The controversial vote on the labor reform on Thursday in Congress, in which two deputies from the UPN violated the voting discipline and one from the PP was confused, was "a real blow to national sovereignty," according to the popular, and a " case of political transfuguismo, of buying wills”, according to the PSOE.
Depending on which party is speaking, Spain is experiencing "the darkest hours" (Pablo Casado) or is experiencing "the greatest economic growth in 20 years" (Pedro Sánchez).
The Government is "a structure of looting and plundering of the middle and working classes," according to Vox, and has "improved people's lives," according to the Executive.
A study published in 2019 by experts from the University of Princeton and Jerusalem placed Spain as the most polarized country of the 20 analyzed (including the US, UK, Germany, Greece, France and Portugal) between 1996 and 2015, and since then the phenomenon that fuels the tension has only grown, that is, worsened.
In a more competitive environment after the emergence of new political brands, the parties try to make the most of the differences with their rivals to avoid vote leaks to other formations.
This polarizing attitude, warn the political scientists consulted, has permeated society, prevents reaching major State agreements, parks the debate and the solution of problems and causes mistrust in the institutions.
What follows are examples from another week of sound and fury in the political arena,
The labor reform.
Oppose according to who is in favor and vice versa
The Government arrived at Congress on Thursday with the fair votes to carry out the labor reform despite the opposition of its investiture partners.
During the debate, the president of Cs, Inés Arrimadas, thus argued her group's support for the decree: "Today, thanks to Citizens, Bildu and ERC lose."
Esquerra's spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, justified the opposition vote of the pro-independence formation in similar terms: "It is exactly the labor reform that Albert Rivera would have negotiated, signed and voted for if he had been vice president."
In the afternoon, in the vote, Sergio Sayas and Carlos García Adanero, the two UPN deputies, who had not intervened in the debate, disobeyed their party and voted against the decree and a PP deputy, Alberto Casero, made a mistake. and voted in favour.
He was not the first.
The problem is that.
@PuriCausapi has erred and voted for disapproval.
Divine justice.
In the end, what has come out is reasonable.
– José Luis Martínez-Almeida (@AlmeidaPP_) February 28, 2018
It has happened in Congress and in the regional parliaments to deputies from different parties and they have not been allowed to correct their mistake, but in the current climate of polarization and absolute tension, that immediately became in the words of the PP a "rib" , a “cacicada”, the “kidnapping of our democracy”.
The labor reform, Vox added, “had to be validated by civil or criminal matters.”
Both parties announced that they will resort to Justice.
Polarization has also burdened the courts.
It is a great failure of Sánchez that his star measure prevails with a rigging.
We demand that the Table of Congress annul it or Batet could be prevaricating.
We will go to the end to reverse this democratic outrage that they want to cover up with the removal of masks.
pic.twitter.com/8y0N3w8jLP
– Pablo Casado Blanco (@pablocasado_) February 4, 2022
For her part, the socialist Adriana Lastra assured, without providing any evidence, that the PP had "bought" the will of the two UPN deputies who voted against it.
Politics is a noble and honorable activity, what we saw yesterday from the right is not politics, it's something else:
❌ Turncoat is corruption, buying wills is corruption and the PP is a corrupt party.
🌹 @Adrilastra #CambioYEsperanza#VotaCastillayLeon pic.twitter.com/RjEUUmZOVG
– PSOE (@PSOE) February 4, 2022
Assault on the Town Hall of Lorca.
“We condemn the violence, but...”
The political anger started high on Monday with the assault on the Lorca City Council (Murcia, 96,000 inhabitants), which reflects both the escalation of polarization in Spain and its risks.
That day a modification of the general urban planning plan was going to be approved in the municipal plenary session to move any new pig farm away from the urban area -it did not affect the existing ones-, by virtue of an agreement signed in June 2020 by the groups municipal and ranchers.
But the plenary session could not be held because some 30 people forced their way into the Consistory, throwing the policemen who were guarding the building to the ground and shouting at the councilors "We are going to kill you, lazybones!"
Moment in which a group of people overcomes the police barrier in Lorca.
What had happened before?
Already in a climate of electoral campaign in Castilla y León, the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, criticized in the British newspaper
The Guardian
the method and the quality of the products of macro-farms.
The opposition called for his resignation or dismissal and Casado offered press conferences for several days with cows, sheep and ham in the background with the slogan "more livestock and less communism."
In the past, however, the PP had supported initiatives against the mega-farms.
And what happened immediately after?
