A history of Spain in stickers (part 2 The Left)

One of the funny things about Spanish Stalinism (and there are very few funny things about Spanish Stalinism) is how dramatically its experiences affected the rest of its European sister parties. The legacy of its time in government during the Civil War was that the party ended up full of middle-class lefties, who wanted a Republic of order, stability and well, whisper it, capitalism. These people were also the core of the party´s elite in exile, and when they came back they behaved in the same way. Despite brief flirtations with guerrilla expeditions after World War 2 (Tito´s exploits evidently got them over-excited), they generally stuck to pretty moderate stuff when opposing the Generalisimo, even to the extent that their present trade union the CC.OO derives loosely from their infiltration of the old Franquista state-sponsored trade unions. It´s not surprising they invented Stalinism-lite aka Euro-Communism (a sort of social democratic cheerleading squad for third world revolutionaries), which then spread around Western Europe. These days they´re light on street presence, but are the largest component of third biggest party in national elections (Izqueirda Unida). You can still find their wee ones (the Unión de Juventudes Comunistas de España) running around putting up stickers like this one about the Battle of Berlin. Of course when you´re a minority of the government, nothing attracts the otherwise disillusioned kiddies like your "glorious" antifascist past and some nice red flags.

Also unsurprising, that they spawned some "return to real coke" communists (err... anti-revisionists maybe?), who go around being all early 30s sectarian. Welcome to the Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España (PCPE) and their especially charming youth section the CJC (Colectivos de Jóvenes Comunistas). They´re loving their hammer and sickles too, but not in the Reichstag planting way, but in declaring whole neighbourhoods their territory. This was in Lavapies, the city centre´s most mixed and most proley barrio. It reads Antifascist Workers Neighbourhood. Bolshier and much less mainstream than the PCE/IU, the PCPE was founded back in the 1980s, when everyone registered that the PCE weren´t going to take over, and some people got nostalgic for the idea that Marxist-Leninism might actually mean challenging capitalism. They´ve a few thousand members apparently, but never poll anywhere near six figures nationally. The kiddies website is full of affection for all sorts of noxious third-world dictatorships and other such third worldist crap that gets Rage Against the Machine fans excited.

As a interesting sideline they also seem to fish quite effectively in the pool marked ´antisocial punky squatters who are confused about what they want´, through various ´independentist youth groups´. The fact that Spain is more or less four or five different countries shoe-horned together by historical coincidence, means that some kids get terribly excited by the idea of liberating their socialist homeland. Like these funny Jaleo!!! kids (and yes, the exclamation marks are in the name). Who were busily plastering Cordoba with these smart looking posters for a free and socialist Andalucía. You see the same thing in other cities, youngsters who live in squats and want to break off pieces of Spain (almost every CSO - Occupied Social Centre in Bilbao has a flag of the Basque homeland on it...), and aren´t really sure whether they´re Anarchists, National Liberationists, Guevarists or some unworldly mix of all of the above.

Finally, there´s my lot, who probably on balance who got more material stuck to walls than anyone else in the city. I don´t know if there´s more of us, or just that we love stickers (anarchists looove stickers), but they´re everywhere. It´s a reassuring feeling to know that one of yours has already been past here recently. This one says (I think ... wasn´t sure about the expression, any Spanish speakers want to explain that one?), "Working week of 65 hours? We will see the faces!!", part of the campaign against a proposed sixty five hour working week. The CNT in Madrid these days is a couple of thousand ish I think, they´ve a nice office in Plaza Tirso de Molina (you can´t miss it there´s a big banner on the 2nd floor), which I presume was paid for or given in recompense for, all the stuff that the Francoists took off them. The CNT is apparently in a period of moderate growth after dropping first from the Civil War high of 2-3 million, to the post-Franco opening of maybe as much as 500,000, to a modern union of 10,000 members with a lot more people influenced by it. The split from the 1980s is a bit more moderate and has about six times that ...

