards do not seem to form coalitions easily. So, the country may find it difficult to form a government.

This political instability comes at an unfortunate time for the country. Spain exercises the EU’s rotating presidency until January 2024. Without a government in power, Spain is likely to squander its chance to set the European agenda and play a leading role in the bloc.

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Like many other European countries, ���貹����’s party system is fragmented and polarized, which renders the country ungovernable. And as in other countries, when it is able to form governments, they will be governments of the Frankenstein type, formed by stitching together multiple heterogeneous parties into an improbable and lackluster unity.

For one thing, votes are now more dispersed across parties. In the nine elections from 1982 to 2011, the two largest parties, the Socialist Party and the People’s Party, averaged a total of 75% of the votes. In the most recent four elections, from 2015 to 2019, however, the main parties’ combined average was only 50%. In last week’s election, it was 65%, which is not a clear indication of any return to solid bipartisanship; both the Socialists and the People’s Party will need the support of other parties if they hope to govern. This seems to be becoming something of a new normal for Spain.

As a consequence of the parties’ inability to form parliamentary majorities, snap elections were called in 2016 and 2019, leaving the country without a government for many months. If Spain holds one more snap election, its record of misgovernment will approach those of that Bulgaria, Romania and Israel which have likewise undergone repeated elections.

Disintegration of political norms

Since the country’s modern democratic constitution came into force in 1978, Spain did not have a successful vote of no confidence for 39 years. This streak was broken in 2018 with the confidence motion that brought down Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. This development signified instability and dissatisfaction with the system.

The second election in 2019 ruptured another Spanish political tradition. For 37 years, Spain had avoided the need for a coalition government. Each ruling party governed alone until Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists found themselves constrained to form a coalition with the leftist Podemos party in 2020. Spain thus lost its distinction as the only country in Europe where a coalition government had never been formed.

What’s worse, it was a minority coalition; on top of the difficulties of negotiating and agreeing between government partners, it needed to transact with other parties in Parliament that lacked a general commitment to cooperate. There were opportunities to form a grand coalition government in both 2015 and 2019, but cowardice prevented it. The evaporation of the centrist party Citizens, which would have been the bridge, sealed the possibility altogether.

Another tradition that fell by the wayside in recent years was the absence of far-right parties, a trait due to the memory of the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship. In other European countries, the engine of the populist reaction was the financial crisis, austerity policies, and massive immigration. But the Spanish far-right did not gain a voice when those parties jumped on the stage, but later, immediately after the referendum for the independence of Catalonia in 2017. The Vox party—the “Voice” of the nation, which jumps, exasperated, like an automatic spring at any sign of territorial tension—was, above all, a jingoistic overreaction to Catalan nationalist provocations.

Now, it has backfired. As a counter-reaction to Vox, the Catalan independentists have become a pivot to form a majority in the Spanish Parliament. The incumbent prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, needs the votes or at least the abstention of the Catalan pro-independence parties to govern again. They will ask for the moon in return.

Spain is at an impasse

The People’s Party and the Socialist Party may be tempted to hold another catastrophic snap election because they can expect that, as occurred on both previous occasions, both abstention and the percentage of votes for the two larger parties would increase.

Given this situation of Frankensteinian normality, some of the democratic reforms that many Spaniards have desired for years may no longer be a priority and could even become counterproductive. A more proportional electoral system, which has been long demanded, would allow even more parties to enter Parliament and make it even more difficult to form a majority, aggravating the governance problem.

Any complex, open and pluralistic political system entails high transaction costs. That is to say, it tends to reproduce the problems of information, coordination, negotiation and implementation of collective decisions that society cannot solve for itself and that, precisely for this reason, it transfers to the institutional sphere.

In today’s Europe and today’s world, with large scale and very high transaction costs, the most effective way to improve governance would be more transfers to other levels of government, especially the European Union and global institutions. As we are faced with problems of the magnitude of financial fragility, energy and food interdependence, vulnerability to epidemics, transcontinental migrations, the deployment of artificial intelligence, climate change, and new border conflicts, our highest priority is to execute competent decisions and recommendations in a way that is accountable to the public for their results. 

In this context, citizens’ relatively high electoral abstention may be inevitable and not very hurting. More necessary and beneficial would be higher abstention from superfluous and conflict-prone legislation on the part of a Frankenstein government.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The two countries, the United States and Spain, had similar populations at the time, about 30 million and 25 million, respectively, and in both cases, the number of casualties was about 2.5% of the country’s population: about 750,000 in the US and about 540,000, plus 50,000 executed in the immediate postwar, in Spain. In neither of the two cases did the civil war explode overnight, however.

Factional Violence is America’s Normal

In the United States, angry riots and revolts, such as we have seen in recent times, are no new phenomenon, and the period previous to its civil war was likewise one of increasing confrontation.

America Needed Something to Smash

The generation of the so-called Founding Fathers provided the revered first five presidents. But the election of General Andrew Jackson, who is Donald Trump’s favorite president, as the seventh president opened thirty years of partisan turbulence and mayhem. For several decades, the average turnout in presidential elections was 80% of eligible voters, a level that would never be reached again by far. Congress was a verbal and physical battlefield, including more than one hundred incidents of violence in the House and Senate chambers.

In her recent book, historian Joanne B. Freeman has studied that “,” in which “armed groups of Northern and Southern congressmen engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the floor… Fighting became endemic and congressmen strapped on knives and guns before heading to the Capitol every morning.” By her description, the incidents “involved physical action —punching, slapping, caning, lunging, shoving, dueling, wielding weapons, flipping desks, breaking windows, and the like.”

Divided Politics Breed Resentment

This polarization, mostly around the slavery issue, culminated in the 1856 and 1860 presidential elections. In the former, the pro-slavery Democrat candidate, James Buchanan, won the majority in the Electoral College with a minority of around 45% of the popular vote against the divided anti-slavery candidacies. In 1860, reversing the situation, the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln carried eighteen of the thirty-three states then existing, with less than 40% of the popular vote, against the divided pro-slavery candidacies. The subsequent secession of eleven Southern states triggered Lincoln’s military response and the civil war.

In Spain likewise, the institutional crisis previous to the civil war had been developing at least since the military in 1923. During the period of the Second Republic (1931–1939), there were also elections with less-than-straightforward results. In 1933, the right, consisting of Catholics and monarchists, received support from 34% of voters, but together with some center-right republican parties managed to collect a majority of seats in parliament against the divided republicans and socialists. Then, in 1936, the united left, as the Popular Front, won a majority of seats with the support of only 46% of voters against the divided center-right and right. The subsequent military uprising triggered civil war.

Civil War Memories More Alive Than Most Think

If you visit Washington, DC, today, you will see that the civil war still appears as a major foundational moment. The Lincoln Memorial, which is an enlarged copy of the Parthenon, is the most revered and visited monument both by American and foreign tourists. All across the city, there are equestrian statues with generals of the Civil War, more numerous than those commemorating the previous American Revolutionary War. On the other side of the Potomac, the civil war seems just as present. Some time ago, I was at a high-level academic event at George Mason University, in Virginia, when the keynote speaker ended a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of decentralization with the reflection: “And that’s why we lost the war.” It has been only in the last few years that monuments and street names dedicated to the leaders of the defeated secessionist Confederacy have begun to be removed in some southern states.

Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

Of course, the big difference is that in the United States the winners restored democracy (although slavery was to be replaced with racial segregation for several decades), while in Spain, the winners held the country down and secluded for forty years. Nevertheless, the foundation of the Spanish democracy in the 1970s was also strongly marked by the dissuasive memory of the civil war. Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez commented that he won the first election “because I was moving the Spaniards away from the danger of a confrontation after Franco’s death. They did not support me out of wishful thinking and longing for liberties, but out of fear of that confrontation; because I separated them from the horns of that bull.”

With a little emotional and physical distance, one can notice how, in Spain, a verbal civil war is still often latent in bitter partisan confrontations, the shouting of certain opinion-makers in the media, and the quarrels that take place in a polarized parliament. In the United States, one might have expected more forgetfulness because nobody alive has ever met a person who had seen a slave. Yet, between the North and the South remains a deep rift, still heralded by the extreme right with Confederate flags.

When does a civil war stop being a major element of political confrontation? It may be that any traumatic civil war can produce endless reverberations.

[The author’s first published this piece.]
[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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What is the Backstory of Western Sahara?

Western Sahara is a stretch of desert territory along the Atlantic coast. It borders Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania. From 1884 to 1976, Spain was the colonial ruler of Western Sahara, which was then known as Spanish Sahara. During the great wave of decolonization in the second half of the 20th century, the —a Sahrawi nationalist liberation movement—waged guerrilla war against Spain.

Following the campaign of pressure that the UN, Morocco, and the Polisario Front launched against Spain in the late 1960s Madrid to consider withdrawing from the region, given that it no longer anticipated a future in the area. Subsequently, in 1974, Spain signaled its withdrawal by plans for a referendum in which the Sahrawi people could determine the future of the territory, whether to be a part of Morocco or Mauritania or to obtain their independence. Morocco and Mauritania welcomed ���貹����’s decision. However, the UNSG Resolution 3292 suspending the referendum until a formal process for this could be determined. 

