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Edited on Sun Dec-31-06 10:28 PM by NV1962
Yeah, I'll readily admit to having a short fuse when it comes to the anti-González campaign that Pedro J. Ramirez spearheaded with "his" newspaper. It's a real pity that other reference newspapers like Ya and Diario16 (for which I've worked by the way - and from where Ramirez came) have disappeared; they were also quite decent, but (alas) didn't appeal to the political / social faults across the Spanish landscape that you mention. For some reason, El País has "survived" (pardon the euphemism) in spite of not really being a truly propagandistic tool when compared, specifically, El Mundo as a tool for the hardliner Acebes/Aznar crowd of PP. The more traditional conservatives still have ABC - a newspaper that I am actually a bit fond of, since it's survived Franco's era when it had oddly the status of being "on the edge" as a traditionally monarchist paper. My late grandfather always read ABC with something of nostalgia...
But I'm getting horribly adrift here.
Since you mention the GAL crusade, I'll give you my take on one of the most absurd, by all means criminal but politically incredibly abused chapter in Spain's national politics. I suppose that you're one of the very, very few people in the US that understand what I mean when I say that the current "war on terror" reminds me an awful lot of the GAL episode. In its most bare-bone essence, the stench of doubly criminal incompetence is overwhelmingly similar. Doubly criminal, as the cabinet-level involvement is a major treason to the weight of responsibility that should govern the minds of those who govern in a representative democracy. I believe that Rafael Vera (junior cabinet member) and José Barrionuevo (senior cabinet members) should have been kept in prison, just for that reason alone.
But there's also the gigantic difference with the current cabinet in the WH: if you've studied the persona of Felipe González, you'd know that he's not only far too intelligent, but also far too sensitive to that "governor's responsibility" to even be believable as someone who would even tolerate a whackjob initiative like the GAL was. GAL was so incredibly botched, rife with incompetence and brutishly stoopid that even thinking about González "giving the order" (or even suggesting it in a minimally serious fashion) is just plain ridiculous.
Look at any of the "big pet projects" undertaken during the González era: the high-speed train (which, by the way, is much more related to ETA as its concession to French Alsthom was practically "payback" for France's new willingness, starting with François Miterrand, to revert their Franco-era inspired laissez-faire attitude toward ETA), the world expo in Seville, the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona - they were all set up with "success" as the only acceptable outcome. So here's a very simple question: do you really believe that González would ever, EVER give an order to set up a clandestine and paramilitary organization to wipe out ETA if their success had not been a foregone conclusion? I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that in the strictly hypothetical case that González would have given the order, or even "simply" approved the creation of GAL (something he would never do: too few people realize or simply know how much González' personal political career and motivation are fed directly by his own experiences as a clandestine Socialist and lawyer) he wouldn't have tolerated the absurd incompetence that (in the end, fortunately!) have doomed GAL to fold and collapse. Had it not been for the violence and the number of their oftentimes perfectly innocent victims, they'd be buried under national scornful laughter and ridicule of that backwater amateurish hack project.
I am convinced that Vera and Barrionuevo were behind it. I am also convinced that they did it keeping González in the dark - until he found out. I can almost hear Felipe's screams of rage...
Now, I think you're mistaken if you think El País didn't report on GAL. It was front page news. And it's all in the archives - fortunately, El País' archive can be consulted, from its first edition in 1975, on-line. The difference with El Mundo is that El Mundo went for what they constantly reported as "Mr X" - which Ramirez never failed to insist was González himself. The relentless sensationalist, insinuating and directly accusatory articles of El Mundo certainly made for more loud headlines - but I don't see any reason whatsoever to believe that El País gave less attention, either in quality or quantity, to the whole sordid GAL affair.
Returning to my "war on terror" parallel: it'd take someone of the "honestly driven but brutally incompetent" stature of, say, José Barrionuevo (or George W Bush) to set up an incompetent and inherently botched "project" like GAL, just as the whole idiotic "war on terror" operation is one gigantic clusterfuck due to the clamorous incompetence at the top.