At 1:48 p.m. on Monday, that is, after the assault, the Lorca PP Twitter account released a video in which Fulgencio Gil, spokesman for the popular in the town, of which he was mayor, summed up what happened: " It is evident that the field has exploded.
He can't take it anymore.
When you play with the bread of many families and with their desperation, situations like this are generated and the field is reacting”.
The tweet was deleted on Tuesday.
The day before, the PSOE had asked for his resignation for not condemning the attack.
Vox Murcia also broadcast a video on its social networks in which it showed part of the peaceful demonstration prior to the assault and part, also, of the confrontation with the councilors of the City Council.
Far from condemning the events, the party stated: “Today Vox has supported the ranchers in their demands.
They are criminalizing, persecuting and lying to all those people who work from dawn to dusk to bring bread home.
This is the image of the tiredness of hundreds of people who only ask to be able to work and who are not allowed to lie and manipulate”.
📢 We will always be on the side of those who defend their work.
This is the image of the fed up of the ranchers, who only ask to stop being criminalized to carry out their work.
pic.twitter.com/unraI0TLR1
– Carmen Menduiña (@CarmenMenduina) January 31, 2022
The assault on the Lorca Town Hall provoked a new confrontation between the political forces, which, fundamentally, through social networks, a fundamental tool in the increase in polarization, confronted the different reactions - more or less forceful - before other episodes that they considered similar and among those that included the assault on the US Capitol, the siege of Parliament, the surrounding of Congress or the escraches.
"All Democrats have to condemn this type of action," Casado declared solemnly after the assault on Capitol Hill.
“I do not understand that there are parties that criticize this assault but justified it when in Catalonia an attempt was made to assault the Parliament, when the Congress was surrounded... Populism has tremendously harmful effects for free societies.
Extremism ends up costing dearly,” he added.
Casado equates the "populism" of Vox and Podemos because some justify the assault on the US Capitol and others surround Congress: "I don't understand how in Spain there are still parties that try to justify it" https://t.co/7InMJo3gRk pic. twitter.com/ex9Mf2wUAS
– Europe Press (@europapress) January 7, 2021
Pablo Iglesias, for his part, supported the protest in the vicinity of the hemicycle in 2016 and described in the past the harassment of public representatives in their homes - which he and his family also ended up suffering after joining the Government - as "the democratic syrup of those below."
The escraches are the democratic syrup of those below http://t.co/jBNRZH4inZ
– Pablo Iglesias 🔻 (@PabloIglesias) June 10, 2013
Any subject works: from ETA to Eurovision
In this desire for polarization, that is, to differentiate itself as much as possible from the political rival, any issue will do.
ETA, which announced the final cessation of violence more than 10 years ago, is still very present on the agenda of some parties and if the country is divided with a musical contest -almost three million viewers, 21% of the screen share , followed the final of the Benidorm Fest—the political formations incorporate extra-parliamentary controversy into their speeches.
All of this (terrorism and Rigoberta Bandini) fit into a recent intervention before the media by Pablo Casado.
“Why do pensioners in the Basque Country or those who receive the minimum vital income have to see it managed by the regional government instead of by the State?
Does it have to do with the fact that Sánchez, at the order of Bildu, is going to release the ETA murderers whom he has already brought to the prisons of the Basque Country?
For a few votes for labor reform he is going to humiliate the victims of terrorism.
We are going to report it,” he said.
In an email to the associations of victims of terrorism, the Ministry of the Interior denied that inmates of the gang are going to go out on the street earlier because the years of sentence they have served in other countries, such as France, will be deducted, and explained that what is planned is to modify the law on the exchange of information on criminal records to transpose a European directive.
In that same intervention in which he accused the Government of preparing to "release murderers", Casado replied to the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, who had previously raised the song
Ay mama
as a political claim. "Rigoberta Bandini has given us a beautiful feminist motto," said Montero. “She wonders why they are so afraid of our boobs, why they are so afraid of our rights, that we have recognized our right to voluntary interruption of pregnancy...”. For the leader of the PP they were "a few statements that were a bit over the top". “They say about a song, but come on, talking about women's bodies. I would tell them to take care of rural women and less feminist slurs.”
Why are our boobs afraid of them?
Why are they afraid of our rights?
#QueTuVozSeEscuche pic.twitter.com/sdAY2VWqZq
– Irene Montero (@IreneMontero) January 28, 2022
The popular Vicente Azpitarte, delegate of the Junta de Andalucía in Madrid, celebrated, for his part, the defeat in the musical contest of the public's favorites, the group Tanxugueiras, which sings in Galician, and Bandini: "Spain said yes to the vehicular language that unites us all.