On October 16, 1975, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague that while there were legal ties of allegiance between the Sultan of Morocco and certain tribes in Western Sahara during the time of Spanish colonization, and there were rights connecting the Mauritanian entity to the territory of Western Sahara, there was no evidence of a territorial sovereignty link between the territory of Western Sahara and either the Kingdom of Morocco or the Mauritanian entity. In response to the ruling, in 1975 King Hassan II of Morocco  for a peaceful mass demonstration in the form of a march into Western Sahara. The King sought to reaffirm Morocco’s claim of sovereignty over the territory and called upon the Moroccan people to participate in the march. He emphasized that the march was the only way to regain control of Western Sahara.

Western Sahara is important for Morocco not only for sovereignty reasons but also for economic ones. It is rich in , a valuable fertilizer that secures the world’s food supply. This mineral is Morocco’s third largest export and brought the country $850 million in 2021. As a region along the Atlantic coast, Western Sahara is important for fishing, providing 75% of Morocco’s catches. Clearly, this region is of paramount to Rabat.

What Is Going on Now with Spain, Morocco and Algeria?

Therefore, Moroccan-Spanish ties turned when Spain admitted Polisario leader Brahim Ghali in April 2021 for medical treatment without officially telling Rabat. In 2022, Madrid agreed to support Rabat’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara, ending a year-long diplomatic crisis.

���貹����’s change in policy has with Morocco after a year-long diplomatic spat. However, this move has infuriated Algeria, which an economic blockade on Spain in June 2022. This resulted in significant losses estimated at around $1 billion (€930 million) in the following seven months alone. Spanish Secretary of State for Trade Xiana Méndez Bértolo recently that, between June and November 2022, ���貹����’s exports were a mere $189.1 million (€176.2 million) to Algeria. In December 2022, Spanish exports to Algeria amounted to $11.81 million (€10.8 million), a fall of 84%. ���貹����’s position as an exporter to Algeria fell from second in 2021 to ninth in 2022.

This has hurt Spanish companies and businesses exporting to Algeria, especially in Valencia and Catalonia. These regions account for over 50% of to Algeria. In terms of sectors, enamelers and ceramic machinery manufacturers are facing significant negative impacts.The economic pain of this blockade has led the Spanish Ministry of Trade to the support of the European Commission. It has come up with a financial plan to support Spanish companies suffering from the blockade. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to Algeria in March to resolve this crisis but the visit was .

Algeria Is Still Supplying Gas to Spain

Spain depends on Algeria for gas. Therefore, it is important for Madrid to maintain good relations with Algiers. Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune commented that “among all the Algerian statements, what matters to the Spanish state is the full guarantee of ���貹����’s supply of Algerian gas and the strict respect of the international contracts.” Algeria has assured Spain that it will continue to supply gas under any circumstances.

Spain gets much of its gas through the Medgaz pipeline from Algeria. According to Spanish reports, Madrid has recently turned to the US for gas. Many analysts speculate that Spain might be moving away from Algerian gas. Hence, Algeria decided not to escalate matters with Spain when it comes to supply of gas. Losing a lucrative export market would not be in Algerian economic interest.

Tensions between Spain and Algeria have occurred in the past but the two countries have always been able to achieve an accommodation. This time, things are different. ���貹����’s change of policy has touched a raw nerve and only a change in government might lead to the calming of the waters.

Algeria Strengthens Ties with Other Countries

As Spanish exports to Algeria have crashed, other countries such as Portugal and Italy have stepped in. In 2021, Portugal exports to Algeria totaled $241 million. The main products were uncoated paper, heating machinery, and acrylic hydrocarbons. Between February 2022 and February 2023, Portugal’s exports have increased by $384.6 million. The top exports to Algeria in February 2023 were vegetables, wood pulp, paper products, plastics and plastic goods, machinery, mechanical appliances and parts. 

Before the rupture in relations, Algeria preferred Spanish products. Sociedad Española Automóviles de Turismo (SEAT), a Spanish car manufacturer was active in Algeria. In 2018, SEAT strategic operations in Algeria. Now, Italian car company FIAT seems to be replacing SEAT. In March 2023, six carlines were launched in Algeria. In contrast, SEAT’s growth has suffered.

Italy and Algeria have good neighborly agreements. They are now deepening their strategic partnership. In January 2023, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Algeria to launch her new Mediterranean policy in Algiers. It is well known that Italy wants to become an energy hub between Europe and the southern Mediterranean. The Russia-Ukraine War is causing an energy crisis in Europe, which is looking for alternative sources. This offers a great economic opportunity for both Italy and Algeria.

Both countries also signed  agreements relating to aerospace and pharmaceutical sectors. These agreements were not only about economics but also geopolitics. Italy sees Algeria as a vital actor in the Mediterranean region that can underpin regional stability. Algeria’s neighbors are facing turmoil. Libya is going through a civil war. Al Jazeera has Tunisia a “ticking time bomb.” The unsettled situation in North Africa makes Algeria critically important not only for Italy but also the European Union.

Is Morocco a Springboard for Spain Into Africa?

Spain has a growing interest in the Moroccan market. In 2022, Spanish exports to Morocco amounted to $12.9 billion (€11.748 billion) while Moroccan imports to Spain were $9.4 million (€8.6 million). Morocco lies just across the Strait of Gibraltar to the south of Spain. It is ���貹����’s closest neighbor in North Africa. Morocco is a natural trading partner where demand for Spanish goods and services is growing. Therefore, it makes sense for Spain to invest in closer relations with its southern neighbor.

Spanish President Pedro Sánchez Morocco in February. The two governments reached agreements on migration, tourism, trade and investment. Just as Italy is developing a strategic relationship with Algeria, Spain is betting on Morocco. Spanish companies are looking to expand in North Africa. Morocco could be a good base of operations for Spain. Given the fact that ���貹����’s relations with Algeria have taken a hit and other European rivals are stepping in, it makes sense for Madrid to cultivate Rabat. A closer relationship with Morocco makes both economic and geopolitical sense for Spain.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Unthinkable: War Returns to Europe

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The immediate answer is there are very few today outside of Russia itself, hence the large rise in gas prices witnessed lately. Over the medium term, however, Libya and Algeria have ample opportunity to increase their supplies to the EU.

Supplies From Libya and Algeria

Libya boasts proven gas reserves of 1,500 billion cubic meters (bcm). Its production is a modest 16 bcm. Algeria has 4,500 bcm of proven reserves and 20-25 trillion cubic meters (tcm) of unconventional gas reserves, the third-largest in the world after the United States and China (and Argentina whose proven reserves tie with Algeria). How much gas that could produce is anyone’s guess, but we are speaking of a figure in the tens of bcm.

Algeria today produces 90 bcm, of which 50 bcm were exported. Another feature of Algeria is the huge storage capacity — 60 bcm — of the Hassi R’Mel gas field, its oldest and largest compared with the EU’s storage capacity of 115 bcm.

Pierre Terzian, the founder of the French energy think-tank Petrostrategies, out that four underwater gas pipelines link these two producers directly to the European mainland: the first links Libyan gas fields with Italy; the second Algerian gas fields to Italy via Tunisia; the third Algerian gas fields to southern Spain; and the fourth the same gas fields to southern Spain via Morocco.

The latter has been closed since November 1, 2021, due to deteriorating relations between Algeria and Morocco, but this has not affected the supply of gas to the Iberian Peninsula. Algeria also has two major liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals, which adds flexibility to its export policy. Its exports to France and the United Kingdom are in LNG ships.

The leading cause of the current crisis is structural as, according to Terzian, EU domestic gas production has declined by 23% over the last 10 years and now covers only 42% of consumption, as compared with 53% in 2010. That decline is the result, in particular, of the closing of the giant Groningen gas field, which is well underway and will be completed by 2030.

Europe has done a lot to expand the gas transmission grid among EU countries, but some major gas peninsulas remain. In 2018, it was suggested that connections between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe needed developing. Spain boasts one-third of Europe’s LNG import capacity, much of it unused, and is connected to Algeria by two major pipelines that could be extended.

As Alan Riley and I four years ago, the “main barrier to opening up the Iberian energy market’s supply routes to the rest of the EU is the restricted route over the Franco-Spanish border. Only one 7-bcm gas line is available to carry gas northwards … The main blocking factor has been the political power of Electricité de France, which is seeking to protect the interests of the French nuclear industry.” An Iberian solution, we added, would not only “benefit France and Spain, but also Algeria, creating additional incentives to explore for new gas fields and maybe kick start a domestic renewables revolution,” which would encourage a switch in consumption from gas to solar in Algeria.

Germany, the Netherlands and Italy

Germany, for its part, has never put its money where its mouth is with regard to Algeria. In 1978, Ruhrgas (now absorbed in E.ON) signed a major contract to supply LNG to Germany. Germany never built the LNG terminal needed to get that contract off the ground. So far, it is the only major European country to have no LNG import terminals, although it can rely on existing facilities in the Netherlands and Belgium.

In 1978, the Netherlands also contracted to buy Algerian gas. Algeria dropped the contract in the early 1980s because of Germany’s refusal to go ahead. Later in the 1980s, Ruhrgas again expressed its interest in buying Algerian gas, but the price offered was too low and because Ruhrgas wanted to root the gas through France, which insisted on very high transit fees. By discarding Algerian gas, Germany has tied itself to Russian goodwill.

