The shit in Spain falls mainly in the fan

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, this is hardly new or exclusive to Spain. And we do have a problem with prostitution: it has grown rampant, it's a hotspot of organized crime, and many women are coerced into it.

That said, I don't expect anything to be done with it in the short term. Actually this pledge has got very little attention in the Spanish press.

Yeah - I don't know what view I have on prostitution but I think the issue with legalisation in Spain and I believe Germany too is that I think demand has been far higher than people willing to do that type work without coercion.

[celedhring]

Today the Catalan branch of Podemos has answered that they want to protect the right of women to be sex workers if chosen freely, so there isn't even a consensus in the Spanish left for going full ban. It won't happen.

The current legal limbo - it's not criminal, but it's not regulated - feels to me like the worst of both worlds though.

[celedhring]

Also, first time in many months that this thread gets traction and it's when we talk about prossies. 

[HVC]

Also, first time in many months that this thread gets traction and it's when we talk about prossies. 

Sex sells!

[Josquius]

The last big activity I recall was the hot nazi.
So yes.

[celedhring]

The last big activity I recall was the hot nazi.
So yes.

I just landed on a random piece of news about her. Apparently she's now spending time in Germany in a "scholarship" offered by Der III Weg.

I guess you gotta learn from the OGs.

[The Larch]

So it turns out that last Saturday Pablo Casado, PP's extremely beleaguered (and not exactly competence-exuding) leader attended "by mistake" a mass honouring Franco. 

(November 20th is the anniversary of Franco's death and one of the most symbolic days for the Spanish nostalgic far right, with masses and celebrations honouring Franco and other "luminaries" of Francoism in many places around Spain).

[Sheilbh]

So it turns out that last Saturday Pablo Casado, PP's extremely beleaguered (and not exactly competence-exuding) leader attended "by mistake" a mass honouring Franco. 

I hope the Spanish internet is doing the Withnail and I "we've gone to a mass honouring a fascist dictator by mistake"

Reminds me of Corbyn who was at a wreath laying ceremony at the graves of some of the Black September leadership - his defence was he "attended, but did not participate" in the ceremony

[The Brain]

When will mass honorings stop?

[The Larch]

So it turns out that last Saturday Pablo Casado, PP's extremely beleaguered (and not exactly competence-exuding) leader attended "by mistake" a mass honouring Franco. 

I hope the Spanish internet is doing the Withnail and I "we've gone to a mass honouring a fascist dictator by mistake"

Reminds me of Corbyn who was at a wreath laying ceremony at the graves of some of the Black September leadership - his defence was he "attended, but did not participate" in the ceremony

It has had surprisingly little traction in the media so far, no major outlet that I know has picked it up, but of course it was all over Twitter and was covered by a fact checking site that corroborated it. To add insult to injury, the Francisco Franco Foundation (yes, it exists) today published a media note denying having invited him to the mass, but thanking him for having attended. 

My guess is that it will pile up in the growing list of anecdotes to support that he's simply speaking not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Edit: So, yesterday the fact itself attracted little media attention but today the reactions are getting coverage:

Spanish rightwing party leader under fire for attending Franco mass
Leader of People's party Pablo Casado's appearance at service for dictator called a 'coincidence'

pain's rightwing People's party (PP) has been compelled to reiterate its condemnation of the Franco regime after the party's leader was criticised for inadvertently attending a mass at which prayers were said for the soul of the dictator on the 46th anniversary of his death.

Pablo Casado, who has led the PP since July 2018, was seen attending the mass in a church next to Granada cathedral on Saturday evening. According to the PP, Casado – who was in Andalucía for a party conference – took his family to mass there because it was near his hotel and because he thought work commitments would stop him making it to church the following day.

"At no point was [Casado] aware that prayers would be said for the dictator," the PP said in a statement on Monday. "In fact, there was no express mention of 'Franco' in the homily."

The party said its leader had only become aware that prayers had been offered for the dictator using Franco's first name, Francisco, the day after he had gone to the mass.

"He never knew that they were going to pray for Franco," the statement said, adding: "The People's party has always condemned the Franco dictatorship."

The statement came after Casado's political opponents had demanded to know exactly what had happened.

A spokesperson for the Spanish Socialist Workers' party (PSOE), which leads Spain's coalition government, described Casado's presence at the mass "a totally irresponsible insult" and called on the PP leader to explain himself.

