Last post on the impending elections before the big day. By the way, did you know that the Spanish vote in local schools? All the classrooms become voting stations – I always go along with Marina as it provides a glimpse into a little bit of a Spain past that I obviously don’t have. Perhaps this weekend I can get some photos.
Talking to my Spanish mother-in-law the other day, she mentioned a friend, a female, middle class, 60-something friend, who declared they would be voting for the Partido Popular – ‘por lo de la inmigracion’ (because of all the immigration).
Now this is a sad, and very likely widespread, state of affairs. There is a sector of the Spanish population that is going to vote for the previously ousted right-wingers because they don’t like the scale of immigration they’ve seen over the past 4 years.
The press has to take a lot of the blame for this, reporting with glee any crime that has anything to do with anyone that isn’t 100% Spanish.
But it does show an unbelievable shortsightedness on the part of people that are taking this stand point. I’m willing to bet that most of them have cleaners from Ecuador, or have friends with grandchildren being looked after by a girl from the Dominican Repulic, or Peru. The tomatoes in their salad were likely harvested by Moroccans working in horrendous conditions in Almeria, long after all the Spaniards became the boss, or were able to go off and earn far more in Madrid. And who do they think is going to be paying their pension? Taxes from the Spanish alone couldn’t take the burden.
P.S. For those that enjoyed/want to relive the recent great debates between Rajoy and ZP, you can now download all of ZP’s famous charts from the PSOE website. Click here to download what they’re calling ‘The White Book’ pdf – aka whopping propaganda machine, allegedly light on real facts and heavy on artful invention. Be warned: it’s pretty dull, though some of the charts are kinda pretty 
Tom
9 Mar 08 at 6:37 pm
I’ll add that unlike you, I still don’t have the right to choose that government. Maybe next time.
Edith
9 Mar 08 at 6:43 pm
No, of course they are not all bad.
Many youths engage in more beneficial activities, like practicing sports or volunteering for NGOs.
I forgot to mention the promotion of violence in the popular media as an additional factor. Video games are becoming increasingly more violent.
Some young people just seem to go berserk by being exposed to all these visual cues – what else could explain ‘pastimes’ like happy slapping etc? And I’m not talking about ADHD!
Bullying in school has also become a huge problem in many countries, including Spain. And it doesn’t only affect immigrant youths.
Olentxero
10 Mar 08 at 7:42 am
But I think that there are also deeper societal issues. The family (in whatever form it takes) is destroyed by ensuring that parents must work longer hours and often take their work home with them. Adolescents are turned into adults by the pressure of marketing designed to sexualise them and turn them into fully competent consumers (although I admit that children can remain childlike for longer in Spain than in England). A general acceptance of violence, whether it be in the shape of war, state-approved torture, cinema, brutalising sections of population etc) is also a key factor. It may be as well that as we move deeper and deeper into liberal ethics, where blame is only ever applied reluctantly and reasons are sought for everything, people have no idea about when to criticise and sanction bad behaviour. Schools suffer when teachers are told what to teach rather than left to their own. Children become alienated from the community in which they find themselves and violence fills the gap – inevitable when they are forced into long periods of boredom, frustration and tension.
In short, there may be some truth in the claim that children react differently today than they did in the past (although we have to accept that it is a cliche for adults to complain about the moral values of the youth of today). However, there may also be some truth in the assertion that the adults of today are to blame for these changes.
Mariana
15 Mar 08 at 1:07 am
hi, Ben.
I don’t know if you’re hearing about the problems with Brazilians there… here (in Brazil), the press has highlighted what was happened with some brazilians in madrid airport (some of them neither were going to spain, but to portugal). now brazilian police are stopping spanish at our airports too (and they say the reasons are the same that made brazilians didn’t get into spain). i listen to “notes in spanish” and think of you when i read a note from a brazilian girl that lives there, she says the spanish press are speaking like brazil was the “villain”. i wish soh much to travel abroad, but, if i was afraid i couldn’t get into USA, now i’m afraid i couldn’t get even into countries that don’t ask visa to us.
Ben
16 Mar 08 at 6:47 pm
Hola Mariana,
It is a crazy situation, I’m not really sure what is going on. I hope it all sorts itself out soon.