Ada Colau, Fascist?
Small but noisy protest outside of city hall Barcelona, against the success of Ada Colau in building a new coalition for local government that has denied the mayorship to a member of the nationalist ERC party.
Ada Colau is a progressive left wing politician, and about as far as you can get from fascism. I asked the protesters if I had heard correctly, and without irony they replied that "yes, Ada Colau is a fascist". This was apparently because she has received (unconditional) support from another former mayoral candidate, Manuel Valls, who apparently is also not only a fascist but, worst still, French. If that sounds like a joke, consider that the former leader of ERC is on record speaking about a distinctive Catalan genetic identity as justification for Catalan independence. A more serious justification might be that Vall's party, the centre-right Ciutadans, has elsewhere in Spain controversially undertaken electoral pacts with the support of the far right. However, there is no indication of such pacts here in Barcelona.
It is frightening that in a country that was until comparatively recently a genuine fascist dictatorship, terms like "facist" have become devaluated to the point where they are meaningless. Under Franco, protests such as these were criminalised and the protesters would have been arrested. That they are free to protest rather undermines the protesters' claim that the Spain of today is still a fascist dictatorship.
Ada Colau, Fascist?
Small but noisy protest outside of city hall Barcelona, against the success of Ada Colau in building a new coalition for local government that has denied the mayorship to a member of the nationalist ERC party.
Ada Colau is a progressive left wing politician, and about as far as you can get from fascism. I asked the protesters if I had heard correctly, and without irony they replied that "yes, Ada Colau is a fascist". This was apparently because she has received (unconditional) support from another former mayoral candidate, Manuel Valls, who apparently is also not only a fascist but, worst still, French. If that sounds like a joke, consider that the former leader of ERC is on record speaking about a distinctive Catalan genetic identity as justification for Catalan independence. A more serious justification might be that Vall's party, the centre-right Ciutadans, has elsewhere in Spain controversially undertaken electoral pacts with the support of the far right. However, there is no indication of such pacts here in Barcelona.
It is frightening that in a country that was until comparatively recently a genuine fascist dictatorship, terms like "facist" have become devaluated to the point where they are meaningless. Under Franco, protests such as these were criminalised and the protesters would have been arrested. That they are free to protest rather undermines the protesters' claim that the Spain of today is still a fascist dictatorship.