The shit in Spain falls mainly in the fan

[The Larch]

The "don't flout the law again or you're back in the slammer" clause is apparently rather common, so I guess that will go in.

I suspect they won't get pardoned for the non-jail penalties of their sentences, too (so they'll still be barred from holding office).

Yeah, being barred from office is more of an administrative penalty, I doubt those can be pardoned away. Won't prevent all these people from taking part in political stuff, though.

[celedhring]

This Guardian articule sums up the current state of events rather well.

I think the analyst they interview at the end misses a significant wrinkle though. Catalan government is a coalition government between ERC (which is indeed trying to appear more moderate) and the radicals of JxCAT and CUP, and that the coalition agreement has a clause forcing a motion of no confidence in 2023. That will make the Catalan government fall unless it commits to some form of unilateral action, exactly in the same year of the next Spanish election.

Anyway, I will enjoy a couple years of relative calm.

Spain's right unites in fury as PM considers Catalan pardons
Rightwing parties condemn prime minister's call to work for 'co-existence' with separatists

Sam Jones in Madrid
Sat 12 Jun 2021 05.00 BST

On Sunday thousands of people, among them the leaders of the three parties on Spain's right, will once again gather in the Madrid square that boasts the world's largest Spanish flag to protest against the Socialist-led government's handling of the Catalan independence crisis.

In February 2019, in a deeply controversial moment immortalised in photographs of the occasion, the conservative People's party (PP), the centre-right Citizens party and the far-right Vox party joined forces in the Plaza de Colón to accuse the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, of betraying Spain, and to call for an early election.

This time, their common fury is directed at Sánchez's decision to consider pardoning the 12 Catalan independence leaders convicted two years ago for their parts in the illegal, failed attempt to secede from the rest of Spain in October 2017.

The question of pardoning the Catalan leaders remains deeply divisive in Spain, a fact not lost on opposition parties and many people in Sánchez's Spanish Socialist Workers party (PSOE). A recent poll for El Mundo found that 61% of those surveyed did not agree with pardoning them, while 29.5% backed it.

Although the government will have the final say, Spain's supreme court issued a non-binding report opposing the pardons last month, saying the sentences handed out were appropriate and noting those convicted had not shown "the slightest evidence or faintest hint of contrition".

Sánchez, however, insists the pardons could be the best way to cool enduring tensions and move towards a political solution to the territorial impasse. "I do understand that there will be people who have objections to the decision the government might make – especially after the events of 2017," the prime minister said on Wednesday. "But I ask them to put their trust in us because we need to work on coexistence ... Spanish society needs to move from a bad past to a better future – and that will require magnanimity."

The prime minister's desire to push ahead with the idea has been seized on by his opponents, including Pablo Casado. The PP leader, buoyed up by his party's new lead over the PSOE in the polls, has decided the pardons question is worth the possible risks of once again appearing to throw his lot in with the far right by heading to the Plaza de Colón on Sunday. Unsurprisingly, he rejects any such suggestion and points to his unambiguous repudiation of Vox last October, when he attacked their politics of "fear, anger, resentment and revenge".

This time Casado will be taking care not to cosy up to the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal, and says attending the rally is a simple democratic duty. He also says the event is about showing the lengths to which the PSOE – which heads a minority government – will go to ensure the continued support in Congress of the pro-independence Republican Left of Catalonia party (ERC).

"I think it's very unfair to try to convince public opinion that gathering peacefully in a square to protest against those who have broken the law is something negative," he said on Monday. "If a state in Germany sought independence and a government needed its votes to stay in power – and failed to do what it had sworn to do, which was to defend the German constitution – and if people came out to defend the constitution, I very much doubt those people would be demonised."

Even so, some regional PP presidents on the more moderate wing of the party have said they will not be attending the rally, citing previous commitments.

Casado likes to describe the PP today as a "reformist, liberal, pro-Europe, globalist, centre-right party" with broad appeal, but its current return to the centre comes only after a fruitless lurch to the right in an attempt to woo Vox voters.

