When I mention Spanish politics to an
English person they invariably say how corrupt it is. I say that I think the
politics in most countries is corrupt but that at least the Spanish admit it, unlike
the English. Acknowledging it may well be the first stage to cleaning up.
Just over four years ago, Spain started
the Indignados movement and people protested peacefully across the country. It
took off across the world. In what I am seeing in the recent local elections, I
suspect that Spain is about to lead the way again.
In the European elections in 2014, a new
party called Podemos (we can) got five “diputados” elected. One of them was
from the city where I live, Cartagena. While Podemos might be too far left for
many of us there were things that impressed the general public, most notably
that they chose to give away two thirds of their salary and also that they set
up discussion groups arround Spain to find what the ordinary voter wanted,
Another party, Ciudadanos (Citizens) came
first from Catalonia. While it is more to the right than Podemos it also was
calling for “transparencia” and an end to the old corrupt ways. With these two
parties, credible alternatives were there for those who no longer fancied PP or
PSOE, the two old parties that had held sway for many years and were riddled
with corruption.
The local elections in May saw a great
many new faces elected in town halls all over Spain. While these councillors
may possibly become corrupt in time, most are not at the start and have entered
with altruistic motives. This in itself is a novelty. While the new parties
were not generally strong enough to provide Mayors they were often able to
forge alliances with existing parties to swing the vote away from PP:
To explain this in more detail I shall
unfold the full story of what happened in the local elections in Cartagena.
Cartagena is a small city with just over 200 thousand inhabitants. It has been
important historically at various times in ancient history and is also one of Spain´s
largest ports. The story of the election has a fairy tale quality. The feral
cats of the city also played their part.
I come into this tale in the way that
Pippin and Merry came into the story of the Storming of Isengard. The people of
Cartagena in a sense resembled the ents as they were fundamentally good, slow
to anger and had put up with a lot. Over the last few years I joined a number
of demonstrations on various matters. The first was over building on Monte
Sacro. Monte Sacro was one of the five hills that Cartagena was founded on. It
had not been properly excavated, but the Council decided to term a chunk of its
rock and the earth alongside as a “solar”, a building site. Permissions were
granted in spite of all archaeological considerations and work on a block of
flats began. I demonstrated for a year and made friends and acquaintances
galore through this. We failed to save the hill from this desecration, though
various denuncias were made. There is now a half-built block of flats there
with some damaged city wall beneath its concrete. It is probable that it will
stay half-built. I also demonstrated on other issues that felt important to me,
most were connected to the environment or saving historic areas or buildings. I
was invariably the only English person there. Some were surprised I bothered as
I was not born in Cartagena or even Spain. I explained that I believed that the
“patrimonio” was a part of world heritage and important to us all. Sometimes
people said it made them feel they must demonstrate at least as much as the
English woman who had joined them.
A few months before the 2011 elections I
became part of a small party hoping to get a candidate in. They made me their secretary
for the environment, in part because I was the chief hill-walker amongst them
and got to see and record some places few others went to. I have been writing a
book on the Sierra Minera for many years and hope to finish it in the next few
months. Part of my researches included checking out old mines and quarries and
the vast tracts of uninhabited land around them. Our party didn´t get enough
votes for a councillor but I learned a lot about the local political system and
made friends also.
At this period, I went on a walk known as
the Ruta de las Fortalezas. It was 50 kilometres across 4 mountains and
organised by the local military. This made me begin to study the history of the
local fortifications. I became interested particularly in the Cantonal War of 1873.
I felt an amused satisfaction that Cartagena was actually a separate canton for
6 months and minting its own coinage. Most years I go up the San Julian
mountain to celebrate this on the evening of July the 12th. Someone runs up a
flag of the Cantonal colour, blood red, and we sit about sharing food. It´s a
way of commemorating an interesting piece of history that the local council does not choose to
celebrate. In 2014, I was bottle-feeding several kittens that had been dumped
at birth. My son was willing to mind them in the morning but not in the evening
while I went out. This meant that I went to a different unofficial celebration
of the Cantonal War on Mount Atalaya. This was the area which was connected
with the betrayal which ended the War. I had been invited to participate by the
younger members of Movimiento Ciudadano, a party with just one councillor in
the Ayuntamiento. Again this ceremony involved running up a flag and reading
speeches. It was here that I met José Lopez, the true star of the local
election story. On the way up the mountain he cleaned up various bits of
rubbish that others had left there and put them in carrier bags to dispose of
later. He then invited the dozen or so of us for sardines in a local restaurant
near a sports centre. I was generally impressed with him as a man who was
willing to clear up other people´s rubbish and listen to the opinions of the
people. He also seemed to have a kind of energy and charisma I googled his history afterwards and found
that he was a baker´s son who had made a business out of coffee and now had
plantations in Nicaragua. The average Spanish baker often has a coffeeshop
alongside where you can enjoy coffee and cakes.
