Tag Archive for: Spain

Anti-Spain Is In Power In Madrid

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Palestinians, Spain | MEMRI Daily Brief No. 604

The news that Norway, Ireland, and Spain would recognize a Palestinian state on May 28, 2024 certainly caught the world’s attention. Both Hamas and the Taliban, among others, congratulated the European countries. But while there was reaction about all three countries, much of the public ire and bitterness – in both directions – focused on Spain.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded on May 27 by accusing Spain of “rewarding terrorism” and added that “the days of the Inquisition are over.”[1] Earlier, he had lamented statements by Spanish officials by mentioning that to “understand what radical Islam truly seeks, she should study the 700 years of Islamic rule in Al-Andalus – today’s Spain.”[2] Other, unofficial, pro-Israel voices focused on the expulsion of Jews by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, or called for the recognition of an independent Catalonia.

Still others denigrated Spanish history or culture, dragging in mocking references to flamenco dancing or bullfighting. American conservative Dennis Prager ignorantly commented in a podcast that “when Spain kicked out the Jews in 1492, it was one of the greatest powers on earth. After 1492, people said, ‘Where is Spain?’ It went from gigantic to nothing overnight with its expulsion of the Jews in 1492.”[3]

The criticism, whether clever or stupid, showed a basic misunderstanding about Spain today, Spanish politics, and the nature of antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric. For what happened with Spain and Israel is not some recurrence of atavistic Castilian Catholic “Jew hatred,” but something rather more common. It is as if the malevolent children – part communist, part Islamist in motivation – who are seen protesting for Palestine on the university campuses of the West actually ruled a country.

Responding to Spain’s patronage of a Palestinian state by bringing up the Inquisition or 1492 or Catholicism or bullfighting might be superficially satisfying in some quarters, but is actually ludicrous, because Spain’s current political rulers despise all these things. The ruling leftist-far left-Catalan/Basque separatist coalition in Spain is in favor of Catalan independence, is soft on Islamic rule in Spain, and is reliably anti-Catholic. It is the left in Spain that wants to allow Islamic prayers in the Cathedral-Mosque in Cordoba. It is the left in Spain that encourages illegal immigration from Muslim countries into Spain, a kind of counter “Reconquista.” They would rather erase all in Spain that is old or distinctive or “Spanish.” The separatist rulers in Catalonia have welcomed Islamic migration, and even the spread of Salafism in their region, as long as the new arrivals don’t commit the cardinal sin of speaking Spanish.

Spain has the most left-wing government in Europe, the only one with actual hardcore communists in it. Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez would not be in power today without the vote of his communist allies (the rival far-left Sumar and Podemos parties), along with the approval of Catalan and Basque separatists, most of whom also lean left. While much ink has been spent in the Anglophone media about the supposed dangers of right-wingers in countries like Hungary, Poland or Italy, the leftist, corrupt and increasingly authoritarian regime in Madrid has flown under the radar. This is probably because the EU bureaucracy itself leans left. And the EU’s foreign policy chief since 2019, Josep Borrell, is a Spanish Catalan Socialist. His old comrades in Madrid are open allies of Venezuela and Cuba, and their views on Israel are closer to the hardcore Latin American left than they are of even social democratic parties in Western Europe. Sanchez himself has steadily moved the Spanish Socialists (PSOE) to the left from where they were in the days of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.

Spain declared an arms embargo on Israel on October 7, 2023 just as Jews were being massacred and before any invasion in Gaza.[4] The greatest stridency against Israel – the calls for “From the River to the Sea” and accusing Israel of genocide, began on the Spanish far left long ago and then steadily migrated throughout the ruling left/far-left coalition. Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz (Sumar) and former Equality Minister Irene Montero (Podemos) used it first, and then it eventually was heard from the lips of the Socialists when Defense Minister Margarita Robles, on May 25, said that what Israel was doing in Gaza was “an authentic genocide.”[5]

In Spain, it is the political right that is pro-Israel. This is the same political right which is monarchist, conservative, mostly Catholic, and against Catalan independence, which is also against the leftist regimes in Latin America like Cuba and Venezuela, and which is against the massive wave of illegal immigration into Spain that is abetted by the ruling left. By far, the most consistent pro-Israel political voice in Spain is the conservative Vox party (often – falsely – described by the left and the media as “far-right’ or “ultra-right”), the third largest party in the country. The center-right Popular Party (PP) also leans towards being more pro-Israel than the Spanish left.

The increasing closeness of Western left-of-center parties with Islamic and imported “anti-colonial/anti-imperialist” ideologies is a widespread phenomenon. Spain is important in this equation because the left is already in power and it is perhaps a model for “progressive” foreign policy that we may see more often in the West as demographics change and as the left is pressured by both its own far-left wing and by a rising populist right.

Spain today is as if “the Squad” in the U.S. House of Representatives or France’s LFI-NUPES ruled a country. There is not one trendy notion of the American and European far-left that has not been embraced by or at least talked about by the current rulers in Madrid. When it comes to Gaza, immigration, abortion, euthanasia, and fourth-wave feminism, they are nothing if not predictable.

Politics in Spain seems increasingly Venezuelanized. The country is beset by very serious economic problems and high unemployment, by the burning question of Catalan and Basque separatism, by poor governance and a catastrophic decline in births – but today in the country, the hottest issues of the moment – promoted by Sanchez’s Socialists and his communist allies – are being anti-Israel, a running war of words with Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei, and the evergreen Spanish leftist campaign against the long-gone late Caudillo Francisco Franco (d. 1975) and all his works. If you can constantly talk about Gaza, Milei, and Franco, you can avoid questions about government corruption or about violating the constitution with crooked pacts with Basque terrorist sympathizers and Catalan separatists or about unemployment, incompetence, and increasingly heavy-handed state authoritarianism. You can do so especially when much of the media is in your pocket because of government subsidies.

AUTHOR

Amb. Alberto M. Fernandez

Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.

REFERENCES:

[1] Kbindependent.org/2024/05/27/israel-relations-take-a-nosedive-as-spain-ireland-set-to-formally-recognize-palestinian-state, May 27, 2024.

[2] X.com/Israel_katz/status/1793896694729286117, May 24, 2024.

[3] Podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/socrates-in-the-city/id1457024541?i=1000654231794, December 6, 2023.

[4] X.com/christinalosada/status/1794662719746166837, May 26, 2024.

[5] Elpais.com/espana/2024-05-25/margarita-robles-tilda-de-autentico-genocidio-la-ofensiva-israeli-en-gaza.html, May 25, 2024.

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VOX PARTY SPAIN VIDEO: ‘Islam Is Incompatible With Western Culture’

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VOX party spokesman gives blunt speech about the consequences of Islam within a Western nation’s borders.

Please read the details at RAIR Foundation

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EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog post by  is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

After the ‘Respect for Marriage Act’, will the U.S. follow Spain down the ‘disrespect for marriage’ rabbit hole?

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Spain is on the way to recognising 16 types of families, none of them the traditional nuclear family.

The Respect for Marriage Act has sailed through the US Senate, amidst great jubilation. Twelve Republicans, including former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, voted with Democrats to pass the legislation by a vote of 61-36. Now it goes to the lame-duck House of Representatives, where it is certain to pass.

This will be one of President Joe Biden’s signature achievements. The Act will basically codify Obergefell v Hodges, the US Supreme Court decision which legalised same sex marriage. If SCOTUS happens to overturn Obergefell, as many people fear, same sex marriage will still be safe.

The President tweeted that: “our nation is on the brink of reaffirming a fundamental truth: love is love.”

New York Senator Chuck Schumer, whose daughter is a married lesbian, tweeted: “the Senate has sent a message to Americans everywhere: No matter who you are or who you love, you deserve dignity and equal treatment under the law.”

Heart-warming sentiments, these. What lies ahead for same-sex marriage now that the US Congress is about to codify “love is love”?

The Senators who voted against the Respect for Marriage Act warn that it will be used to strip religious institutions of their tax-exempt status. Texas Senator Ted Cruz commented that “Not only does the so-called Respect for Marriage Act open the door for a weaponized IRS to target religious non-profits, but it will start a race to the bottom, forcing the most extreme marriage laws from any state onto every other state.”

In a speech to the Senate Utah Senator Mike Lee reminded his colleagues that the possibility of a conflict with religious freedom was also predicted in the oral arguments before SCOTUS:

Justice Alito asked whether, should states be required to recognize same-sex marriages, religious universities could lose their tax-exempt status. His response, the response from [then] Solicitor General Verrilli was chilling. He said, quote, “It’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It’s going to be an issue.” …

But if you want to look even further ahead, consider Spain, which legalised same-sex marriage in 2005, ten years before Obergefell v Hodges. After almost two decades of experience, it is moving on to bigger and better things. The government there is a left-wing coalition and the Minister of Social Rights and 2030 Agenda, Ione Belarra, belongs to Podemos, a party at the extreme left of the left-wing.