Italy, like Germany, a big importer of Russian gas, has positioned itself much more adroitly. In December 2021, Sonatrach, Algeria’s state oil and gas monopoly, increased the amount of gas pumped through the TransMed pipeline, which links Algeria to Italy via Tunisia and the Strait of Sicily at the request of its Italian customers. This followed a very successful state  by Italian President Sergio Mattarella to Algeria in early November. On February 27, Sonatrach  it could pump additional gas to Europe, but contingent on meeting current contractual commitments.

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Relations between the Italian energy company ENI and Sonatrach are historically close because of the important role played by the Italian company’s founder, Enrico Mattei, in advising the provisional government of the Republic of Algeria in its negotiations with France, which resulted in the independence of Algeria in July 1962.

The pursuit of very liberal energy policies since the turn of the century by the European Commission overturned the policies of long-term gas and LNG purchase contracts, which were the norm in internationally traded gas until then. Yet security of supply does not rest on such misguided liberalism. New gas reserves cannot be found, let alone gas fields brought into production if producers and European customers are, as Terzian points out, “at the mercy of prices determined by exchange platforms which have dubious liquidity (and can be influenced by major players).” This is an attitude, he adds, “that borders on the irresponsible.”

German energy policy has mightily contributed to the present crisis. It has blithely continued to shut down the country’s nuclear plants, increased its reliance on coal in the electricity sector and with that a consequent increase in carbon emissions.

Serious Dialogue

When considering Caspian gas as an alternative to Russian gas, I would add another country, Turkey, which has a very aggressive and independent policy as a key transit for gas. However, few observers would argue that such a solution would increase Europe’s security.

Engaging in serious long-term strategic dialogue with Algeria would provide Spain and the EU with leverage. This could help to build better relations between Algeria, Morocco and also the troubled area of the Sahel. When trying to understand the politics of different nations, following the money often offers a good guide. One might also follow the gas.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner organization of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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However, after signing the deal, the government in Madrid never formalized its political and diplomatic position regarding Moroccan over Spain‘s former colony in Western Sahara. A geopolitical matter of vital importance for Morocco, the question of Western Sahara remains an unhealed wound in the relationship between Madrid and Rabat.

Can Self-Help Diplomacy Lower Political Heat in the Middle East?

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In 2021, this wound was reopened after Spain, in a somewhat secret and irregular move, welcomed Brahim Ghali, secretary-general of the Polisario Front, a nationalist movement seeking independence for Western Sahara vis-à-vis Morocco. On top of the fact that Ghali is wanted in Spain for crimes against humanity, rape and torture, among others, he is also a staunch enemy of the government in Rabat.

This politically embarrassing situation, a product of a diplomatic miscalculation by the Spanish government, created a feeling of betrayal in Rabat. Morocco quickly conveyed its discomfort, considering Spain’s harboring of Ghali a challenge to the kingdom’s sovereignty and interference in an internal state matter. Thus, Morocco issued a warning that continuing to host Ghali would have consequences.

Spain in North Africa

Despite these warnings, the government in Madrid decided not to make any political or diplomatic overtures to Morocco, declining to resolve the misunderstanding in a consensual manner. Therefore, in a way, the Spanish government forwent its diplomatic relationship with Morocco and disregarded the important role that Rabat has always played as a critical partner in the fight against illegal trafficking and terrorism stemming from the Maghreb and the Sahel.

Though the relationship between Morocco and Spain has lived through ups and downs, the tensions last year felt much different. Through relaxation of its military controls, Rabat‘s threat became a reality in May 2021 when Morocco effectively opened its border with Ceuta, a Spanish enclave and autonomous city located on the African continent, which made it easier for waves of irregular to reach Tarajal beach. Around 8,000 people, including more than 1,500 estimated minors, tried to cross the Spanish-Moroccan border on foot and by swimming to enter Spanish soil illegally.

As crude as it may seem, this political move by the government in Rabat, using Moroccans and Africans in general as a weapon against Spain, is not new. For years, Morocco has used this modus operandi as a diplomatic weapon to pressure and obtain concessions from its European neighbor. However, there has not been such a mass arrival of people, especially such a high percentage of minors, to the Spanish border in recent history.

The diplomatic crisis last May led to authentic moments of chaos and siege along Ceuta‘s border, making the passage of many of these immigrants to the European territory possible. Through its actions, Rabat sent a message without palliatives and the Spanish government to back down from political moves, such as open invitations to regional nationalist leaders.

The Existential Issue of Territorial Integrity

Morocco’s red lines related to Western Sahara have been drawn, and the kingdom has reiterated that interferences with its national sovereignty will not be tolerated. The crude political response at the Spanish border of Ceuta represents the harshness of Rabat‘s diplomatic relations, choosing, yet again, to weaponize its population.

Spain needs Morocco; indeed, Europe needs Morocco. Rabat is a crucial partner in Africa, especially given the many challenges in the region. However, Spain and the European Union should not allow the pressure and blackmail from their North African neighbor to stand because they embolden others. Spain and the EU should impose strict red lines on Morocco as well as clear and intelligent economic sanctions concerning development, education and health funds.

Political, and diplomatic issues can be resolved with class and delicacy without cheap blows and without trivializing despair and compassion. For this, Spain needs to reach a rapprochement with Morocco the status and future of Western Sahara.

Energy and Copycats

In tandem with Morocco’s migrant valve vis-à-vis Spain, Algeria started leveraging its gas valve to counter France’s escalation on matters like issuing visas to Algerian citizens. In this latter issue, Spain and Morocco, neither of whom are particularly close with Algeria, are collateral damage to the Paris-Algiers feud whether in the form of declining pipeline or a higher power bill.

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Since these episodes toward the middle of last year, the same playbook has been used by Moscow’s client in Minsk, who has fostered a migrant cul-de-sac along the EU’s Polish border. In doing so, Russia and Belarus are feeding the euroskeptic spirits the Visegrad countries and beyond, which are particularly sensitive to migration and border sovereignty issues. Moreover, Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin are playing good cop, bad cop on the issue of Europe’s gas supply by offering both threats and assurances that further highlight the EU’s vulnerable dependency on external providers when it comes to energy.

On the migration front, the European Union needs to reinforce its external borders and FRONTEX agency, particularly within the Schengen area, and formulate a common framework to tackle both migration quotas and allocation throughout Schengen member countries. Not only is the migrant in places like Spain, Greece, and Poland a human tragedy, but it is also increasingly a geopolitical lever weaponized by Morocco, Turkey, Belarus and other adversaries to destabilize the EU and bolster internal chaos to the benefit of figures such as Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders, Santiago Abascal, Marine Le Pen, and Eric Zemmour.

Whether nuclear, solar or wind, a common and comprehensive European defense framework urgently requires a holistic approach that tackles the issue of energy independence, in addition to that of border security, particularly in an increasingly hostile and multipolar neighborhood.

Building Solutions Where Possible

Along the Maghreb, one of the best solutions would be a new pragmatic and flexible bipartisan agreement between Spain and Morocco. An agreement that commemorates the golden jubilee of the Tripartite Agreement provides a firm solution to the Western Sahara dispute in a framework that benefits coexistence in the region and maintains collaboration in critical matters such as the fight against terrorism, illegal immigration and human trafficking.

In the same way, Spain and the EU must encourage the good behavior of Morocco with humanitarian aid and fruitful commercial relations to definitively close the post-colonial wound that sometimes reopens between the two countries.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Since the banning of the far-right National Action in the in 2016, other countries have followed suit. In , groups like Combat 18 and Citizens of the Reich have been proscribed as terrorists. has done the same with Combat 18, Blood and Honor, Three Percenters, Aryan Strikeforce and the Proud Boys.

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Spain has also designated particular organizations as terrorists. Their legal prosecution has affected the nature and activity of the far right at the national level.

Hate and Radicalization in Spain

In 2017, the educational launched a on the behaviors and attitude of Spanish millennials. The study unveiled the increasing ideological radicalization of that generation, as one in five young individuals (out of a total sample of 1,250) supported either the extreme left or right.

Four years later, Spain witnessed an anti-Semitic delivered in front of 300 attendees at an event held at the Almudena cemetery in Madrid to commemorate the (Blue Division), a group of 14,000 young men who fought for Adolf Hitler in World War II. Torn between bewilderment and outrage, Spaniards wondered about the speaker but also about the speech.

The inflammatory speech was given by Isabel Medina Peralta, an 18-year old history student, member of the Francoist party La Falange (The Phalanx) and a fascist and national-socialist. Her comments are currently being investigated by the prosecution office in Madrid as a hate crime.

Medina’s case is just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem: the increasing presence and relevance of extremist groups in Spain. That increase has been partly driven by a growing sense of dissatisfaction toward the political elites and rising immigration, with the subsequent perception of economic and cultural threat this may represent.

It is such factors that, in turn, facilitated the relative success of far-right parties like Vox, which was founded in 2013 and holds 52 seats at Spain’s Congress of Deputies, the lower house of parliament. Spain has ceased to be an “ among European countries that have witnessed the steady growth of right-wing radicalism since the mid-2010s.

