Conflict over the national question threatens to derail a supposed European success story
Spain is Europe’s left-liberal success story. In the words of the Financial Times, under socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, “Spain has become Europe’s standout economy” chiefly due to immigration.
However, the accolades of this PSOE minority government are ephemeral. The government is held up by separatist parties, caught as the Spanish say, between la espada y la pared — “the sword and the wall”. These separatists are tarnished by association with a socialist government mired in corruption but are unable to do anything. Elections would likely lead to a Spanish nationalist conservative government involving the hard-right Vox party — a nightmare for Catalan and Basque separatists. Pedro Sanchez has relied on this dynamic for almost eight years, but the immigration policy which has caused this growth and foreign adulation may be what brings him down.
“What I ask from the left is less purity and more sense.” That’s how Gabriel Rufián, the leader of Catalunya’s left-wing separatists Esquerra Republica Catalana (ERC), began his address to the Spanish Parliament. This attack on the PSOE government his party keeps in power started off with the normal concerns about the cost of housing, but then something changed. Rufián raised his voice: “We should talk about migration. Yes, migration, stop putting your ear to the ground for five minutes… understand that waves of migration are a challenge for communities.” Rufián is no post-liberal nor has he “left the left”; his speech this week still warned against the “exaggeration by some” of issues over security but the tone remains remarkable. Just a few years ago he declared “there was no wall higher than institutional racism” and railed against ascendant fascism. So what changed?
Rufián is reflecting the realities of a Catalan nationalism in crisis over immigration. Alianca Catalana, a firmly anti-immigration Catalan separatist party, is ascending in the polls every week. The party is led by Silvia Orriols, Mayor of Ripoll, a town in the Pyrenees who infamously described herself as “Catalan and Islamophobic”. Alianca Catalana is polling as the 3rd most popular Catalan separatist party, and Vox themselves were the most popular party for Catalans under 35 in the same survey. Catalans are especially impacted by immigration. Barcelona has a very large Moroccan community and most recent arrivals speak Spanish, not Catalan. Orriols is well beyond the nationalist electoral politics of the UK, declaring she wants a Catalonia “free from the Spanish state, free from the French state, and free from the Islamic state.” This anti-immigration surge is what Rufián is responding to as he says, “Everyone in society has rights and responsibilities no matter if you are called Javier or Brahim.”
This concession to reality was lauded by the moderately conservative Basque Nationalist PNV. Their spokesman, Joseba Diéz Antxustegi, reposted Rufián’s speech and had a similar message himself. He told La Vanguardia his party’s position was against both “the populism and exaggeration of the far right and the naivety and negation of the problem by the left.” Both Rufián’s party ERC and the PNV are vital to the minority government staying in power; either one of them could bring it down, but will not lest it lead to an anti-separatist right-wing government. Despite this, the Spanish government they support is what has brought them to this position.
The PSOE government’s much-envied economic growth is primarily due to large-scale immigration. Pedro Sanchez, in an interview with radio station Cadena Ser last month, celebrated the two million legal migrants that had arrived during his time in office. He also said “the canard of linking migration to delinquency, and an invasion was a fallacy.” Yet the rise in tensions over integration has at times reached boiling point. In the summer there were race riots between right-wing activists and second-generation Maghrebis in the region of Murcia. This environment has seen the Spanish nationalist Vox party gain support.
As they say in Spain, el que espera, desespera — he who hopes despairs
Vox’s popularity is useful to Sanchez as their Reconquista-lite rhetoric not only places the more moderate Partido Popular in a bind, but also provides an ultima ratio to separatists who have to support him given a radicalised alternative. These very separatists, such as Rufián, now see their own support imperilled by a government they have no option but to back themselves. Why would Europe’s most Machiavellian politician, Pedro Sanchez, change a dynamic that still favours him? After all, they can’t vote him out and allow Vox leader Santiago Abascal into government. Unfortunately for a writer who covers Spanish politics, the most likely outcome of all of the above is that old internet favourite “nothing ever happens”. That is not to say nothing will change, but that the currents of Spanish politics will grow stronger even as the surface remains only a little choppy.
Rufián in his speech began by daring the PP and Vox to call a motion of no confidence in Sanchez’s government. The leaders of both parties had left their seats before his speech started, but even if they had heard him, they wouldn’t have listened. Pedro Sanchez has no majority, but there is a majority against his opponents, and they know it. As rhetoric against immigration on one side and against fascism on the other increases, Spain’s Basque and Catalan separatists are being held hostage by their own Spanishness. Pedro Sanchez might be smart enough to stay in power by maintaining this balancing act, but even if he is unsuccessful the country will be more divided than ever. As they say in Spain, el que espera, desespera — he who hopes despairs.
