How Spain voted.....and ·not· voted.

national | miscellaneous | news report

Monday May 26, 2003 11:50

by O' as if

barcelona Catalonia EU

yesterday Municipal elections invited registered voters of the Spanish state to chose from the lists

for city and town councils. Some of these municipal entities wield considerable power over the lives of their inhabitants. The results were calculated on the basis of votes passed by those who exercised their right to be registered and to vote for the people they were allowed vote for.

Spanish democracy is a funny thing.

The PP (Partido Popular which is the party of Aznar with roots in the Franco dicatorship civil service a thus may be considered the reconstructed fascist party) has won lots of councilor seats.
Madrid and many other cities shall continue to be PP.

The PSOE (akin to the new labour party of the UK) have not won lots of seats.
Their losses to the left were most notable in Barcelona and the Autonomy of Catalúnya.
in Barcelona city the PSC (catalan branch of the PSOE) lost five of it's twenty seats. The Republican nationalist Catalan ERC "leftrepublicancatalan" won five up three, the ICV "initiative green&marxist left" won five up two.
Barcelona will thus be pacted council from now between green, red, catalanist, and Spanish Blairite neo-liberal capitalist.

Other interesting results included those of Galizia and Euskadi.
the PP shall continue to rule the councils of Galizia.
in the Basque countries the EH formation was disallowed from presenting itself for election and all its councilers have thus been lost, this varied from two to seven members of each Basque city. The PP increased their representation by one councilor here and there.

Over all the votes passed caused smiles for the PP on TV last night. In Catalunya the ERC smiled most widely, but the ICV are quite smiley too. First off impressions are that the Spanish people that vote do not all vote for the PP, but many of them ·do·.
And in Catalonia the rise in support for the ERC and ICV who themselves have pacted before and occasionally can be seen to work on many important levels ·together· with ·Left· and ·Alternative· groupings can maybe seen as a good thing.
Participation varied between 58% and 74% across the peninsula. There is thus a large section of the registered electorate who are _·not·_ voting.

It is worthy of comment that none of those awaiting residency or work papers in Spain mostly found in the cities of Madrid and Barcelona are afforded the right to register to vote, thus to vote or ·not· to vote.

Application of simple mathematics shows that once again we are to be ruled in Barcelona, by a rightwing groupings considered acceptable to approximately 4 in 7 of those who voted yesterday. People who quite obviously hold a markedly different political vision for the future from those who voted in Catalonia yesterday. Catalan nationalists today speak of the importance of their greatest victory in 25 years the 25 years of the social-democratic party system in Spain. Basque nationalists today speak of the performance of both the PNV and PP in the Basque regions after 25 years of the social-democratic party system that has just allowed for over 20 political represantatives to be illegalised.

Others in Barcelona will be intrigued to see several councilers elected on an "@bstenció" platform which included immediate Independence.

I did ·not vote·

maybe someone who did might write an explanation,..