Where are the Reds?

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has asked the presidents of all regions for a list of buildings, both public and private, such as hotels, hostels and sports centres, which can be used as quarantine centres to house those diagnosed with Covid-19, with few or no symptoms. CREDIT: Shutterstock

VOX wants to prohibit pro-independence political parties and “those who do not renounce Marxism,” the party’s creator Santiago Abascal announced.

We all know who the pro-independence parties but it’s trickier identifying those who are still clinging to Marxism.

There’s Podemos although they have reluctantly renounced Chavism and Bolivarism, so presumably they’ve renounced Marxism too.

Abascal could be thinking of Mas Madrid as its leading figure, retired Supreme Court judge Manuela Carmena, was once a communist.  And possibly Abascal would take a potshot at Iñigo Errejon who feels he still belongs to Podemos but runs in the forthcoming regional elections on Carmena’s ticket.

And of course, there’s Izquierda Unida, the remnants of Spain’s Communist Party which had flourished when clandestine but dwindled and diminished after it was legalised in 1977.

The only Reds these days are the Spanish football side but Abascal will doubtless search zealously to find reasons for banning anything and anyone not in line with Vox doctrine.

Welcome to the dictatorship. 

No second chance

SUSANA DIAZ, the former president of Andalucia and the PSOE primaries candidate who was wiped out by her eternal rival, Pedro Sanchez, is unhappy.

She already had enough to be unhappy about, having managed to lose Andalucia for the PSOE after almost 37 years of uninterrupted control.

Had she not done so, perhaps she would have had more say in putting together the electoral lists for the April 28th general election. 

As it is, she must put up with the dearth of Susanistas on the lists. 

If Diaz and her closest collaborators made a hash of the regional elections on December 12 what makes her think she can do any better now?

A simple answer

WRITING in El Pais recently on Brexit, Pedro Sanchez referred to a referendum as an instrument that attempts to provide a simple solution to a complex problem.

Sanchez was referring to the June 2016 referendum but reading between the lines he could also have been referring to Cataluña.

Sanchez’s tone was disapproving but if only Cataluña had been allowed to hold a referendum!

Not Mas’s November 9 semi-referendum of 2014 or 2017’s cobbled-together October 1 disaster where many Catalans took the cynical old advice “Vote early and vote often.”

Spain’s Constitution does not envisage independence referendums so it was never going to happen.  But if a referendum could have been held before the separatists got the bit between their teeth, Catalan Remainers would have won.

It would have been a very simple solution to a complex problem that is now tearing Spain apart.

Not a dickybird

THE politicians are hawking their wares for April 28.

Constitutionalists focus on Cataluña and its indivisibility although none have any bright ideas on how to keep it glued to Spain.

When not talking about Cataluña everyone’s preaching equality with Vox and the Partido Popular going off at a predictable tangent.

What about the economy, what about jobs, the things voters really care about?

Not a dickybird. Just a few tweets at most.

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Cassandra

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