Today, Spain held elections. The Socialists under Zapatero won re-election, though with a slightly smaller number of seats. This is wonderful news for all those who claimed that Zapatero only won the last time because of the terrorist attacks on the eve of the election. Actually, the plurality of Spaniards are ready to embrace social change: easier divorce, procreative rights, and gay marriage. They also rejected the heavy-handed efforts of the Roman Catholic church to interfere in the elections. This, in Spain, is a reprise of the Roman Catholic church's historical role of supporting the Spanish fascists and monarchists, and disdain for democracy and modernity (John Paul II tried to gloss over this by casting everything as anti-communism - clever, but no longer possible). Like Ireland before it, Spain is shedding its anti-democratic, insular, Roman-dominated past (well, peninsular...) for a place in modern Europe.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
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Some websites say Zapatero actually gained a handful of seats this time. There was a related terrorist attack this time also, however, that overshadowed events. On the last day of the official campaign--March 7, 2008--a politician in Spain's northern Basque region was murdered--which Zapatero attributed to the ETA. Politicians and the victim's daughter called for people to come to the polls as a way of condemning ETA.
The right-wing narrative is that Zapatero won because Spaniards are cowards who were afraid of terror and therefore voted for appeasement. Their vote for the center-left was a vote for appeasement, as evidenced by leaving Iraq immediately. Americans, they argue, would also be appeasers if they vote for Democrats. This Spanish election is, I hope, a window into the fact that such atrocious arguments can't always be used to trick people into voting for a hard-right political and social agenda. I hope so, anyway.
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