Spain said yes to equality between men and women.
Neither languages that separate us nor rancid feminism.
Galician is one of the co-official languages that the Spanish Constitution indicates as “cultural heritage object of special respect and protection”.
The lyrics of the winning song,
SloMo
, by Chanel, have 61.4% words in Spanish, 28.7% in English and 9.9% onomatopoeia, as TVE had to clarify.
The singer, by the way, closed her Twitter account after receiving a barrage of insults.
The musical contest to elect Spain's candidate for Eurovision reached the Council of Ministers —Ione Belarra, from Podemos, dropped with a “I'm going to shut up what I think” that the winner of the contest did not like—;
to the Madrid Assembly — Carolina Alonso, from the same party, asked Isabel Díaz Ayuso, speaking of the Children's Law: “do not rob citizens of being able to have this regulation, as the jury has done with the Tanxugueiras” — and to Congress —several formations registered parliamentary questions asking to investigate the voting of the Benidorm Fest—.
Carolina Alonso (Podemos), to Ayuso: "I ask you not to rob citizens of being able to have this regulation, as the jury has done with the Tanxugueiras" pic.twitter.com/Z5fMqeqEN3
– The HuffPost (@ElHuffPost) February 3, 2022
The origin.
Who polarizes whom?
Experts point to two types of polarization, the "ideological", understood as the distance in the programmatic positions of the parties, and the "affective", that is, the rejection of those who have other political ideas. The political scientist Lluís Orriols, author of a study for ESADE on polarization in Spain, explains that it has grown in both categories. “The ideology increases a lot with the appearance of Vox and Podemos. The affective one, the one that generates more tension, began to increase in the first term of office of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, when the rival was denied the legitimacy of the victory over 11-M”.
Víctor Lapuente, professor of Political Science and co-author of a study on polarization, populism and mortality in the pandemic, agrees: "Spain is one of the most polarized countries."
On “the positive side”, he points out that, unlike other sites, “here, vaccination has not been so used politically.
We are a country of Nadales, not of Djokovics”.
But he warns: “We are the country of the two Spains, traditionally subscribed to Cainism.
Part of the responsibility for this escalation lies with the offer, that is, the politicians and the media who, in a much more segmented environment, see incentives to appeal to the very left or the very right.
There is political entertainment 24 hours a day with talk shows and programs in which politicians, in a multi-party, more competitive environment, seek to make noise,
launch the headline of impact or the tweet that assures them to be in the first line.
But there is also a citizen responsibility, of demand, of individualism that causes an environment of less rationality in which it is easier to be captive of the simplistic manifestations of polarization”.
In 2019, the CSIC released a report on an investigation carried out together with the Institute of Advanced Social Studies and the IMOP institute that concluded that the majority of Spaniards preferred not to interact with those who had different political ideas.
Among the more than 1,000 participants, 71.4% declared that they would be displeased if their children's teacher was a “supporter” of another party.
More than 20% considered someone who supported another group to be a “bad person”.
"We confirm that this level of rejection, caricature and moral absolutism," says researcher Hugo Viciana, "was not limited to political elites."
"And that study was done before the rise of Vox, so everything indicates that this feeling has gone further."
The experts consulted agree that all the parties participate in the polarization.
They feed back.
“It is not an exclusive problem of the radical right”, points out Lapuente.
“The extremes exploit it more because they try to undermine the work of the traditional political families, but everyone thinks at some point that they cannot let the opportunity pass.
I miss those boring politicians of yesteryear,” he adds.
The consequences: distrust and impoverishment of discourse
This escalation of polarization has consequences. For years, the CIS has shown an increase in citizens' mistrust of parties, and politicians, that is, those in charge of providing solutions, are pointed out as one of the main problems. “Polarization has perverse effects, it generates mistrust in institutions and impoverishes political discourse”, explains Orriols, “because it often parks programmatic proposals. What tribe you are from stands out more than the political project you defend and that makes agreements difficult because it is no longer about looking for intermediate points, in common, as it is about marking the differences with the rival.
For Lapuente, this escalation could lead to a crisis of democracy.
“Polarization has caused two tendencies: the populist one, which tries to directly replace the parties with citizen participation, so that everything is decided by referendum, like
Brexit,
and the technocratic one, which wants to replace them with experts.
It is early to know where all this is taking us, but it is worrying because all this artificial noise already produces a certain paralysis to tackle important problems and because all this is going to increase, not less”.
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