110
submitted 5 days ago by Tychoxii@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net 7 points 4 days ago

Spanish here: almost entirely EU socdems. Two of the most important premises of the government coalition were to:

  1. Eliminate the infamous "reforma laboral" (worker's rights reforms) carried out by the christian conservatives during the post-2008 crisis, which primarily made it much easier and cheaper for firms to fire people

  2. Eliminate the infamous "ley mordaza" (mouthgag law), also carried out by the christian conservatives during the same period, which greatly hurts the right to protest and makes police violence much harder to prosecute

Neither of those has been eliminated, showing the lack of will of the PSOE government to carry out meaningful improvements in economic policy.

Spain being in a particularly advantageous position politically within Europe is due to a few main reasons IMO:

  1. Spain is a "poor", "unindustrialized" country, whose primary export is low-cost tourism. This means that its economy is naturally much less threatened by the rise of China's industry. On the contrary, cheaper consumer goods here are much less controversial. We do have automotive industry, so it would take a hit, but comparatively less than many richer nations in Europe. Additionally, Spain has a great historical and geographical link to Latin America (unfortunately for the Latin American peoples of old), sharing a language, possessing seaports on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and controlling to a degree the Strait of Gibraltar (remember the African cities of Ceuta and Melilla belonging to Spain being exclaves off the northern coast of Morocco). Spain could be a key link between Europe, China (new silk road) and Latin America (Atlantic trade). It's also a huge and rather unpopulated country with lots of wind and sun and without fossil fuel deposits, so it's perfect for renewables (as proven by its current construction of Chinese-firm electric battery factories in mainland Spain).

  2. Catalonian and Basque nationalism. Both of them have quite strong leftist movements within them (though there's also plenty of reactionary right wing nationalists). The centralist, Spanish nationalist right wing of the two main right parties in Spain (PP - christian conservatives, VOX - far-right mixture of neoliberalism and Franco "nostalgics") have absolutely alienated everyone in Catalonia and Euskal Herria by promoting a very centralist repressive understanding of "Hispanity" and preventing by all means any referendum for independence in either region. These regions have enough voters that it's almost impossible to conform a government coalition without the nationalist parties of Catalonia and Basque Countries, and it's unthinkable for the following 5-10 years to see any nationalist party from those regions supporting either of the two right wing parties in government, it would be political suicide.

  3. Spain is on the opposite corner of Russia in the continent, so the "anti-Russia" discourse is much less powerful here. Like, nobody here really gives a fuck about the territorial integrity of fucking Estonia or Poland. Being also a very tourism-driven country, the authorities are very careful on having bad relations with anyone, because bad relations implies less tourism, and that's less line going up. This has allowed Pedro Sánchez to, at least according to his words, avoid the 5% GDP expenditure in NATO, so far the only country to try and sneak out of it. We'll see how well that translates into actual policy. Spain also didn't formally participate in WW2, so it's not a central issue in public discourse or even public education and history lessons, so people really don't care about the Motherboard-Ribbedcock pact propaganda and russophobic shit like that.

  4. No a la guerra and 11-M. The anti-Iraq invasion protests were extremely followed in Spain, likely because they were used as a political weapon by the PSOE (socdem party) and all its media apparatus to hurt the PP. Close to a quarter of the country was on the streets protesting, the war was exceedingly unpopular, and "No a la guerra" and pacifism are still very popular points of view among the general progressive population, nothing like the bloodthirst for Russians of the average German SPD voter. The 11-M terror attacks in Madrid carried out by Al-Qaeda also left a big imprint on people on the consequences of state participation in war, because again, the PSOE and its media apparatus used it as propaganda against the PP. Very different from the bipartisan reaction in the USA to 9/11.

  5. Latent memory of fascism. My parents (I'm not even 30) remember literally raising their hand in the fascist salute and singing "Cara al Sol" (a Fascist anthem) at school and in summer camps, Franco died in 1975! Most people older than Gen-Z, except for so-called "nostalgic" boomers, do not want a return to fascism, and the state propaganda has done a good job of whitewashing the "super nice and great transition to our wholesome democracy". Gen-Z are already distant enough in time that fascist propaganda is effective on them, but it's mostly not the case for people aged 20 to 65. The collective opinion is generally that the army are a bunch of fashies (bad propaganda after the Failed Tejero coup attempt post Franco's death), are glad that compulsory military service was removed some decades ago, and would much rather have funding of pensions than of weapons.

this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
110 points (100.0% liked)

news

24560 readers
463 users here now

Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:

We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.

Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:

The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.

  1. Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.

  2. Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.

  3. Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.

  4. Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.

  5. Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.

  6. Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.

  7. American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.

  8. Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.

  9. AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS