Giles Tremlett

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Lt Col Antonio Tejero (arm raised) during an attempted coup in the Spanish parliament on 23 February 1981. Lt Col Antonio Tejero during the attempted coup in the Spanish parliament on 23 February 1981. Photograph: Manuel Barriopedro/AP

MundoAméricaEspañaMemoria Histórica, ,

Tension was high, security was weak and a bitter handover of power was under way when violent intruders forced the people’s representatives to stop their debate and cower on the floor.

Future generations of Americans will identify this as a description of events at the Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January 2021. For Spaniards, however, it fits an earlier moment in history – an assault on Madrid’s parliament, the Congreso de los Diputados, on 23 February 1981.

Spain’s attackers – reactionary followers of the dictator General Francisco Franco, who had died six years earlier – were also led by men in silly hats, although Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero was sporting the patent leather tricorn of Spain’s civil guard paramilitary police force rather than a pair of buffalo horns.…  Seguir leyendo »

Members of the Military Emergency Unit wait for vans of deceased people for cold storage at the Palacio de Hielo ice rink in Madrid on 24 March. Photograph: Carlos Álvarez/Getty Images

EspañaSanidad y Salud Pública, , , ,

It is one of the darkest and most dramatic moments in recent Spanish history. In the chilling table of daily dead from the coronavirus pandemic, Spain has taken top position from Italy - with 738 dying over 24 hours.

Spain is now the hotspot of the global pandemic, a ghoulish title that has been passed from country to country over four months – starting in Wuhan, China, and travelling via Iran and Italy. As it moves west, we do not know who will be next.

What went wrong? Spain had seen what happened in China and Iran. It also has Italy nearby, just 400 miles across the Mediterranean and an example of how the virus can spread rapidly and viciously inside Europe.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘Those now in jail will be hailed as martyrs to their cause and become an inspiration for future generations of separatists.’ Pro-independence protesters hold Catalan flags in Barcelona. Photograph: Pau Barrena/AFP via Getty Images

EspañaModelo de EstadoModelo Territorial

Some things are impossible. Catalan independence is currently one of them. The stiff jail sentences handed down to the leaders of the separatist campaign that peaked in 2017 with a banned referendum, police violence and a fudged declaration of independence make that clearer than ever.

There are huge practical obstacles to independence, starting with the many hurdles written into Spain’s constitution. Overcoming these requires massive support in Catalonia itself; but the separatist leaders who orchestrated a head-on collision with the law never had anything like that. The jail sentences are for sedition, but their real problem is hubris.

That was already obvious on the streets of Barcelona and elsewhere when a unilateral proclamation of independence in the Catalan parliament on 27 October 2017 changed exactly nothing.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘Pedro Sánchez is the overnight sensation of European social democracy.’ Photograph: Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images

EspañaAspectos Generales

The surprise in Spain is not that the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has gone, but that he lasted so long. His conservative People’s party (PP) had been knee-deep in corruption scandals for years. So many of the party’s principal players were involved that it became impossible to blame a few rotten apples. The barrel itself stank of putrefaction.

Somehow, however, events conspired to keep Rajoy in power. It was only when his police began beating up citizens in the streets of Catalonia that the rest of the world woke up to what that might actually mean. The worst part of his legacy is a restriction of fundamental rights and his overempowerment of a police force that can now even fine people for taking photographs of suspected abuses.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaPolítica Exterior

La sorpresa ha sido mayúscula y el desasosiego también. En Europa millones de personas han basado sus proyectos de vida en la creencia de que nuestro continente se acordaría para siempre de los siglos de luchas fratricidas que terminaron en dos guerras mundiales y que, por eso, nadie sería tan atrevido como para intentar romper la Unión Europea. Sin embargo, llegó un conjunto de políticos británicos que puso sus intereses personales y partidistas por encima de todo lo demás y trajo el Brexit. El precio de su insensatez lo pagaremos otros.

Los más perjudicados y preocupados son, sin duda, los dos millones de ciudadanos comunitarios que viven en el Reino Unido y los 1,3 millones de británicos que residimos en otros países de la Unión.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaMemoria Histórica

They dug up yet another mass grave in Spain this week, this time near the village of Arándiga, 45 miles from Zaragoza. The bones of eight men, all trade unionists, lay where they had been hurriedly buried more than 70 years ago in the early days of the civil war. They had been shot at the same spot by supporters of General Francisco Franco.The eight were never tried. It was enough for them to be known leftwingers, members of the Union of General Workers. Franco's death squads were busy in territory conquered by his army, cleansing it of opponents. The eight men from Arándiga, and thousands of others, were left to rot in their unmarked graves during 39 years of dictatorship.…  Seguir leyendo »