The party's efforts to capitalise on the proposed Catalan pardons have also been complicated by the reappearance of the kind of historical corruption allegations that did for the government of Casado's predecessor, Mariano Rajoy and, perhaps more significantly, by a well-timed change of heart from the ERC.

In an article on Monday, the ERC's jailed leader, Oriol Junqueras, admitted the independence movement had made mistakes, showed enthusiasm for the pardons, and said the time of unilateral actions had come to an end.

The article, which did not go down well with the hardline separatists in Together for Catalonia, the party of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, struck a decidedly conciliatory note as Sánchez prepared to meet the new regional president, Pere Aragonès, for talks later this month.

Aragonès, a member of the ERC, has also indicated a willingness to negotiate over the future of the region, saying: "It won't be easy – it will be extraordinarily difficult – but it's our duty to the people of Catalonia."

José Pablo Ferrándiz, a social sciences lecturer at Madrid Carlos III university, said Casado was taking a gamble by going to the Plaza de Colón. He said that Citizens, which is in freefall across Spain and in danger of disappearing altogether, had little choice but to show up – as did Vox, which used the Catalan crisis to break into the political mainstream.

Ferrándiz said Casado did not currently command a huge amount of support among all rightwing voters, not even among those backing the PP. "That's why I think this Colón strategy is mistaken: he's not going to convince his own voters, and nor is he going to convince those from other parties that are close to it in ideological terms," he said. "I don't think it's a very profitable move from an electoral point of view and I think he's doing it because of what he's seen in the polls."

Ferrándiz said much of what happens in the next few months would depend, as ever, on the economy – in particular on how Spain used its €140bn Covid recovery fund from the EU. "If people see that the funds are being managed well and are making their way into their pockets and helping to reduce inequalities and create jobs, the pardons will shrink into being just a story that happened in the summer of 2021," he said.

"But if the economy goes bad, the recovery is mismanaged and people feel they're grappling with another crisis like in 2008, then the pardon issue will be another thorn in the PSOE's side at the next election."

[The Larch]

The Qanon shaman has competition from our nutty righters, as seen today during their protest.

[Tamas]

south is left, north is right

Sounds like that one WW1 game.

Yeah the one Tamas was so effusive about.

When you explain a joke...

It made sense! 

[Duque de Bragança]

The Qanon shaman has competition from our nutty righters, as seen today during their protest.

Vaqueros (Cow-boys/jeans for the non-hispanophones) make sense with a bull's head. 

[celedhring]

We need to get this fella his own Marvel show.

[celedhring]

The pardons are coming out today. According to the leaks they'll get their jail sentences rescinded but will still be barred from holding office. The pardons will also be rescinded if they commit the same offence (which their parties are threatening to if talks with the Spanish gov collapse, although a lot of that talk is just political theater for their radicals).

[Sheilbh]

Pablo Pérez
@PabloPerezA
Spain in 2001: "you have 20 years to exchange your pesetas and get euros"

Spanish people in January 2021: "we still have time"

Spanish people the day of the deadline

Juan Carlos Amón
@amoncope
Esto es lo que pasa cuando solo te dan veinte años para cambiar las pesetas por euros.

[Josquius]

Oh Spain.

Surprised there's a deadline tbh. Pretty sure in the UK its the case that you can take even a vintage 17th century note to the BoE and get its face value back (though you'd obviously get more selling it)

[celedhring]

My mother inherited from my grandma a shitload of essentially worthless (we checked it) Republican Spain banknotes.

[Duque de Bragança]

My mother inherited from my grandma a shitload of essentially worthless (we checked it) Republican Spain banknotes.

Reminds me of the worthless Ostmark scene in Goodbye Lenin. 