Pablo Echenique, a spokesperson for Unidas Podemos, the PSOE's junior coalition partners, also said an explanation needed to be forthcoming.

"Last Saturday there were 10 masses for Franco and there are about 23,000 churches," Echenique said in a tweet. "The probability of randomly stumbling into one is 0.05% – yet, according to sources from his own PP, Pablo Casado managed it."

Íñigo Errejón, the leader of the Más País party, said that while Casado may have attended the mass unknowingly he still needed to address the matter. "If this had happened in another country – if Angela Merkel was travelling through Germany, found herself in Munich and went into a church where people were paying homage to Adolf Hitler – then I'm sure she would have come out the following day and said: 'I was wrong. I didn't want to be there and I'm sorry of I've offended the democrats of my country'."

But not everyone was outraged. The Francisco Franco National Foundation – which exists to preserve and promote the dictator's legacy – said that while it had not "expressly" invited Casado to the mass, it was pleased he had been there.

"We thank Mr Casado and his family, and the rest of those who attended the mass, for the prayer for the soul of an exemplary Christian such as Francisco Franco Bahamonde."

The incident comes as the PP continues to lead in the polls despite internal rifts and tensions over the party's ideological direction, and a few days after the government tabled amendments to draft legislation that would in effect allow prosecutors to investigate crimes committed under the 1939-75 Franco regime on the basis that crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and torture have no statute of limitations under international humanitarian law.

[The Larch]

Today, besides discussing Eurovision, the main topic in Spain is our own mini/local version of the assault on the capital, after pig farmers in the Murcian city of Lorca assaulted the local city hall ahead of a vote on new regulations that would restrict the opening of new farms.

Not many links in English, this one seems to be clumsily/Google translated but at laest it's something.

Lorca farmers assault the City Council and force to suspend a plenary session on the pig macro-farms

The Lorca City Council had convened a plenary session on Monday to vote on a motion on the new urban planning for pig farms and macro-farms, and that it was to be approved with the votes of the PSOE, Cs and IU. Minutes before the plenary session, at ten o'clock in the morning, farmers from the municipality have gathered at the gates of the Consistory to protest the measures contained in the motion and that establish the distance of these pig facilities with respect to the urban area and spaces natural, and some of them – up to thirty – have jumped the police cordon, sneaking into the City Hall and leading moments of high tension, as this newspaper has learned from eyewitnesses.

"They have had to escort us to be able to leave the room," says Pepe García, from Stop Cebaderos near houses in Lorca, who had attended this morning (on Monday) as a public to the plenary together with representatives of other organizations that fight to move pig facilities away from the urban core. "The actions of the ranchers have been disproportionate, and are motivated by false information from the PP, Vox and people with particular interests, who have sent a message that some points of the motion had been modified, but it had already been debated last year. past and today we only voted".

The motion contemplates that the new pig farms, whatever the classification group to which they belong, cannot be installed less than 1,500 meters from the urban land of the nucleus of Lorca, the nuclei of districts, schools, health centers and medical consultants; nor less than 500 meters from springs or cataloged natural sources or less than 100 meters from boulevards or riverbeds listed in the Inventory of Riverbeds of the Region of Murcia, among other measures.

"For years now, the focus has been on the legality of these facilities, the concessions of permits, the use they make of water, it's all hand in hand and the livestock sector doesn't want them to get involved," complains Pepe García, who He adds "that we have already gone many times with all these dossiers to the Prosecutor's Office, but the powers that be are what they are".

The Association of Livestock Entrepreneurs of Lorca (Acega) had organized a demonstration this Monday that planned to go through Juan Carlos I de Lorca Avenue to the Local Development Center, and they planned to move with their vehicles through some roads of the municipality to end up walking the last section, in a march that had the support of the Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives of the Region of Murcia (Fecoam), PP and Vox.

The farmers criticize that the City Council is not going to comply with the agreement reached in July 2020, tightening the measures approved at that time, which already limited the granting of licenses and established minimum distances between pig facilities and urban centers.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKQDUBjThfY

No QAnon shaman here, but apparently there was a Travis Bickle cosplayer. 


For context, industrial animal farming is a really hot button political issue in Spain lately, as in the last few years massive (mostly pig) farms have popped up all over Spain, most often in our almost desolated countryside (Lorca is actually the 2nd municipality in Spain by number of pigs, apparently), to the point of those macro farms have become problematic for the local environment, and have recently been also questioned about the quality of the meat produced in them as well as other related topics like animal welfare and the like.