Legislation

Spanish law does not any display of Nazi and fascist symbology unless it is related to criminal behavior. In other words, it does not punish the display of extremist symbols unless they are accompanied by active conduct. It is criminal actions and messages that allow for law enforcement to get involved, rather than the use of symbols. The mere display does not make the act a crime. The only exception to this is of July 11 against violence, xenophobia, racism and intolerance at sporting events. The law states that the of Nazi symbology could lead to a fine of up to €3,001 ($3,400) and a six-month ban from attending any sporting event.

However, there are some existing laws in Spain that could be used to enable the proscription of extremist groups. For example, the Spanish penal code, specifically , states that those who publicly encourage, promote or incite hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence against a group because of their ethnicity, religious beliefs or sexual identity will be “punished with a prison sentence of one to four years and a fine of six to twelve months.” This also applies to those who produce or disseminate material that encourages, promotes or incites violence against groups.

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Article 510 also allows the prosecution of those who publicly deny, trivialize or extol genocide and other crimes against humanity. of the Spanish penal code could also be applied in prosecution and proscription processes. Section 4 of this article, in particular, states that associations or groups are punishable if they promote discrimination, hatred or violence against people, groups or associations by reason of their ideology, religion or beliefs, ethnicity or gender.

Where the Spanish penal code would not be enough to proscribe an extremist group, the  Rome Statute of International Criminal Court may be employed. Article 7 on crimes against humanity specifically indicates that a group may be prosecuted under international law if it is responsible for the persecution of a community or collective based on political, racial, national, ethnic, culture, religious, gender or other grounds. When inciting, promoting or motivating such persecution, international law should be applied as a preventative measure.

Organized Extremism in Spain

Proscription in Spain began with the dissolution of the neo-Nazi organization (Blood and Honor) by Spanish judges, who condemned 15 of the 18 defendants to prison terms of up to three and a half years. Several extremist groups remain active in Spain today.

Democracia Nacional, a far-right party founded in 1995, is one example. Its current leader, Alberto Bruguera, and 14 other members of the party have been by the special public prosecutor on hate crimes for attacking a mosque in Barcelona’s Nou Barris neighborhood in 2017. The prosecutor has requested a 10-year sentence for its leader. The party’s vice-president, Pedro Chaparro, has also been accused of photojournalist Jordi Borras in 2015.

Alianza Nacional is another problematic group. In 2013, a judge in Vilanova i la Geltru, a city in Catalonia, sentenced three leaders of the organization to two and a half years in prison due to the dissemination of Nazi ideology online. Their message spread hatred against black and Latinx groups as well as immigrant communities and liberal multiculturalism. They blamed these groups for taking the jobs of Spaniards, along with fostering the use, abuse and trafficking of drugs, amongst other crimes.

Hogar Social is a neo-Nazi group that is well known for its campaigns to collect and share food “only for Spaniards” as well as to squat in buildings.Some of its members have been prosecuted and were due to be judged in December 2021 for inciting hatred and attacking a mosque in March 2016 after a terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium. They face potential sentences that range from one to four years in prison. The leader of Hogar Social, Melisa Jimenez, was in 2020 and later released for attacking the Socialist Party headquarters and displaying resistance to authorities.

Bastion Frontal is a neo-Nazi group related to the French organization Social Bastion. It was established during the COVID-19 pandemic in the working-class neighborhood of San Blas in Madrid. The group to have around 100 active members who are between the ages of 15 and 25. The creation of Bastion Frontal was mainly triggered by the decay of Hogar Social and the rise of VOX, but it does not identify with the latter due to it being a constitutionalist party. Instead, Bastion Frontal aims to abolish the Spanish Constitution. Although its members claim to have a physical headquarters, Bastion Frontal’s presence is mainly online. The prosecutor’s office in Madrid has filed a against the group because of hate crimes due to its threats against unaccompanied minors from Africa, including Morocco.

Echo Chambers

Spanish society has been going through a process of polarization, which has been pointed out by academics and civil society actors. The situation, as scholars have , has remarkably worsened during the pandemic, mainly due to the amount of time people have spent in front of their screens. In particular, young adults are the most vulnerable. In this context, isolationism and echo chambers have further contributed to the strengthening of an already growing extreme right.

Spain’s practice of prosecuting after crimes against human rights have been committed is only a relatively effective strategy, as it focuses on the individual rather than on the social, economic and ideological networks that the individual relied upon to carry out the violence.

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With Podemos, a left-wing party, Spaniards have become accustomed to phrases that are a break from what they considered old and useless ways of doing politics. This is referred to as “vieja política vs nueva política,” or old politics vs. new politics.

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VOX, a far-right party, brought a wide array of terms to discredit the left and their ideological system. This is a system perceived as involving “ideología de género” (gender ideology), “feminismo supremacista” (feminist supremacism) and “la España Bolivariana” (the Bolivarian Spain). Yet VOX has also attacked the more conservative forces that its supporters describe as “derechita cobarde,” or right-wing cowards.

In addition, VOX has also advocated for a set of national symbols, including the flag, the anthem or the cross. It has also pushed for the historical revival of events such as the Reconquista, the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa or the Army of Flanders, as well as figures like Don Pelayo or the Catholic Kings. VOX has carefully chosen these subjects to shape its ideology.

As extreme opposites of the political spectrum, both of these parties are examples of the present-day populism in Spain despite their differing linguistic styles. Whereas Podemos often opts for complex rhetoric, VOX has a straightforward way of communicating its message.

Online Wars

It is worthwhile to compare the rhetoric of political leaders in debates or rallies during electoral campaigns and the type of discourse that they or, in particular, their followers use on social media. Supporters of both parties tend to display a higher level of aggressiveness and extremism on social networks, mainly as it is online. Cyberspace is a breeding ground for dogmatic, bigoted and exclusionary language due to perceived anonymity and a presumed lack of accountability that users think they have behind a screen. This is what Claire Hardaker, a lecturer at Lancaster University in the UK, calls the “,” even when people use their real identities.

The presence of “virtual communities” whereby people around the world have the possibility to communicate in a many-to-many context, coupled with the endless possibility of what the internet offers, has redefined the feelings of inclusion or exclusion and increased the wish to belong through participation in cybermobs. All these features are related to the concepts of group salience and polarization that favor the ignition and propagation of online hostility. 

The divisive language on social media in Spain, particularly on Twitter, over the last few months of 2019 reached levels not found before. This was mainly due to two reasons: the Catalonian independence process and the exhumation of the late dictator Francisco Franco’s corpse. Both events might seem unrelated, but they are actually connected. On the one hand, many of those opposed to exhuming Franco were also against Catalonia’s right to self-determination and independence from Spain. On the other hand, many who backed it are often supportive of Catalonia’s claims.

The binary construction of the world into “us vs. them” tends to enhance (or create) intergroup bias, with the ultimate goal of reinforcing in-group bonds and ties. More specifically, it leads to fairly homogenous groups of supporters and opponents. Yet on this occasion, and due to the events aforementioned, Spanish society has become more polarized and the division has resulted in two sides that are no longer considered opponents but enemies.

In relation to Catalonia, the referendum over the region’s status in October 2017, and the subsequent declaration of independence issued by the Catalan parliament — which was suspended by the Spanish government — have drawn a line between two Spains on a topic that does not hold the possibility of seeing an amicable solution.

Traitors vs. Patriots

Two sides have thus been established: traitors or patriots. The lexical choices made by both factions to label each other have revealed their ideological basis and the pillars of their stances showing two incompatible perspectives. Pro-independence supporters have used the term “fascist” to refer to Spain, in addition to “political prisoners,” “exiled politicians” and “occupation forces.” The far right has described the situation with phrases such as “terrorism,” “enemies of the country” or “separatism.”

The historical event that still divides speakers of both sides is the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, even though most of them were not alive to see that conflict. In relation to Franco’s exhumation, the war was essentially resurrected on Twitter using the imagery of sports that had been previously referred to by in 1980 as one of the basic conceptual metaphors.

The fact that Franco’s corpse was exhumed in 2019 — casting aside the political reasons of both sides for or against this — was perceived as a victory by supporters on the left. For followers on the far right, they were reminded that whatever they do with Franco’s corpse, the right would always be the “winner” of the war and that that fact could not be erased.

In the Spanish general election of November 2019, VOX historically won 52 parliamentary seats for the first time. Thousands of its supporters gathered outside party headquarters to celebrate while singing “A por ellos” (go for them). No one, either from the party or its supporters, clarified what was meant by “them.” That kind of exclusionary discourse that fosters the division, enhances the difference and deepens the irreconcilable views is the last thing Spain needs at a time of instability.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Imagine a place where people seem to enjoy meeting in cafes, bars and restaurants to talk with each other, connecting with other human beings to enjoy the moment.��Imagine casual eye contact like it used to be.��Imagine Spain.��I recently got back from a month-long solo journey to that country. I traveled by car for three weeks along the eastern coast of Spain and up into the Pyrenees.��Then, I enjoyed spectacular Madrid for a week.

I have been to Spain many times before, and speak Spanish fairly well. Each time that I have been there, I have come away with the impression that Spain is a place where the human condition is about as good as it gets.��I say this having traveled extensively in the United States and around the world and having worked and lived in multiple countries overseas.��There is simply more positive human engagement in Spain than I have seen elsewhere, combined with the institutional infrastructure necessary for a people to thrive.

