Local elections give Rajoy the jitters!

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Tomorrow...a Sunday.....sees local elections in two Spanish provinces; Galicia and the Basque country, who will both be voting for their regional governments.  The results will be watched eagerly, not just by Mariano Rajoy, a Galician himself, but by many across Europe in the wake of yesterday's announcement by Angela Merkel that direct re-capitalisation of the (many) Spanish banks who are teetering on the brink of collapse will not happen immediately, if at all.

A worried Mariano Rajoy.

Spain is a country in crisis.  To live here is to be party to the desperation of the people.  Hope is now a dirty word as the nation sinks deeper into crisis and, to be honest, it's very worrying.

The Spanish are a people who do not like change and even when the rest of the world was cowering beneath the falling debris of the of the economic crisis many Spaniards were happy to ignore the signs and carry on as before.  But not anymore.

Spain is changing.  And it's changing rapidly.  But not, I would suggest, for the better in the short-term.  Things are going to get a lot worse before they start to improve.

Unemployment in Galicea is at 21% (as it happens lower than the national average) and is rising every month.  Rajoy, once the local hero, is fast becoming Rajoy the embarrassment, even though he may just hang onto power in the region as a result of the popularity of the PP candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo (below).  Even so, there is expected to be a rise in the prominence of local nationalists which have a knock-on effect with further elections next month in other provinces.

 Alberto Núñez Feijóo

In the Basque country the situation is more complex, with the new radical nationalist coalition, EH-Bildu expecting to gain substantial support in their push for Basque separatism.  A year ago Eta, the Basque terrorist movement 'officially' renounced violence and since that time the radicals have moved towards a more political and democratic process with EH-Bildu (which actually means 'Basque country gather') blazing the way.

EH-Bildu did not take part in the 2009 elections (because they were formed after this time) and might be expected to gain considerable local influence after tomorrow elections.  Polls indicate that unemployment will be the key issue in an area where the rural vote has always been majorly important.  But even here it beggars belief that the radicals do not offer solutions to the problems for the electorate to mull over but instead spend their campaigning time slagging off the other parties and their mismanagement of the economy, employment, etc.

Heaven forbid that they might offer a new way of looking at things!  Radical by name only it seems! 

And one cannot help but wonder if, once tomorrows results are known, and the celebrations (what the Spanish do best of all!) are over, if anything will actually change.

Spain is a country in flux, but the paradox is that whilst change is being forced upon the nation by the recent austerity measures and an economy that looks to be sliding ever deeper into the red, nothing actually changes. 

Everyone bitches and moans about the lack of cash in their pocket and the complete and utter absence of prospects for the current U25's, no-one really wants anything to change.  If things could just go back to how they were 4 or 5 years ago then the majority of Spaniards would settle for that.

As a political and social policy, sticking one's head in the sand isn't usually a vote winner, but then Spain is a place apart, still reeling from a Francoist hangover and a black-market economy that bleeds the life from Spain as a vampire bat drains a vein, Spain is a nation lost in the political wilderness, wandering aimlessly, but forever looking over the shoulder to the good old days of a few years before.

Historically Spain has been stuck in a time-warp since the era of the Armada and as an Englishman living here I find many of the attitudes and 'customs' (for want of a better term) similarly dated, old fashioned and out-moded.  On the face of it, a staunchly Catholic country, where incongruously church attendances are actually lower than in the UK, yet religious holidays hypocritically fill the calender.  Any excuse for a party!  And as an electoral tactic holding local elections on a Sunday is a no-brainer.  It will almost certainly lower turnout because church is such a good excuse not to vote, whether you actually attend or not.

In the Basque region then the radical nationalists may well find themselves as the one of the new voices of the people.  If, as expected, a similar trend is seen in Galicia with the nationalists pulling together with the communists, separatists and the ecologists, it may spark further disharmony with the Catalonian electorate who hold their elections next month.  And if Artur Mas, Catalonia's President, is re-elected he has already promised a full referendum on the question of Catalonian independence, which may well be the first of many similar referendums all over Spain.

As one of Spain's richest provinces the outcome of the Catalonian referendum could be crucial for the future stability and unity of the Spanish state, especially since Mas yesterday agreed to work more closely with Basque nationalist leader Iñigo Urkullu on the issue of their respective sovereignty claims, further weakening the stance of Rajoy as he attempts to paper over the vast cracks that are fracturing this ever-more fragile and sick nation. 

What the future holds here I don't know.  As fast as people say 'it can't get any worse' it just does!  And it keeps getting worse.  I'm pessimistic about the immediate future of Spain simply because they seem to be unable to adapt to the changing economic climate.  There are no new solutions for what are a host of new problems and until someone actually stands up and offers something truly radical as a possibly way out, then Spain will continue to flounder as its' people go from bad to worse.

What do you think?