Next week she will present a draft of a new law on families to the Spanish Parliament. This lists 16 kinds of families, according to an exclusive in the ABC newspaper.

The bill’s explanatory memorandum states: “The family no longer exists, only families, in the plural, exist”. Based on rulings by Spain’s Constitutional Court, it declares that “the concept of family is not limited to those of matrimonial origin”.

Accordingly, the Minister says that Spain must give full legal recognition to this array of families and to protect and support them with government services.

Here is the list:

  • Two-parent families
  • Single mother or single father families
  • Young families
  • LGBTI families
  • Families in need of support
  • Multiple families
  • Blended families
  • Immigrant families
  • Transnational families
  • Intercultural families
  • Families living abroad
  • Families returned from aboard
  • Vulnerable families
  • Married couples
  • Defacto couples
  • Single-person families

The linguistic and legal creativity is astonishing. What’s notable about the list is that none of the 16 categories corresponds to the traditional definition of family: a married woman and a man and, if they exist, their children.

In Minister Belarra’s narrative, two-parent families (familia biparental) include married couples and defacto couples and could even squeeze in gay and lesbian couples. Married couples (personas unidas en matrimonio) include heterosexual and homosexual couples. She has even created new words to describe gay and lesbian couples (familia LGTBI homomarental y homoparental).

Clearly Belarra’s aim is to create a blizzard of labels in which the nuclear family disappears from view. It will no longer have a privileged place in Spanish law or a special claim on government services.

Furthermore, Spanish schoolchildren will be catechised in the new order of things. According to the draft bill, “family diversity is a principle of the educational system”. The list of family types must be included in textbooks and in the syllabus for trainee teachers.

What if parents object?

They can’t.

The bill specifically states that “parents or responsible adults may not limit or impede the access of children and adolescents to information and their participation in activities to raise awareness and disseminate family diversity that take place within the educational framework, in order to avoid restricting their rights to education and the free development of their personality”.

Spain is a country where politicians like Ione Belarra are unafraid of defending and imposing loopy laws. Once in power, opposition energizes them and fills them with righteous conviction. Whether or not her proposals succeed completely, it is clear that the nuclear family in Spain is in the sights of a very large LGBTQI cannon.

In the near term, the Spanish experience will not easily transfer to the United States, which has a federal system of government and a larger and more intellectually diverse population.

However, it’s a clear warning of what lies ahead. If American courts and legislatures can redefine marriage to include gay and lesbian couples, why can’t they include polyamory or polygamy?

Or still worse, redefine marriage to include so many relationships that it means nothing at all?

AUTHOR

Michael Cook

Michael Cook is the editor of MercatorNet. He lives in Sydney, Australia. More by Michael Cook.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Proposed EU Quota for Distribution of Illegal Migrants Draws Fire

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The European Commission’s (EC) European Agenda for Migration has floated its proposals for dealing with the massive surge in illegal migrants being smuggled across the Mediterranean by human traffickers. That has created discord among the 28 EU members about the rescue burden placed on so-called front line countries in the Mediterranean like Malta, Italy, Greece and Spain versus the relocation burden on major members like Germany and Sweden. It has also given rise to UN criticism for a controversial plan to destroy the rickety boats of human traffickers in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa, originally proposed by EU Foreign Relations Commissioner, Frederica Mogherini. A side show has been the UN and European Parliament adverse comments of  the ’horrible’ national survey in Hungary opposing EU and UN setting allotments and quotas for distribution of asylees and refugees. Hungary’s PM Orban is a prominent member of the large center right European Parliament EPP coalition. The formal release of the EU Commission’s proposal is scheduled for Wednesday, May 13th.

We wrote in our NER article on this roiling debate in the May edition, “Stemming the Surge of Deadly Illegal Migration Across the Mediterranean”:

The EC proposed a pilot project to re-distribute 5,000 refugees who meet asylum requirements stranded outside the EU, as an attempt to fairly distribute the burden of asylees. That flies in the face of objections by major northern countries to further asylum quotas. In 2014, 626,065 refugees filed asylum claims, a 44% percent increase over 2013. As one example, Germany experienced a sharp rise is asylum requests over the first quarter of 2015 to 85,394, double over the same period in 2014. By contrast the U.S. received 47,500 asylum applications.

The majority of those asylum seekers hail from Kosovo, Syria and Albania. Germany currently has a backlog of over 200,000 applications. This has given rise to complaints by municipalities in Germany about the impact on facilities and community integration. In the most controversial proposal, the EC requested EU Foreign Relations Commissioner Federica Mogherini to develop rules of engagement enabling it to capture and destroy illegal smuggling vessels. Overall EC President Donald Tusk of Poland said the illegal migrant crisis is a” complex issue” that will “take time to tackle.”