Spain has not always been like this, but I was never there before 1975 when Francisco Franco finally died. And, for sure, today’s Spain has many political, social and economic challenges to meet.��Separatist movements in Catalonia and the Basque Region have riven the country’s core for decades. Today, the Catalans are divided about a new independence push, and the rest of Spain is divided over the appropriate response.��The unemployment is too high and rising tides of immigration are causing deep social divisions.

But then, walk down the street, go into a shop or café, or order tapas and a beer on a terrace just about anywhere I was and there is a palpable sense of balance that opens the immediate moment to hopeful possibilities. As everywhere, cellphones are everywhere, but there seems to be a hesitation before touching it just because it is there. It is hard to say “hola” if you have a phone in your face. So go to Spain if you want to see and feel how decency and social connection can enrich the human spirit and improve the quality of life. Take along a smile and few words of Spanish and enjoy.

END THE PLAGUE

I could go on with more of a travelogue, but I want others to experience Spain for themselves, and I want to get back to doing my small part to end the plague that is Trump. When I last posted on ��just before I left for Spain, I urged the Democrats in Congress to get on with because it was constitutionally-mandated and the only right thing to do.�� I believed then, and I believe now, that Trump has already earned his place in the pantheon of impeached US presidents.��In fact, in this pantheon, the would-be king would be king, and probably forever.

Since I speak Spanish and could watch and understand daily news coverage in Spain, including a 24-hour news station with a format similar to that of CNN, it struck me how little anyone cared about Trump. There was minimal coverage of his visit to Britain and his continued interest in dehumanizing immigrants. But beyond that he was an afterthought.��Of US news, the mass shooting in Virginia Beach got the most coverage during my month in Spain. When commentary mentioned Trump, it was always with disdain.

While there is a lot about the Spanish news coverage or lack thereof relating to Trump that might be instructive to American journalists, their world spins free of the daily diet of Trump lies, deceit and corruption that dominates news coverage in the US. While this makes some sense since it is our problem not ���貹����’s problem, it occurred to me that taking a break from Trump saturation to focus on real public issues would not only benefit the public discourse, but return reporters to the job of reporting about events and issues that matter.

Think about how many people you know who watch less news coverage than before and simply avoid reading print coverage of Trump’s latest assault on ethics, morality and presidential norms. This is not because Trump shouldn’t be exposed, it is because he is so transparently ignorant and venal that his daily rants provide no palpable content. But tuning out can have a societal cost. Those who care will also miss the minimal coverage of issues of import. And that is what Trump’s handlers and apologists most appreciate about him.

Trump is the clownish but effective diverter-in-chief. After yet another mass shooting at a school, church or shopping center, gun nuts need not worry. Trump will momentarily skip right over the thoughts and prayers and head straight to war with Iran or tariffs on Mexican avocados. And a now “conditioned” press corps will blindly follow Trump, while leaving the National Rifle Association to fashion its madness in darkness. And guess what, no war with Iran and guacamole for all.

The conundrum that faces American journalism is real. Just as Trump will do and say anything to avoid confronting the demon of his illegitimate victory, the press will seemingly do anything to avoid taking any responsibility for creating that victory.��Now, in the absence of critical introspection and media ethical standards, the beat goes on.��But maybe the audience is beginning to lose interest. Maybe climate change and gun violence and access to meaningful health care should dominate the news for a while.��Trump has nothing of import to say on any of these issues.

And, by the way, it just might be that his ignorance and narcissism are finally losing their commercial appeal.

*[A version of this article was cross-posted on the author’s , Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The current chaos devouring ���貹����’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) has mixed elements of farce and tragedy. However, the issues roiling Spanish politics reflect a general crisis in the European Union (EU) and a sober warning to the continent: Europe’s 500 million people need answers, and the old formulas are not working.

On the tragedy side was the implosion of a 137-year-old party that at one point claimed the allegiance of half of ���貹����’s people now reduced to fratricidal infighting. The PSOE’s embattled general secretary, Pedro Sanchez, was forced to resign when party grandees and regional leaders organized a coup against his plan to form a united front of the left.

The farce was street theater, literally: Veronica Perez, the president of the PSOE’s Federal Committee and a coup supporter, was forced to hold a press conference on a sidewalk in Madrid because Sanchez’s people barred her from the party’s headquarters.

There was no gloating by the Socialists’ main competitors on the left. Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, somberly called it “the most important crisis since the end of the civil war in the most important Spanish party in the past century.”

There’s no question that the party coup is a crisis for Spain. But the issues that prevented the formation of a working government for the past nine months are the same ones Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and Irish—and before they jumped ship, the British—are wrestling with: growing economic inequality, high unemployment, stagnant economies and whole populations abandoned by Europe’s elites.

Spain: Post-Electoral Crisis

The spark for the PSOE’s meltdown was a move by Sanchez to break the political logjam convulsing Spanish politics. The current crisis goes back to the December 2015 national elections in which ���貹����’s two traditional parties—the right-wing People’s Party (PP), led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, and Sanchez’s Socialists—took a beating. The PP lost 63 seats and its majority, and the PSOE lost 20 seats. Two new parties, the left-wing Podemos and the right-wing nationalist party Ciudadanos, crashed the party, winning 69 seats and 40 seats, respectively.

Although the PP took the most seats, it was not enough for a majority in the 350-seat legislature, which requires 176. In theory, the PSOE could have cobbled together a government with Podemos, Catalans and independents, but the issue of Catalonian independence got in the way.

The Catalans demand the right to hold a referendum on independence, something the PP, the Socialists and Ciudadanos bitterly oppose. Although Podemos is also opposed to ���貹����’s richest province breaking free of the country, it supports the right of the Catalans to vote on the issue. Catalonia was conquered in 1715 during the War of the Spanish Succession, and Madrid has oppressed the Catalans’ language and culture ever since.

The Catalan issue is an important one for Spain, but the PSOE could have shelved its opposition to a referendum and made common cause with Podemos, the Catalans and the independents. Instead, Sanchez formed a pact with Ciudadanos and asked Podemos to join the alliance.

For Podemos, that would have been a poison pill. Podemos is the number one party in Catalonia largely because it supports the right of Catalans to hold a referendum. If it had joined with the Socialists and Ciudadanos, it would have alienated a significant part of its base. Bearing this in mind, Sanchez might have reasoned that Podemos’ refusal to join with the Socialists and Ciudadanos would hurt it with voters. Sanchez gambled that another election would see the Socialists expand at the expense of Podemos and give it enough seats to form a government.

That was a serious misjudgment. The June 26 election saw PSOE lose five more seats in its worst-ever performance. Ciudadanos also lost seats. Although Podemos lost votes—at least 1 million—it retained the same number of deputies. The only winner was the Popular Party, which poached eight seats from Ciudadanos for an increase of 14. However, once again no party won enough seats to form a government.

The current crisis is the fallout from the June election. Rajoy, claiming the PP had “won” the election, formed an alliance with Ciudadanos and asked the PSOE to either support him or abstain from voting and allow him to form a minority government. Sanchez refused, convinced that allowing Rajoy to form a government would be a boon to Podemos and the end of the Socialists.

There is a good deal of precedent for that conclusion. The Greek Socialist Party formed a grand coalition with the right and was subsequently decimated by the left-wing Syriza Party. The German Social Democratic Party’s alliance with the conservative Christian Democratic Union has seen the once mighty organization slip below 20% in the polls. Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party was destroyed by its alliance with the Conservatives.

Sanchez was forced out ostensibly because he led the Socialists to two straight defeats in national elections and oversaw the beating the PSOE took in recent local elections in the Basque region and Galicia. But the decline of the Socialists predated Sanchez. The party has been bleeding supporters for over a decade, a process that accelerated after it abandoned its social and economic programs in 2010 and oversaw a mean-spirited austerity regime.

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The PSOE has long been riven with political and regional rivalries. Those divisions surfaced when Sanchez finally decided to try an alliance with Podemos, the Catalans and independents, which suggests he was willing to reconsider his opposition to a Catalan referendum. That’s when Susana Diaz, the Socialist leader in ���貹����’s most populous province, Andalusia, pulled the trigger on the coup. Six out of seven PSOE regional leaders backed her. Diaz will likely take the post of general secretary after the PSOE’s convention in several weeks.

The Andalusian leader has already indicated that she will let Rajoy form a minority government. “First we need to give Spain a government,” she said, “and then open a deep debate in the PSOE.” Sanchez was never very popular—dismissed as a good looking lightweight—but the faction that ousted him may find that rank-and-file Socialists are not overly happy with a coup that helped usher in a rightwing government. This crisis is far from over.

In the short run the Popular Party is the winner, but Rajoy’s ruling margin will be paper-thin. Most commentators think that Podemos will emerge as the main left opposition. Although the Socialists did poorly in Galicia and the Basque regions, Podemos did quite well, an outcome that indicates that talk of its “decline” after last June’s election is premature. In contrast, Ciudadanos drew a blank in the regional voting, suggesting that the party is losing its national profile and heading back to being a regional Catalan party.