[celedhring]

After months of negotiations between coalition members, the Spanish government has finally submitted its trans rights law. Finally the proponents of more expansive rights (essentially Podemos and some sectors within PSOE) have won the debate. Nonetheless, the law is  going to be controversial (FWIW, my "go to" friend when I want to take the pulse on women's/gay issues is adamantly against it).

MADRID, June 29 (Reuters) - The Spanish government on Tuesday approved the draft of a bill to allow anyone over the age of 14 to change gender legally without a medical diagnosis or hormone therapy, the Equality Ministry said.

The draft bill, which will go to a public hearing before another reading in the cabinet and a vote in the lower house of parliament, removes the requirement for two years of hormone therapy and a psychological assessment to switch gender in official records.

"This is an historic day after more than 15 years without any legislative progress," Equality Minister Irene Montero told a news conference.

"We send a strong message for the protection of LGBTI people," she said, referring to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community.

The "self-ID" draft bill sets age limits, with 14- to 16-year-olds needing parental approval, after parliament's rejection in May of a proposal from a group of political parties to give children total freedom to legal gender recognition.

Activists and families of transgender children say the draft bill does not go far enough, while some feminist associations oppose it.

It puts Spain at the centre of Europe's debate about the rights of LGBT people. European Union leaders last week confronted Hungary's prime minister over its new anti-LGBT law. read more

With the draft bill, which also bans LGBT conversion therapies, Spain is set to join two dozen countries aiming to decouple gender choice from medical procedures and would become the largest European country to introduce self-identification.

If approved, trans people will be able to declare their gender by filling in a form at a registry office and then confirming the decision three months later.

The draft bill is part of a political agreement signed between Spain's Socialist Party (PSOE) and its left-wing junior coalition partner Unidas Podemos. The deal has taken months of negotiations due to the conflicting positions of the two governing parties.


Saida Garcia of the Euforia non-governmental organisation, which supports transgender children, said the bill failed to accommodate people aged 12 and 13, who require court approval for the process, and younger children who are excluded.

"It's not true self-determination if there are age limits," she said, adding there was also no provision for non-binary people, who do not identify as male or female, or non-Spanish residents.

Aida Chacon Martinez, the mother of a non-binary teenager, said: "Waiting until you're 14 to be recognised for who you are is very hard."

A collective of about 50 feminist groups said it opposed the bill. "These legal reforms are regressive and it is essential to stop them in order not to lose the protection of the specific rights against gender-based oppression," said the Confluencia Feminista federation in a statement.

Reporting by Belén Carreño and Inti Landauro, editing by Robin Emmott

[Josquius]

In a way sounds reasonable to me. Clear requirements and waiting times. Heads off the nutters usual whails that self identification means anyone can declare themselves a woman and the next minute go into the ladies changing room.
But you just know bad faith actors will be a thing in this. I would say a bit more is needed. But really hard to define quite what.

[celedhring]

In a way sounds reasonable to me. Clear requirements and waiting times. Heads off the nutters usual whails that self identification means anyone can declare themselves a woman and the next minute go into the ladies changing room.
But you just know bad faith actors will be a thing in this. I would say a bit more is needed. But really hard to define quite what.

A prior draft had psych eval requirements, but they were removed after a *lively debate* (read: quarrel) within the coalition.

It's a bit of a quandary. Out of principle I'm a believer in "let people be what they want to be", but you have to draft these things carefully to avoid bad actors. It goes further than "let's sneak in bathrooms", we have a significant legal corpus of positive discrimination towards women which can now be co-opted just by signing some papers.

Honestly, since there's little experience around the world in legislating this, we'll just have to carefully monitor how the law is used (once is enacted) and see the consequences and make the necessary adjustments down the line.

[The Larch]

Back in the day, when same sex marriage was made legal, similar bewildering claims of "dudes will get married to each other for tax reasons" were made, and never materialized, so I think we can take it easy with the argument that "dudes will claim to be women to get unfair advantages" that this law will create.

(FWIW, my "go to" friend when I want to take the pulse on women's/gay issues is adamantly against it).

TERF alert?