A brief history of Spain in stickers (part 1: the right)

Politics geek that I am, whenever I see an interesting bit of graffiti or a sticker knocking about I take a quick snap with my camera phone, so's I can check it a bit later. Having a handful of these I thought I tell youse all a few brief things about the politics and history of Spain through this random collection of snippits.

First up, snapped on Calle de Goya, in the poshest part of the city, a poster for La Falange. It'd be surprising in most countries to see fascists concentrating their propaganda in the rich parts of town. Not, obviously, in Spain, where a lot of the older fortunes round that way were made off Franco's coat-tails. This lot, so I'm told are the 'official' Falange, the direct descendants of Franco's party of government. The picture, suitably enough for the area, is of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the party, executed by the Republican government in November 1936 (during the Civil War). On the very same road, still prominent (and shiny enough to be being maintained), a plaque adorns the front of a chapel anouncing that this fascist Germanophile was "fallecido por dios y espanya" (killed for God and Spain). This is apparently identical to the thousands that were placed on religious buildings across the country under the Generalisimo. In 1981, Madrid's main thoroughfare (Gran Via) had its original named restored, after 42 years as Avenida Jose Antonio.

The modern day Falange now exists as 3 small squabbling parties, arguing over a legacy. As in other countries, the obsessions of the modern far right have shifted from fear of Bolshevism and International Jewry toward more immediate concerns and La Falange participates on some basis in the broader two year old Frente Nacional, that peppers the same areas of Madrid with obscenely racist anti-immigration posters, such as the one illustrated here. The caption at the top reads 'deduce: who is last?' with an elderly Spanish man pushed to the back by various ethnic caricatures. Concluding with 'if you're Spanish, you (should) always (be) first'.

More weird and not so wonderful things than straight up, old-fashioned, Castilian fascism are to be found when venturing out of Madrid, and wandering round Seville, I found something probably unique in European politics: Carlism. Just when the rest of Europe was beginning to stop arguing about such trite nonsense as which particular line of their unelecting, sponging royalty got to be King, Spain was just getting started on a 19th Century full of revolutions and counter-revolutions aimed at founding Republics, or placing different royal lines on the throne. The hardiest challenger to the 'Alfonsine' line of the House of Bourbon, was Carlism. Carlos, the brother of King Ferdinand VII, was briefly heir to the throne, prior to Ferdinand's death, on grounds of being his closest male heir. He was then stripped of this right when it was decided, instead, that a woman would be able to accede to the throne. What he came to represent though, in a time where Spain veered between liberalism and absolute monarchy was the absolutist of the absolutist, the most interventionist notion of the Spanish throne. Now, you might wonder at this point why anyone gives a shit about this sort of thing in this day and age. After all, I saw this sticker on a electrical box in 2008 Seville. Besides which, the Spanish monarchy are absurdly popular, probably the best-loved royal house in the World.

It goes back I suppose to the great big ideological mess that is Spanish conservatism. Back in the '30s, the ostensibly fascist party in Spain (the aforementioned La Falange) were not that big a force. They did a good line is street fighting with anarchists and socialists, but the major force on the Right in pre-civil war politics was a formation called CEDA, an alliance of traditional conservative groups. It was this sector of society that backed the army in their coup d'etat and came to identify the conservative part of their identity with Franquismo and the crusade against godless Reds. So, even though Franco didn't recognise their monarch (and was fairly ambiguous about the role of the actual monarch), it came to pass that Carlism was the only ideology to really turn-out a mass social movement (Los Requetes) that voluntarily fought for Fascism, mostly landowning small/medium farmers from the Northern region of Navarra, who marched for "Dios, patria, rey" (god, country, king). These days the Comunion Tradicionalista Carlista (not to be confused with the Third Way branch of Carlism that supports national socialism and workers' self-management) pulls between 20-50,000 votes nationwide and spends its time promoting Catholic social doctrine, chiefly through intolerance of gays and abortion. They are currently the only political organisation to recognise Carlos Hugo de Borbon Parma as the rightful King of Spain (he's a university professor who lives in Brussels apparently).