Soul Searching on the Left

Hanging over this is the puzzle of what went wrong for the left in the June election, particularly given that the polls indicated a generally favorable outcome for them. It is an important question because although Rajoy may get his government, few are willing to bet that it will last very long.

Part of the outcome was its dreadful timing: two days after the English and the Welsh voted to pull the United Kingdom out of the European Union. The “Brexit” was a shock to all of Europe and hit Spain particularly hard. The country’s stock market lost some $70 billion—losses that fed the scare campaign the PP and the PSOE were running against Podemos.

Even though Podemos supports EU membership, the right and the center warned that, if the left-wing party won the election, it would accelerate the breakup of Europe and encourage the Catalans to push for independence. Brexit pushed fear to the top of the agenda, and when people are afraid they tend to vote for stability.

But Podemos lost a measure of support because it confused some of its own supporters by moderating its platform. At one point, Iglesias even said that Podemos was “neither right nor left.” The party abandoned its call for a universal basic income, replacing it with a plan for a minimum wage, no different than the Socialist Party’s program. And dropping the universal basic income demand alienated some of the anti-austerity forces that still make up the shock troops in ongoing fights over poverty and housing in cities like Madrid and Barcelona.

Podemos was also hurt by ���貹����’s undemocratic electoral geography, where rural votes count more than urban ones. It takes 125,000 votes to elect a representative in Madrid, 38,000 in some rural areas. The PP and the PSOE are strong in the countryside, while Podemos is strong in the cities.

Podemos had formed a pre-election alliance—“United We Can”—with ���貹����’s United Left (IU), an established party of left groups that includes the Communist Party, but made little effort to mobilize it. Indeed, Iglesias disparaged IU members as “sad, boring, and bitter” and “defeatists whose pessimism is infectious,” language that did not endear IU’s rank and file to Podemos. Figures show that Podemos did poorly in areas where the IU was strong.

The Galicia and Basque elections indicate that Podemos is still a national force. The party will likely pick up those PSOE members who cannot tolerate the idea that their party would allow the likes of Rajoy to form a government. Podemos will also need to shore up its alliance with the IU and curb its language about old leftists (which young leftists eventually tend to become).

The path for the Socialists is less certain. If the PSOE is not to become a footnote in ���貹����’s history, it will have to suppress its hostility to Podemos and recognize that two-party domination of the country is in the past. The Socialists will also have to swallow their resistance to a Catalan referendum, if for no other reason than it will be impossible to block it in the long run. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont recently announced an independence plebiscite would be held no later than September 2017 regardless of what Madrid wants.

The right in Spain may have a government, but not one supported by the majority of the country’s people. Nor will its programs address ���貹����’s unemployment rate—at 20% the second highest in Europe behind Greece—or the country’s crisis in health care, education and housing.

For the left, unity would seem to be the central goal, similar to Portugal, where the Portuguese Socialist Workers Party formed a united front with the Left Bloc and the Communist/Green Alliance. Although the united front has its divisions, the parties put them aside in the interests of rolling back some of the austerity policies that have made Portugal the home of Europe’s greatest level of economic inequality.

The importance of the European left finding common ground is underscored by the rising power of the extreme right in countries like France, Austria, Britain, Poland, Greece, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany. The economic and social crises generated by almost a decade of austerity and growing inequality require programmatic solutions that only the left has the imagination to construct.

One immediate initiative would be to join the call by Syriza and Podemos for a European debt conference modeled on the 1953 London Conference that canceled much of Germany’s wartime debt and ignited the German economy.

But the left needs to hurry lest xenophobia, racism, hate and repression, the four horsemen of the right’s apocalypse, engulf Europe.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On the surface, the and the June 26 Spanish elections don’t look comparable. After a nasty campaign filled with racism and Islamophobia, the British—or rather, the English and the Welsh—took a leap into darkness and voted to leave the European Union (EU). Spanish voters, on the other hand, rejected change and backed a center-right party that embodies the policies of the Brussels-based trade organization. But deep down the fault lines in both countries converge.

For the first time since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan rolled out a variety of neoliberal capitalism and globalization that captured much of the world in the 1980s, that model is under siege. The economic strategy of regressive taxes, widespread privatization and deregulation has generated enormous wealth for the few, but growing impoverishment for the many. The top 1% now owns more than 50% of the world’s wealth.

The British election may have focused on immigration and the fear of “the other”—Turks, Syrians, Greeks, Poles—but this xenophobia stems from the anger and despair of people who have been marginalized or left behind by the globalization of the labor force that has systematically hollowed out small communities and destroyed decent paying jobs and benefits.

“Great Britain’s citizens haven’t been losing control of their fate to the EU,” wrote����of the Campaign for America’s Future. “They’ve have been losing it because their own country’s leaders — as well as those of most Western democracies — are increasingly in thrall to corporate and financial interests.”

While most of the mainstream media reported the Spanish election as a “victory” for acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative People’s Party and defeat for the left, it was����than a major turn to the right. If Rajoy manages to cobble together a government, it is likely to be fragile and short lived.

The Shadow of Brexit

It was a dark couple of nights for pollsters in both countries. British polls predicted a narrow defeat for the Brexit, and Spanish polls projected a major breakthrough for ���貹����’s left—in particular Unidos Podemos (UP), a new alliance between Podemos and the Communist/Green United Left bloc.

The next few years will be filled with opportunity, as well as danger. Anti-austerity forces in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Ireland are organizing and beginning to coordinate resistance to the troika.

Instead, the Brexit passed easily and the UP lost 1 million votes from the last election, ending up with the same number of seats they had in the old parliament. In contrast, the People’s Party added 14 seats, although it fell well short of a majority.

A major reason for the Spanish outcome was the Brexit, which roiled markets all over the world but had a particularly����on Spain. The Ibex share index plunged more than 12% and blue-chip stocks took a pounding, losing about $70 billion. It was, according to ���貹����’s largest business newspaper, “the worst session ever.” Rajoy, as well as the center-left Socialist Party, flooded the media with scare talk about stability, and it partly worked.

The Popular Party poached eight of its 14 new seats from the center-right Ciudadanos Party and probably convinced some potential Podemos voters to shift to the mainstream socialists. But Rajoy’s����that “We won the election. We demand the right to govern” is a reach. His party has 137 seats, and it needs 176 seats to reach a majority in the 350-seat parliament.

The prime minister says he plans to join with Ciudadanos. But because the latter lost seats in the election, such an alliance would put Rajoy seven votes short. An offer for a “grand alliance” with the socialists doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either. “We are not going to support Rajoy’s investiture or abstain,” said Socialist Party spokesman��.

Which doesn’t mean Rajoy can’t form a government. There are some independent deputies from the Basque country and the Canary Islands who might put Rajoy over the top, but it would be the first coalition government in Spain—and a fragile one at that.

Austerity on the Horizon

Part of that fragility is a scandal over an��, head of the European Commission, which was leaked to the media. The commission is part of the “troika” with the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank that largely decides economic policy in the EU.

During the election, Rajoy promised to cut taxes and moderate the troika-imposed austerity measures that have driven ���貹����’s national unemployment rate to 22%, and a catastrophic 45% among young people. But in a confidential email to Juncker, the prime minister pledged: “In the second half of 2016, once there is a new government, we will be ready to take further measures to meet deficit goals.”

In short, Rajoy lied to the voters. If his party had won an absolute majority, that might not be a problem, but a coalition government is another matter. Would Ciudadanos and the independents be willing to associate themselves with such deceit and take the risk that the electorate would not punish them, given that such a government is not likely to last four years?

Unidos Podemos supporters were deeply disappointed in the outcome, although the UP took the bulk of the youth vote and��, ���貹����’s wealthiest province, and the Basque country. What impact UP’s poor showing will have on divisions within the alliance is not clear, but predictions of the organization’s demise are premature. “We represent the future,” party leader Pablo Iglesia said after the vote.

There is a possible path to power for the left, although it leads through the Socialist Party. The SP dropped from 90 seats to 85 for its worst showing in history, but if it joins with the UP it would control 156 seats. If such a coalition includes the Catalans, that would bring it to 173 seats, and the alliance could probably pick up some independents to make a majority. This is exactly what the left, agreeing to shelve their differences for the time being, did in Portugal after the last election.

The problem is that the SP refuses to break bread with the Catalans because separatists dominate the province’s delegation and the Socialist Party opposes letting Catalonia hold a referendum on independence. Podemos also opposes Catalan separatism, but it supports the right of the Catalans to vote on the issue.

Europe’s House Divided

Rajoy may construct a government, but it will be one that supports the dead-end austerity policies that have encumbered most of the EU’s members with low or flat growth rates, high unemployment and widening economic inequality. Support for the EU is at an��, even in the organization’s core members, France and Germany.

The crisis generated by the free market model is hardly restricted to Europe. In the United States, much of Donald Trump’s support comes from the same disaffected cohort that drove the Brexit. And while “The Donald” is down in the polls, so were the Brexit and the Spanish People’s Party.

The next few years will be filled with opportunity, as well as danger. Anti-austerity forces in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Ireland are organizing and beginning to coordinate resistance to the troika. But so too are parties on the far right: France’s National Front, Hungary’s Jobbik, Greece’s Golden Dawn, Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party, Austria’s Freedom Party, Denmark’s People’s Party and the Sweden Democrats.