P XX

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Life in the Campo

I can see sticking to writing a regular blog amongst many other things to do and duties to perform is not going to be easy.  No sooner have I started than it's been a week or more between posts.  Not the most auspicious of beginnings, but from small acorns....blah de blah de blah!

Not a whole lotta news this week, but what there is isworth telling.  The employment situation in Spain is pretty poor, as I'm sure most know.  Unemployment is just over 20% and is the highest in Westren Europe.  It's not that there isn't work here, because there is, but getting into the position to be able to actually impress a potential employer is albut impossible.  Well, maybe not impossible, but bloody difficult, to say the least.  A friend who works in Valencia in the service industry told us that she had over 600 applications for a part-time receptionist vacancy.  The vacancy before that had over 800!!  And on both occasions the job ended up going to someone who was known personally to one of the managers.  This seems to be the way in Spain.  Nepotism is rife and everyone accepts that is how the job market is largely controlled.  If you don't know the right person then your chances diminish whatever your knowledge and experience.  It's talked about openly and, whilst it is against the law, the Spanish don't get too uptight about such things, certainly not like the Brits do.  So bearing all this in mind it gives me great pleasure to announce that my lovely wife, Latifa, whose Spanish is already near fluent, has landed herself a job (albeit a temporary posting) without any prior knowledge of the Company or any of the employees.  She did so well and it will help to take a bit of the pressure off and also return Christmas to us which, until that point, had been cancelled!

I've been doing some fruit picking to supplement the household income but it's very hard work, bending all day, scrabbling amongst thorns, cacti and ants nests to gather algarrafas (can't tell you the name in English because I've nevere seent hese in the UK) by the sackload for sale to the local co-op.  By the end of a day 260kg, or 12 sacks and two delieveries later, my neighbour and I pocketed the princely sum of 40 Euros.  We did this every day for a week, along with many other locals short of a bob or three, until the co-op said 'no more' for this season.  I'm not complaining though.  Less than £20 for a day's hard labour is not minimum wage for sure, but if that's what I have to do in order to keep my Spanish dream alive, then that's what I'll do.  Juan, my picking partner, says that prices have been slowly dropping, relative to the cost of living, for the past 10 years.  Before you could make good money, especially before the conversion from Pesatas to Euros, he tells me.  Not enough to be rich, but enough to keep a small house and family.  But now.....ouch!.....it doesn't go anywhere. 

Even so, the co-operative system is not something I ever came across in the UK, but here it seems that every peublo has it's cooperativa and they buy pretty much whatever you can find to pick, provided it's in season, it was not stolen (raiding a farmers fields to pick his bounty is not recommended) and it's in good condition.  They buy grapes, olives, oranges, lemons, almonds, basically whatever you've got, until they have sufficient quantities to make it commercially viable.  This way the community can produce it's local varieties of wine, cava, olive oils, olives, sugared almonds (a Casinos speciality for which it is known all over Spain), juices or other foodstuffs and all, I might add, much better quality and tasting far finer than what you might pick up at your M&S.

We've got only 3 olive trees, 2 almond trees, a fig tree and several vines but it's amazing how much they produce.  This years almond crop was destroyed by a vicious hailstorm (stones the size of golfballs, I kid you not!) in May, but even so, no pasa nada, we're stiil eating last years!  We've planted some lemons and oranges but probably won't get any fruit till next year when they are a bit bigger.  I'd never grown any veggies in the UK, but here I've got lots of space so I thought I'd give it a go.  We tried onions, courgettes, tomatoes, peppers, chillis, even some rhubarb!  It was all so easy I couldn't believe it.  Nature really is an amazing force.  Whilst the rhubarb didn't really take off, but the rest produced a yeild far higher than I ever imagined.  We also had many seedlings destroyed by the storm, but from just 4 courgette plants I was extracting at least 1 per plant per day.  Far more than you can eat without turning green!  The tomatoes are still outside in mid-October, still producing 4/5 a day.  The other plants as well are still churning it out but are perhaps on the wane now.  So next year, watch out.  If times are still tough then I'm going to start early, produce many seedlings of various veggies and fruit and then sell them on by starting a market stall.  In tough times you do what you need to do.

We've been here long enough to have a pretty good idea of how things work, what life is like and feel we have enough experience to offer an opinion on Spain and on our own lives here.  We both love it, and as tough as things are at the moment, returning to the UK is not an option we could ever consider.  The pace of life here is slower, especially in the campo, the stress and tensions I felt in the UK are all absent.  Admittedly, some of those stresses have been replaced by new ones, but somehow it's just the same.  I sleep so well, feel happier and more content than I have ever done and that is a lovely position to be in and a lovely thing to be able to say.  My health is better, I've lost more than 10kg since being here (which I think is more than 2st, but I'm not sure of my conversion rate!) and feel stronger and younger than I have in many a year.  So, if breaking my back picking fruit for a meagre supplement is what I have to do give me peace of mind then that is exactly what I shall do.  The olive harvest starts very soon, so bring it on!

Peter