We recently had a bit of a controversy when the minister for Consumer Affairs (Alberto Garzón, from the Podemos - United Left side of the coalition) called for Spanish people to change their diets and eat "less meat, but better meat", or something like that in a fairly inocuous interview to The Guardian (you can read it here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/26/spanish-should-eat-less-meat-to-limit-climate-crisis-says-minister), due to, in part, the impact of these industrial mega farms in the environment and their role on climate change. When this interview was reported in Spain, what Garzón said got twisted and PP turned it into a "the government is against the countryside and its farmers" spearhead, and called for Garzón to be removed from the government, which didn't happen, although PSOE didn't really defend Garzón very much. It could even be said that the whole thing kinda backfired, as now this model of industrial animal farming is being openly debated, with many calls to further regulate it, when it was a topic that had been basically ignored for years.

The controversy, rather than eventually dying down as it should, has been kept alive by PP, as we're at the moment in the campaign for regional elections in Castilla León (a very rural region of the coutnry, in which agriculture still has an important role in the regional economy, and this "defence of our farmers' honour" has become one of their leitmotivs, to the point that it has almost become a joke to see Casado constantly visiting ranchers, farmers, food factories and the like. I was not aware of Murcia being another hotbed for this kind of farming but I'm not really surprised, as it's a region that is also heavily agricultural and whose economy depends a lot on food production, so the model repeats itself, in this case with the local mayor (PSOE) trying to regulate the industry (quite timidly, as it's not as if a local government has many powers about it, it was mostly about keeping farms far away from housing and water sources) and the local farmers, supported by PP and VOX (some of their local politicians were in the group that was protesting, although AFAIK they were not involved in the assault), bitterly protesting any attempt at regulating them.

[The Larch]

We just had regional elections in Castilla y León, where PP has been in government since 1987. The PP regional president, in coalition with Ciudadanos, called for an early election following a strategy set up by the national party, in order recover an absolute majority and to boost the party's national leadership. Let's just say that it didn't go as planned.

The campaign has been mightily bizarre, with Pablo Casado, PP's national leader, involving himself a lot in it and providing plenty of ridiculuos images and headlines, and cementing his image as not the sharpest tool in the shed, so to speak. The end of the campaign became even more ridiculous than the beginning, with PP entering in their foaming in the mouth Mr. Hyde version, bringing out the ghost of ETA and the usual boogeymen.

As expected, once the results were in, Ciudadanos was wiped (it's still there, but with only one MP), and has been replaced as 3rd party by VOX, who will now have to be PP's partner in order for them to retain the regional government. VOX has already demanded to be included in the regional government in order to give PP their support, which would make it the first time they actually get into any kind of official government spot in Spain, as until now they had always been kept at arms length, only providing support from outside the government.

New provincial parties (several provincial parties gathering under a common platform) meant to represent the growing disenchantment in the "hollowed out Spain" (ie, the interior regions facing depopulation, aging populations and lack of investment) got a worse result than expected, as all of them except one failed to get a single MP. The one that succeeded did very well, though, in the province of Soria, becoming the leading party in the province. If this example becomes successful it bodes ill for PP and PSOE in the next national elections, as they'd stand to loose plenty of MPs in the smaller provinces, which they've always basically split amongtst the two of them.

PSOE did somehow well, retaining a strong but ultimately powerless position, with decent results. Podemos remains irrelevant, and is saved from dissappearing from the regional parliament by a very lonely MP. If they don't change course I don't see them doing well in the future, and they'll want to avoid becoming the new Ciudadanos, in this sense.

All in all, the situation remains the same, but exchanging Ciudadanos for Vox as junior party in the coalition government. Let's just say that a master strategist Pablo Casado is not.

[celedhring]

Casado is dumber than a box of rocks. Absolute lack of self-awareness, too - his campaigning for this election has been truly surreal. I guess it comes when you surround yourself with sycophants.

He may well be the next Spanish president. 

[The Larch]

Casado is dumber than a box of rocks. Absolute lack of self-awareness, too - his campaigning for this election has been truly surreal. I guess it comes when you surround yourself with sycophants.

He may well be the next Spanish president. 

Think deeply about this... do you prefer him or Ayuso? 

[celedhring]

Christ, they do make Rajoy look like a titan of statemanship.

I guess Casado. Ayuso is actually good at populism - which scares me - while Casado bumbles all the time.