Instead of reconsidering the policies that have spread so much misery through the continent, European elites were quick to blame “stupid” and “racist” voters for the Brexit. “We are witnessing the implosion of the postwar cultural and economic order that has dominated the Euro-American zone for more than six decades,” writes Andrew O’Helir of��. “Closing our eyes and hoping that it will go away is not likely to be successful.”

A majority of Britain said “enough,” and while the Spanish right scared voters into backing away from a major course change, those voters will soon discover that what is in store for them is yet more austerity.

“We need to end austerity to end this disaffection and this existential crisis of the European project,” said a����following the election. “We need to democratize decision making, guarantee social rights, and respect human rights.”

The European Union is now officially a house divided. It is not clear how long it can stand.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Spanish city of Valencia is famous for its wonderful lace and, of course, its oranges.

It is a beautiful city and has so many talented young people living there, but it also hides some sad secrets. Figures show that the , and this has had an impact on the increasing numbers of people being displaced, excluded. Without a home, without a job, without choices, without the chance to build a decent life—people whom poverty has left stranded on the street.

The delicate fabric of life has been torn asunder by the disaster of the financial crash of 2008. Even despite a strong family network and the recent election of a new progressive municipality, the solutions to the fallout from the challenge of austerity and unemployment have been limited and unrealistic, particularly in addressing the disaster of homelessness.

I was visiting Valencia with Building and Social Housing Foundation to work with the talented team at that runs one of the city’s few day centers. The center is located in the heart of the city and offers homeless people breakfast, a shower and the chance to wash their clothes—those normal everyday tasks we take for granted but which are yet another obstacle for homeless people to feeling included in society.

Trying Out New Ideas

I was in Valencia with Isobel and Kim from the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF), to see the launch of the “pilot of pilots”—an innovative campaign that BSHF are supporting using a model developed in the US by Community Solutions as part of the . This successful campaign took a very different approach to the problem of street homelessness by involving volunteers in meeting homeless people, respecting each person by getting to know them by name, doing rigorous but sensitive surveys that would provide the hard data on age, health status, years on the street but also focus a gentle and empathetic light on each individual person by hearing his or her story.

This process not only motivates and energizes the volunteers but provides such important tools for communicating the urgency of the issue to the wider community, the media and politicians at both local and national level. Over the four years of the campaign, the communities involved found housing for over 100,000 of the most vulnerable rough sleepers in the USA.

BSHF, that runs the , was so inspired by the 2013 winners—100,000 Homes Campaign—that they decided to see if it might work in European cities. Working with the (FEANTSA) to identify organizations and cities that might be open to trying out new ideas.

They knew this was an important opportunity to change the lives of homeless people in Valencia and, as Begoña, the inspirational director of the region for RAIS described: “This was a moment to break out of the status quo.” Her passion for change and her frustration shone through in equal measure.

Excluded at Every Turn

Valencia, Spain © Shutterstock

RAIS Fundación are experienced and determined—every day they see homeless people in their day center and on the street. They hear the sad stories of people turned away from the night shelters because they have mental health problems or difficulties with addiction—the very issues that are often a response to their harsh lives on the street.

We met a man—I will call him Josef—who had travelled to Valencia to pick oranges, who never got paid and became trapped, unable to return to his native Romania. For eleven years he has slept on a park bench. Is it any wonder that he turns to alcohol for comfort and solace? So alone, so little hope for the future, so worried about his need for health care, excluded at every turn by the harsh barriers to help.

It was so moving to see Guadalupe, so young, so energetic, who led our band of volunteers around the dark and frightening corners of the parks and shuttered places around the bus station where homelessness people seek refuge after night has fallen.

Despite a full day at work, her energy and compassion were boundless, her bright pink spectacles and her face shone in the dark. We had to walk very fast to keep up, but she was determined. She knows this area well and comes every Tuesday after work to offer support to those whose only home is the street. She is a volunteer with , who had partnered with RAIS to mobilize over 280 people to volunteer, to go out on the street for three nights to survey and count every homeless person they could find in Valencia.

It was wonderful to see people gathering on the first night, squashed into the RAIS day center, spilling out into the street, so diligent, so determined, so organized. It was remarkable—controlled but not controlling, well thought out but somehow relaxed and friendly at the same time.

Each group of volunteers had an experienced leader, who already understood the realities of the homeless. We also had the insight and knowledge of people who had been or were homeless themselves. They could guide us all and give confidence to their compatriots on the street that all of us, in our high visibility jackets, were on their side and that they could choose to participate or not. As Guadalupe said so clearly to Josef, “You are in charge.”

I was lucky enough to spend two nights working with Migue, a very dedicated professional who works for RAIS, and the quiet knowledgeable and charming Carlos, an older man (well not so old–younger than me) who had worked for 40 years for the same firm but, when they went bankrupt, his life fell apart. No money for rent, at 62 too young to collect his pension, he showed me the bench by a church in the center of Valencia that became his home. He explained it was safer than other places, a streetlight above the bench, water from a fountain nearby to wash. Carlos was immaculately turned out and told me how important and how hard it had been to keep himself clean and tidy when he was sleeping on the street.

© Shutterstock

Carlos had now found a room in a flat and was doing better. He was on our team to help others, still facing the trauma and challenges of having to live your life on the street, how heavy that toll is.

Both he and Migue were such sensitive guides, so patient, so respectful. We met a couple living in a cardboard box—she was pregnant—having already had four children taken into care because they have no home. No privacy, no utilities—just a garden torch for light; no kitchen—just the plastic knives and forks carefully tucked into the top of the box; no running water—just a plastic bottle or two; no door to shut against the world—just a bit of cloth across the cardboard. They had dignity, but their situation denies it every day and every night and RAIS, their partners, the volunteers and BSHF are determined to change this.

So Many Miles

By the end of the three days, so many miles walked, so many important conversations, so many hours spent by the staff and dedicated volunteers, so much data entered far into the night by volunteers, with the expert help of Paul from Community Solutions, whose experience of thousands of surveys of homeless people is mixed with his knowledge of how to combine sensitivity and rigorous evidence. We all knew we had the evidence, the human stories and the data to show that the beautiful city of Valencia has an ugly problem—that the safety net is torn, and that the official figures do not tell the true story nor describe the scale of the problem.

That marathon street count—taken over three long and tiring nights—had shown that over 400 people were homeless and on the street and this was so much higher than the official figures from the by the city council (approximately 79 people in 2015). The reality shows a shocking figure. But it was not shocking to Begoña and her passionate and determined team at RAIS who see so many people with so many difficult stories every day. They already knew that this is a city-wide emergency and that urgent and effective measures must be put in place to get people from the streets into homes as soon as possible. Leaving them on the street is not an option.

We know each day on the street robs years from people’s lives. Everyone must work together to find immediate and effective solutions to rebuild the social fabric of this city, which has so much to be proud of, but can no longer hide this sad, dark and hidden story—of the failure to weave people who are on the street, ignored and excluded, back into a good life in lovely Valencia with its orange trees, its beautiful lace and its proud history of progress and cooperation.

The good news is that the mayor of Valencia and the regional government have already met with RAIS and have announced a Housing First pilot in the city. The log jam is moving and the journey has begun—to end street homelessness in Valencia.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Over the past year, left and center-left parties have taken control of two European countries and hold the balance of power in a third. Elections in , Portugal and Spain saw right-wing parties take a beating and tens of millions of voters reject the economic austerity policies of the European Union (EU).

But what can these left parties accomplish? Can they really roll back regressive taxes and restore funding for education, and social services? Can they bypass austerity programs to jumpstart economies weighted down by staggering jobless numbers? Or are they trapped in a game with loaded dice and marked cards? And, for that matter, who is the left?

Center vs Left

Socialist and social democratic parties in France and Germany haven’t lifted a finger to support left-led anti-austerity campaigns in Greece, Spain, Ireland or Portugal, and many of them helped institute—or went along with—neoliberal policies they now say they oppose. Established socialist parties all over Europe tend to campaign from the left, but govern from the center.

Last year’s electoral earthquakes were triggered not by the traditional socialist parties—those parties did poorly in Greece, Spain and Portugal—but by activist left parties, like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the Left Bloc in Portugal.

With the exception of Ireland’s Sinn Fein, all of these parties were either birthed by, or became prominent during, the financial meltdown of 2008 that plunged Europe into economic crisis. Podemos came directly out of the massive plaza demonstrations by the��Indignados (the “Indignant Ones”) in ���貹����’s major cities in 2011.

Syriza and the Left Bloc predated the 2011 uprising, but they were politically marginal until the EU instituted a draconian austerity program that generated massive unemployment, homelessness, poverty and economic inequality.

Resistance to the austerity policies of the “troika”—the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the —vaulted these left parties from the periphery to the center. Syriza became the largest party in Greece and assumed power in 2015. Podemos was the only left party that gained votes in the recent Spanish election, and it holds the balance of power in the formation of a new government. And Portugal’s Left Bloc, along with the Communist-Green Alliance, has formed a coalition government with the country’s Socialist Workers Party.