The EUObserver reported  the leaked contents of the EC proposals and reactions:

Leaked documents, seen by EUobserver, indicate that both ideas are now back on the table in an effort to help ease pressure on select member states.

“The EU needs a permanent system for sharing the responsibility for large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers among member states,” notes the draft document.

Some 80 percent of all asylum applications are processed in six EU countries, with most refugees from Syria either ending up in Germany or Sweden.

Germany’s Angela Merkel reportedly backs the commission’s proposals but the issue has already generated a backlash elsewhere.

Hungary’s PM Viktor Orban on Friday described the commission plan as “mad and unfair”.

Earlier this month, he proposed setting up new national legislation to keep out immigrants even it runs counter to EU rules.

“If [other EU members] want to receive immigrants, they can do it. But then they should not send them back here, or through us,” said the Hungarian leader.

According to the leaked commission text, the EU executive wants member states to resettle around 20,000 new refugees every year, although the final figure could change.

An initial figure of 5,000 had been floated last month at the EU emergency summit, but was then dropped.

[…]

The number of relocated migrants to be taken in by each state would depend on the member state’s population size, economic strength, unemployment level and number of refugees already there.

“The commission will table legislation by the end of 2015 to provide for a mandatory and automatically-triggered relocation system to distribute those in clear need of international protection within the EU when a mass influx emerges,” notes the commission paper.

The proposed quota system would not be binding on Ireland, the UK and Denmark.

This has brought an immediate reaction from the newly elected Conservative government of UK Prime Minister David Cameron.  The Guardian reported:

“We will oppose any EU commission proposals to introduce a non-voluntary quota,” a spokesperson told the paper.

Britain is instead pushing for an UN-backed resolution to “destroy the business model of the traffickers” by sinking the boats and rubber dinghies used to ferry migrants across the sea.

The UK’s Royal Navy’s flagship HMS Bulwark and its three Merlin helicopters are already at port in Malta.

Debate at the UN Security Council session yesterday in Manhattan revealed criticism of the EU Foreign Commissioner’s proposal to attack the smuggler vessels engaged in trafficking of illegal migrants. The EU Observer reported:

Peter Sutherland, the UN special envoy on migration and a former EU commissioner, issued the warning at a meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) warned the EU that “innocent refugees”, including children, will be “in the line of fire” of any operation to sink migrant smugglers’ boats.

He noted that in the first 130 days of this year “at least” 1,800 people drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to get to EU shores.

“This total represents a 20-fold increase over the same period last year. At this pace, we are on course to see between 10,000 and 20,000 migrants perish by autumn”.

He said about half the people who make it have a legitimate need for EU protection.

EU Foreign Relations Commissioner Mogherini replied:

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini told the UNSC, also on Monday, that she’s been tasked “to propose actions to disrupt the business model of human trafficking networks across the Mediterranean”.

“We have in these [past] weeks prepared for a possible naval operation in the framework of the European Union Common Security and Defence Policy. The mandate of this operation is currently being elaborated with the EU member states”.

“We want to work with the United Nations, in particular with the UNSC”, she added.

She took pains to say the military plan is part of a wider approach.

She also pledged that “no refugees or migrants intercepted at sea will be sent back against their will”.

[…]

“This is not all about Libya, we know that very well. This can happen in other parts of the world. But we all know also very well that the vast majority of human trafficking and smuggling in these months is happening in Libya, or rather, through Libya”, Mogherini noted.

Given the divisions within the EU, it would appear the roiling political debate over how to handle the deadly illegal migrant surge of illegal migrants across the Mediterranean may be irresolvable. Much of the illegal migrant flight is driven by civil war and jihad conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Al Qaeda-linked terror groups in Africa. This despite the suggestions of  Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders that perhaps the only ways to deal with the surge is to adopt the Australian model of returning the stream of illegal migrants for possible relocation in North Africa and other areas in the Middle East. That is likely to be objected to by the UN High Commissioner of Refugees seeking to depopulate huge refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere across the Muslim Ummah. The Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council would clearly object to such a scheme involving the members of the GCC embroiled in a war against Iran–backed Houthi Rebels in Yemen.

The question is whether that means an increase in refugee resettlement  allotments  courtesy of the UNHCR  might be coming here in the U.S. The arrival of Syrian refugees in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is  already causing a rising debate among localities in the American heartland.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of illegal migrants picked up in the Mediterranean. Source: Migrant Offshore Aid Station