Unlike the "war on terror", which is run from the top (and it shows!) the whole sordid GAL project was run from a few hardly competent and isolated morons (and that shows, as well...) near the top. In the US, the top guy is an obvious incompetent brute; in Spain, Barrionuevo and Vera were.
El Mundo was certainly aggressive - they didn't do much "investigative" reporting, however - unless you count the seeded, and premeditated and tendentious "putting the conclusion before the cart" reporting to nail González as the key objective of the Ramirez-Aznar duo as "reporting", just as the Madrid train bombings and El Mundo's insidious, suggestive and even false reports don't deserve the label "reporting".
As much as it is true that El Mundo shouldn't be condemned as a whole (with many, many top notch journalists doing a fabulous job - as illustrated by their reports during the invasion of Iraq - clearly breaking with Aznar on that issue) I believe it is irresponsible to consider Ramirez' personal vendetta-style campaign against González, with GAL as his projectile of choice, as deserving any kudos, by considering it "investigative reporting". The term witch hunt is far more appropriate than journalism, in my opinion.
The GAL episode has been and still is a very painful lesson for Spain in how to behave in a democracy under duress; El Mundo, sadly, was part of the condition to overcome.
In many respects they have (again, their anti-war in Iraq position is a remarkable instance) but I'm not taking arguments that El Mundo did anything better than (for example) Cambio16, ABC or El País did on unearthing (and indicting) the hideous creature that was GAL.
However: yes, I fully agree that the "culture war" that grips the US is mirrored with painful accuracy in Spain, too. There is no middle ground between the Left (mostly PSOE, but also IU and what's left of it, and of course the "regionalist" leftist parties) and the Right. There is one big, fat, honking difference though: once the perception of foul play sets in (as happened under González, under the weight of corruption, GAL and just too many years in government) it's lights out for the government in Spain. Not so in the US; here (in the US) there's even a tendency to "move on, forgive and forget". Remarkably, Spaniards appear to vote with a sense of cautious electoral apprehension: it appears that Spaniards want to give the opportunity to "the other team" much earlier but also more tentatively to "the opposition team" than is the case in the US. In a sense, Spaniards put the alternative on probation much sooner, but on a shorter leash. In the US, once the critical mass leads to the opposite team, it's a big swooshing landslide. It happened in 1994 then favoring the GOP here; I think it's getting now to the point where the Dems will be swept into the WH with a Congressional majority.
For an example of the "early but careful" alternations in Spain, González first won on a very small margin, to take a whopping majority in the next election; Aznar won with a razon thin margin, but was given a big majority afterwards, too, after earning the trust that he wouldn't screw around with the basics (he left the pensions, social security, public health care and public education realms alone, in spite of relatively small and mostly "politically cosmetic" changes). And now Zapatero, too: if he manages to wrestle both ETA back to negotiations, and PP into a more reasonable opposition, he'll win big, next time. So, in that sense, Spaniards apparently learned more in a few days full of governmental lies, distortion and hollow propaganda after the train bombings to change their mind -- practically overnight, no less than a 5% swing of the electorate -- than the American electorate did in the three years following 9/11 and the almost two years in Iraq. Of course, there's a host of issues that separate the situations; there's quite a "temperamental" difference.
But the "culture war" is most definitely there, in both countries. With incredible divisiveness and acrimony on both sides. To the point that I'm believing that both countries may well end up reacquainting themselves with the horrors of a Civil War, unless the trails of fascism are permanently wiped out. In Spain, PP absorbed the far right without digestion; in the US, they thrive in the GOP. And in both countries, the right consists of one solid block; it wouldn't be a bad thing at all if there'd be a fraction to open up more traditional alternatives like "Christian Democrats", "fiscal conservatives" (aka fiscal liberals / libertarians) and "fringe right"; just as is the case in the great majority of Western European countries.
Anyhow, I find it fascinating to compare the two situations side-by-side.
I look forward to seeing how Zapatero gets both PP (and their pet victim clubs) and ETA in tow again; let's see how the next President of the USA gets this "war on terror" back on the right track, along with the dangerously teetering national economy in the US.
In both cases, before it's too late... We live in very dangerous times.
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