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But with success has come headaches. Syriza won the Greek elections on a platform of resisting the troika’s austerity policies, only to have to����of them. In Portugal, the Left Bloc and the Communist-Green Alliance are unhappy with the Socialist Party’s commitment to repay Portugal’s quite unpayable debt. ���貹����’s Podemos����a united front with the Socialist Party, only to find there are some in that organization who would rather bed down with ���貹����’s right-wing Popular Party than break bread with Podemos.

Big vs Small

Lessons learned? It is still too early to draw any firm conclusions about what the 2015 earthquake accomplished, but there are some obvious lessons.

First, austerity is unpopular. As Italy’s prime minister,��, put it after the Spanish election: “Governments which apply rigid austerity measures are destined to lose their majorities.”

Second, if you’re a small economy, taking the power of capital head on is likely to get you trampled. The troika didn’t just force Syriza to institute more austerity: It made the austerity more onerous—a not very subtle message to voters in Portugal and Spain. But people in both countries didn’t buy it, in large part because after four years of misery, their economies are still not back to where they were in 2008.

The troika can crush Greece—Portugal as well—but Spain is another matter. It’s the 14^th largest economy in the world and the fifth largest in the EU. And now��, the fourth largest economy in the union, is growing increasingly restive with the tight budget policies of the EU that have kept the jobless rate high.

But can these anti-austerity coalitions force the troika to back off?

A major part of the problem is the EU itself, and in particular the eurozone—the 19 countries that use the euro as a common currency. The euro is controlled by the European Central Bank, which in practice means Germany. In an economic crisis, most countries manipulate their currencies—the United States, the and China come to mind—as part of a strategy to pay down debt and restart their economies. The members of the eurozone don’t have that power.

Germany pursues policies that favor its industrial, export-driven economy, but that model is nothing like the economies of Greece, Portugal, Spain or even Italy. Nor are any of those countries likely to reproduce the German model, because they don’t have the resources (or history) to do so.

Inside vs Outside

Complicating matters are political divisions among the troika’s left opponents. For instance, Syriza is under attack from its left flank for not exiting the eurozone. Former Syriza Chief Economic Advisor����charges that the party has abandoned its activist roots and become just another political party more interested in power than principles. There are similar tensions in Spain and Portugal.

Over the past year, left and center-left parties have taken control of two European countries and hold the balance of power in a third. Elections in Greece, Portugal and Spain saw right-wing parties take a beating and tens of millions of voters reject the economic austerity policies of the European Union.

But what to do next isn’t so obvious. Withdrawing from the eurozone can be perilous. In Greece’s case, the European Central Bank threatened to shut off the country’s money supply, making it almost impossible for Athens to pay for food, medical and energy imports, or finance its own exports. In short, it threatened Greece with economic collapse and possible social chaos.

But following the policies of the troika sentences countries to permanent debt, rising poverty rates and a growing wealth gap. Portugal has one of the highest inequality rates in Europe, and ���貹����’s national unemployment rate is 21%—and double that among the young. Greece’s figures are far higher.

The left coalitions are far from powerless, however. Portugal’s coalition government just introduced a����that will lift the minimum wage, reverse public sector wage cuts, roll back many tax increases,����of education and transportation, and put more money into schools and medical care.

But this doesn’t mean everything is smooth sailing. The coalition has already fallen out over a bank bailout and it disagrees on the debt. But so far the parties are still working together. Jeremy Corbyn, the newly elected left leader of the British Labour Party, hails the Portugal alliance as the beginning of an “anti-austerity coalition” across the continent.

Bridging the Divides

Interesting developments in Spain address the tensions between street activism and political parties.��, a long-time housing expert from Boston and an analyst for NACLA, has studied Barcelona’s “Platform of People Affected by Mortgages,” or PAH.

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PAH came out of ���貹����’s catastrophic housing crisis brought on by the financial meltdown of 2008. Some 650,000 homes are in foreclosure, and 400,000 families have been evicted. Worse still, Spanish homeowners are responsible for debts even after declaring bankruptcy—debts that can block them from renting an apartment, buying a home or purchasing a car.

At the same time, according to the 2013 census, 34 million homes and apartments—14% of the country’s housing stock—are vacant, most of them owned by banks. And since Barcelona has become one of Europe’s tourist magnets, “tens of thousands of once-affordable apartments are marketed to tourists through on-line platforms like Airbnb,” says Achtenberg, exacerbating the situation.

With the help of Podemos, progressive activists linked to CAH and other groups won control of the����in 2015. Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, is a founder of PAH. She and her allies on the city council have slowed down the evictions, cracked down on unlicensed Airbnb owners, and leaned on the banks to free up vacant homes and apartments.

PAH now has some 200 chapters all over the country and is planning to press the national parliament to end ���貹����’s “debt for life” law, which traps bankrupt people with crushing debt from their homes. While allied with Podemos, PAH has maintained its political independence, working both sides of the street: sit-ins and protests, and running for office.

“A perennial question,” says Achtenberg, “is whether the impetus for progressive change comes from inside the institution, or from the streets. In Barcelona today, it seems that both strategies are needed, and are working.” As Colau says, for progressive movements, “both are indispensible. For real democracy to exist, there should always be an organized citizenry keeping an eye on government—no matter who is in charge.”

Between Change and Co-optation

Putting people in apartments and raising minimum wages doesn’t overthrow capitalism, but many activists argue that such victories are essential for convincing people that change is possible and that the troika isn’t all-powerful. They also play to the left’s strong suit: building a humanistic society.

Finding that fine line between change and cooptation isn’t easy, and one formula doesn’t fit all circumstances. Spain has more breathing room than Portugal and Greece simply because it’s bigger. Yet the Portuguese may find their path a bit easier simply because they have allies in the eurozone. As Greek Prime Minister����says: “I think it is not so easy to change Europe when you are alone.”

In the end, the path may be like that old peace song: “If two and two and 50 make a million, we’ll see that day come ‘round.”

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:�� / ��

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In 2005, the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Spain approved gay marriage. The big question was whether the approval was going to be the small landslide that would cause the avalanche in Latin America, the stronghold of the Catholic Church. December 2009 saw Mexico City become the first city in Latin America to approve gay marriage; although, this approval does not apply for all states in the country. The leading step taken by Mexico City motivated gay activists across the continent in the quest for their right to marry.

Argentina, in July 2010, became the first country in Latin America to recognize gay marriage. Other countries at the time, including Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia, had presented law proposals to their senates. In April 2013, Uruguay approved a law recognizing gay marriage with a vast majority of 71 out of the 92 members of parliament approving the measure. Four federal states of Brazil have also recognized the right to gay marriage.

This year started with the approval of gay marriage in France, New Zealand and Uruguay. Colombia was in line to approve gay marriage, and for the last week of April 2013, the political and religious struggle shook the country to its core.

The Gay Population in Colombia

According to several NGO estimates, nearly 8% of Colombia's population is gay, despite a strong Christian majority in the country.

Homosexuality was recognized as a crime in Colombia until 1936. Since then, the country has taken significant strides toward the recognition of gay rights. These steps include recognition since 2007 by the Constitutional Court, the right to inherit assets, and the right to receive life insurance and retirement money. 

In Colombia, gay couples can currently register their union. Although, they cannot adopt as a couple, nor can their union be considered a formal marriage. Gay Colombians cannot be discriminated against, cannot be fired from their job for their sexuality, and have the right to keep the custody of their children, among other recognized rights of the civil code.

Arguments in Favor

With the support of the Constitutional Court, the gay marriage movement has appealed to the constitutional principles of pluralism (Article 1), diversity (Article 7), and the measures to promote equality (Article 13). The court has been positively affirmed in their recognition of gay families in society, and has valued that nucleus on the same level as heterosexual families.

According to many experts, not recognizing gay marriage goes against human rights, which universally recognizes the right to have a family, regardless of the family’s sexual orientation.

Denying civil rights to a specific part of the population resembles the struggle against anti-Semitism and the call for equal rights by the African American population. A campaign against a new version of “apartheid” has been started among gay activists to counter the declarations of the Colombian Catholic Church and Senator Gerlein, who referred to gay sex as excremental. Both the church and Senator Gerlein started a campaign to keep the concept of family as heterosexual-only and the values it represents. This argument was also the basis against divorce, which was approved in Colombia and ratified in the 1991 constitution, even if the church proscribed it as adultery.

However, over 20 years later, the concept of family in Colombia has kept its values, and there has been no social chaos or collapse of the traditions of Colombian society.

Is the Struggle Over?

After 51 votes against 17 in favor, the project was temporally dismissed. However, the Constitutional Court established in the C57 sentence of 2011, that if by July 20, 2013, there was no legal recognition by Congress, gay couples would be able to register their union through a contract in any judge’s office. 

Being able to sign a contract starting July 20, does not mean the “union statement” is recognized as equal to the heterosexual marriage. For several gay activists, having a separate contract for their union is just as discriminating. This measure is a huge step back in a country that was a leader in promoting equality for their gay population. This legal defeat just means that a process that has taken years to progress will have to be restarted and could last many more years.

Gay activists have sounded a call to flood all legal offices with marriage requests starting July 20. The political defeat must not make us forget that the legal trend is still open, thanks to the Constitutional Court.

Despite this setback, the call for gay rights is still on its way and the struggle continues in other countries like Peru and Venezuela. Hopefully, the avalanche will soon make its effect in Colombia and its medieval segregationist mentality.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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