Spain: the politics of apathy
Raymond Carr
Madrid Have Spaniards become fed up with politics? The elections of 1 March will decide the political future of Spain, yet the politicians are worried by opinion polls which suggest that a third of the electorate may not vote at all. After the democratic euphoria of the 1977 elections, old Spanish watchers talk of a revival of the apathy that underpinned Francoism.
In so far as this talk does not reflect the Spanish capacity for self-denigration, it is the product of a boredom with `consensus politics' —the co-operation 'behind the curtains' of party leaders. Santiago Carrillo protests that because the Socialist leader Felipe Gonzalez has proposed a joint television debate with Prime Minister Suarez, he must be in league with his main rival. The triumph of consensus politics was the Constitution of 1978 — the first constitution in Spanish history that was not the imposition of a single party or ideology. But the price paid for this triumph — and, given the political history of Spain, it was a triumph — is the feeling that politicians are a race apart playing a private game.
Prime Minister Suarez is a subtle politician: rather than seeking a vote of confidence in the Cortes that would have allowed him to soldier on as a minority government, he has gambled on a quick general election.
So what are his chances of winning? He enjoys much prestige as the man who, with the King's all-important help, brought democracy to Spain and persuaded the institutions of Francoist 'inorganic democracy' to commit political hari kid. The slogan of his party, the UCD, is `Said and done'. But, his opponents clamour, what has he done? The economy is getting out of hand, there are a million unemployed and terrorism is still claiming a victim nearly every day. The Interior Minister, Martin Villa, can find no answer to the problem of ETA terrorism. Wild rumours of a rightwing coup persist. Suarez's government has suffered, like all governments confronted with inflation and unemployment, an inevitable process of erosion. The latest polls estimate that his party will obtain only 24.9 per cent of the vote on polling day.
Whatever it was in 1977, the UCD is now a party of the centre-left and is seeking to steal votes from the Socialists. If an estimated vote of 24.7 per cent for the Socialists means anything, then they will lose the slight edge they seem to have at the moment. To win, they must steal votes from the moderate left of the UCD. Hence their leader, Felipe Gonzalez — a superb performer on TV — appears as a mature, responsible stateman who has rejected any truck with Marxist nonsense. He is no longer the whizz kid in jeans and open-neck shirt of the 1977 elections. His picture which is plastered all over Madrid, shows him wearing a tie and a serious expression, and the Party has dropped some of the more prominent leftists from its lists.
Next come the Communists, well behind with 6.7 per cent. They are also engaged in the process of vote-stealing, as the true workers' party, to replace the Socialists. But they are also in the race for respectability and 'efficiency' — a key word in the campaign. Sartorius, from a great aristocrat family, appears on posters embracing the workers' leader Camacho. Cynics have invented a slogan for Communists: 'Trust the aristocracy; we know how to do things'.
The right is in some disarray. Fraga now heads the Democratic Coalition (CD) where Areilza, in search of a political home ever since he failed to become Prime Minister in July 1976, has found an uncomfortable resting place; but, on present showing, CD will get a mere 2.8 per cent of the vote. The mere existence of CD confuses the average conservative voter and weakens UCD on its right. The hard non-democratic right, the National Union, seems even weaker with a mere 1.4 per cent.
What are the issues? First unemployment and soaring prices, and then the backwash of terrorism. The Communist slogans are Tut your vote to work' and 'Put democracy in your shopping basket'; the Socialists announce themselves as 'A strong government to conquer unemployment'. The Democratic Coalition makes a direct appeal to material interests: 'The one thing that has gone up are prices. CD will defend the value of your money'. Its other appeal is to the nostalgia for strong government in a period of rapid social change which leaves some middle-class voters bewildered. (Madrid is now more expensive than London). `CD will put your house in order' the slogans claim.
All the parties are battling for the 30 per cent of floating voters, and if political apathy persists until 1 March it will be despite the efforts of all parties to break it down. A winter campaign in appalling weather cannot resurrect the exciting open-air mass meetings of June 1977; electoral meetings are thinly attended — as they are in most democracies. But the streets are littered with handbills and Spaniards are bombarded with wallposters, saturated with political talks on TV and radio.
And so the high participation of 1977 is unlikely to be repeated: but those who look at the opinion polls and make gloomy predictions of a general disillusionment with democracy are often expressing their hopes rather than their fears. It is true that the post-Francoist removal of the cork from the beer bottle — to use Ferdinand VII's phrase — has not automatically produced great literature, a vital theatre or a film renaissance; that crimes of violence have increased in the new society. What else could one expect when the old Francoist slogan, 'Spain is different', became out of date and when freedom has taken the sting of excitement out of protest pop groups and literary sedition? With consensus politics the political press has become flat and boring although the repellent mixture of pornography and politics persists. Eloy de Iglesias' film The Deputy is the story of a communist deputy whom the extreme right seek to destroy by exploiting his homosexual leanings and finally murdering his boy friend. It contains scenes of oral sex in a homosexual brothel that could not be shown in Britain outside Soho. This sort of stuff appals the right and doesn't do the left any good.
But as the campaign hots up, so will interest. On present form the Socialists and the UCD will get between them a good half of the vote, probably pretty equally split between them with the Socialist strength in the big cities and the UCD in the rural provinces. If Spain is to have strong government they must then form a coalition government — the one thing the Communists, as proponents of a national government, fear. Such a coalition might provide a stable reformist government with the strength to tackle Spain's problems.
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