I think moment like this are why Spain doesn’t get as much hate as the French or British. Their governments occasionally have a moment of being based that the other two lack.
Not really having anything to do with this post, but Sanchez is what Starmer or Macron wish they were: a politician with insane luck, good instincts and able to somehow juggle a parliament with multiple parties while pissing off all of them but not enough to have his goverment taken down.
Lol Spain is wholeheartedly worse in every way than France or Britain
Spain recognizes Palestine. It also had a homegrown anarchist movement that led one of the most successful anarchist enclaves in history.
They also suck in unique ways that France and the UK don't. They never caught up with all the social progress made in other Western European countries because they were shut off by Franco's fascist regime. They had a uniquely brutal rule over a huge chunk of the world, and led the most successful genocidal campaigns against indigenous people.
But can we really say that makes them worse than the UK and France?
As someone who’s grown up in Latin America, what I don’t understand is why Spain gets a pass, every single fucking time in the eyes of the West and pretty much world over?
They don’t even have the excuse of being precious little Italy who didn’t have the vestiges of a massive fucking empire dating all the way to the mid 20th century.
Spain is the most fash country in the West, by far.
Spain may be the western country that’s done the most historic evil but there is no way that modern day Spain is worse than modern day France, US, or UK.
Spain may be the western country that’s done the most historic evil
It would be UK, actually, with US second. France, Spain and Germany are tied for the third place.
Oh to be clear I wasn’t saying definitively that Spain was the worst, just that it could be possible. Modern day Spain isn’t even in the competition
why Spain gets a pass, every single fucking time in the eyes of the West
The Spanish Empire was functionally kaput at the end of the 19th century. The US/UK take more of the blame because they gobbled up the territories that Spain used to hold. It's the same reason why the US takes more flack for our involvement in Vietnam than the French. Just a game of hot potato. You get the blame for being the last guy to hold the bag.
I don't think anyone is suggesting the Conquistadors are somehow absolved of blame. But Spain, as an institution, hasn't been a global player in nearly a century.
They don’t even have the excuse of being precious little Italy
That's exactly the excuse they have, practically speaking. And Italy gets tons of shit for being a hotbed of vile Catholicism.
Protestantism is just as bad. It's the christianity, not the sect. For that matter nearly all religions are problematic.
Spain gets a what? What are you even talking about??
That "pass" (if it even exists) is because current Spain is nowhere near as relevant as France, US or the UK in the world stage. Also lmao at saying Spain is more fascists than any of them.
update your knowledge on its more recent sins: madrid sent in police forces to arrest people engaging a peaceful and popular vote to separate and maintains arrest warrants for its leaders that no one else in europe will cooperate with since it's so clearly politically motivated.
they're also the strong opposition force against scotland joining the eu out of fears of encourage it's own separatists movements.
they've walled off the asylum process from its enclaves in africa; cueta & melilla; with police forces; high walls; high fees; and decades long wait times that it's no longer reasonable to assume that you can expect to get your asylum appeal ever heard while you're still alive.
Thank you for the info.
Can you think of examples of Spanish repression of the separatist movements that compares to the French ban on religious face coverings and the UK's campaign against Palestinian solidarity activists? I ask because my main frame of reference for evaluating these countries is the geopolitical context; Spain is essentially a semi-periphery country nowadays while the UK and France maintain a claim to their previous imperial hegemony through neo-colonialism. Spain's era has come and gone almost entirely so they only wish to retain their own state's stability, these campaigns would not extend to the level of racial hatred that you see in neo-colonialist states. With that framing in mind, Spain's repression of separatist movements has a similar character to Russia silencing dissenters or South Korea banning pro-DPRK speech. They are not commendable actions and should be understood as elements of Fascism (capitalism in crisis), yet do not have the historical character that would bring about the crushing forces of imperialism to a larger group of people, like what the UK and France attempt to do both with their domestic policies and their imperialist foreign policy.
spanish repression has been much more violent and much larger scale than either of the episodes you've shared; Islamophobia is less common due to the virtue of spain having large muslim populations its entire existence and being dominated by them in the distant past.
spain does the same things the french and the british do, it's just out of the spotlight of the anglosphere and smaller in impact due it not being a world super power anymore; as you've demonstrated & explained here.
That's dated. Like pointing to the Romanovs and complaining about the dark legacy of Russian imperialism.
The Spanish Civil War, combined with the Catalonian independence struggle, has turned Spanish politics on its head over the last century. They're much better today than the Brits (who cling desperately to their imperial legacy) or the French (who keep trying to reinvent the Bourbon Dynasty) simply by virtue of not being a country full of fucking Monarchists.
Franco was in power until the 1970's, I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. It's one of the most fascist and racist countries in the entirety of the West.
Franco was in power until the 1970's
He was fighting insurgencies well into the 1960s. Then he passed a civil war in Basque Country to his successors, who fought insurrections into 2011. Spain is a fractured mess of competing local interests. It isn't a globe-spanning empire run out of a state department in Madrid.
It's one of the most fascist and racist countries in the entirety of the West.
Its one of the least consequential European states, in large part because of how internally divided it continues to be. There are definitely fascists in Spain and quite a few of them are in high office. But is your average Spanish fascist more consequential than Erdogan in Turkey or Trudeau in Canada or Modi in India or Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea? More consequential than the Mayor of New York? Not even close.
Since 1990, you'd be hard pressed to name a PM in Spain half as fascist as Tony Blair.
How is India comsequential? It’s one of the poorest countries on the planet, they haven’t had a colonial presence for at least half a millenia
How is India comsequential?
The country with 1/6th the world's population, located at the center of the largest continent and playing host to both enormous technological and manufacturing logistical hubs?
The nuclear armed power that put a probe on Mars for $75M? The ultra-national religious wedge between the Islamic states and China?
Can't think of any reasons.
How is India consequential
What 0 theory does to a MF
India is a BRICS member, has enormous importance in light industry, agriculture, the service industry, and is a major military power. The suggestion that a nuclear power with the literal highest population on Earth is less consequential than Spain is pretty unserious.
Friendly reminder that Iran is the only nation on earth for Persians. Iran has a right to exist. It must maintain its sovereignty against the aggressive territorial incursions of European expropriators, Russian invaders, and South Afrikkkaner settler colonists.
Funny how opinions differ when your country has no horse in the Middle Eastern oil race.
Good but I'm not voting for that fucking wreck of a party lmao
I don’t know the person and they be a nazi, but that’s not what the quote says. It directly after says the worst genocide by Israel against Palestinians.
yeah then they could of dropped the century, also this is not the Nakba
Ty sleve, I did know, I was tryna make a funny so i put the : thonk : emoji
Well, yes and no.
Podemos split/got partially absorbed a few years ago into Sumar and the current Podemos. Sumar is currently the minority party in government and they suck, they are terrible at reading the room and don't realize how much they are pissing off/dissappointing every leftist in the country by being a cross between Ned Flanders and Ted Lasso.
Is the current Podemos better than them? Yes, obviously. Much much better and Ione is an ok leader.
BUT, Podemos was the minoritarian party during the previous Sanchez government (got replaced by Sumar) and they really seem to want you to forget it. It doesn't matter how much they laud the palestinian or the saharaui causes if they did nothing to help them when they were in government (and no, i don't care that they didn't hold the foreign affairs office).
Tldr: the statement is good and refreshing, but it's fundamentally being used by Podemos to distance themselves from PSOE and Sumar, if they were in government (as the inority party) their position would be the same as the current government.
yikes, didn't catch that on the first read