In story after story in local papers I
realised that José Lopez was fighting a lone battle against corruption. I began
to be impressed that one man on his own could be so effective without other
councillors backing him. The fact that he was a successful businessman helped
him be less frightened as politicians tried to sue him for defamation. Many
others would have backed down in the circumstances.
The Cantonal War can sound a bit like
Passport to Pimlico but it is a significant story to many who seek to defend
Cartagena. It was a bloody war with a great loss of lives and property. What is
important to many these days is that it was a period when Cartagena was
independent and also had such strength it took national and international
forces plus a betrayal to subdue it. It has a special resonance for
“cantonalistas” who want to see Cartagena as a province separate from Murcia.
In my time with a small party in 2010 to
2011 I learned that Cartagena has 27 council seats in the Ayuntamiento. Each
party has to provide a list of 30 names to fill these 27 seats and provide 3
spares. Cartagena had been safely PP for 20 years, but the emergence of various
scandals including the large corruption case known as Operación Punica began to
eat away at the solidarity of the PP vote.
Lots of seemingly unnecessary public
works were being done. Squares were being renovated and ruined in the process.
Ancient trees were moved so often I began to liken the Mayoress to Saruman in
my head. The PSOE Mayor who was in
charge for 4 years before the Mayoress was arrested. He had the Mayoress´
credit card on him at the time (they were
friends). This was the card used for expenses. This resulted in one of the best
pre-election jokes. The Mayoress, Pilar Barreiro, was running a publicity campaign consisting
of various PP citizens saying “Soy Pilar” (I am Pilar) then going on to say why.
Myself and others made spoof videos saying why we weren´t Pilar, but by far the
best offering came from someone who put a picture of the arrested former PSOE
Mayor with Soy Pilar on it, then explained below that he must be Pilar because
he had a credit card with her name on it.
With all this going on, the PP vote
shrank to way below that necessary numbers to confer an automatic right to
choose the Mayor. Yet another matter lowered their popularity: The Councillor
for Health sent a very unpleasant letter to the head of a small charity, Cuatro
Gatos, that helps stray cats and had been given leave to run 5 colonies in the
city centre. That charity is run by a long-term friend of mine. What Ana had
done wrong was question the running of the dog pound which was receiving
300,000 euros a year and put dogs down rather fast. Although her colonies were
all sterlised with money from Brigitte Bardot´s charities the letter threatened
to put them all down unless she turned in a plan for mass vaccination,
chipping, etcetera in an impossibly short space of time. They were offering no
money to help her do this.
There was a mass demonstration for animal
rights where several local political parties offered solidarity. Ana got more
than 11,000 signatures on a petition and got international animal welfare
societies interested. People like myself tweeted how bad putting down cats
would be for tourism. The Council did not apologise or withdraw its
threats but instead pretended to the
press it had never made them once they saw they were getting bad publicity. Not
the brightest move when their letter´s wording is available online.
At the same time this was going on, Ana
had joined Ciudadanos and decided to stand.
She was third on their list and got elected. Though I did not vote for
this party I immediately congratulated her saying that there was now a voice
for the cats in the Ayuntamiento.
I watched the numbers of votes counted
online round midnight on the 24th of May with some trepidation. Another PP
victory could mean a mass feline slaughter perhaps. The final count gave 10
seats to PP, 6 to PSOE, 5 to Movimiento Ciudadano, 3 to Ciudadanos and 3 to
Cartagena Si Se Puede (connected to Podemos). There was hope in these numbers. Before
June 13th a pact had to be made. Only 14 seats would give the chance to elect a
Mayor. With so much bad behaviour from PP, there was noone left for them to
cosy up to. Ciudadanos might have been a possibility if they hadn´t threatened
the cats. But now, Ciudadanos was pro-animal thanks to input from Ana. Neither
was Movimento Ciudadano a possibility, as José Lopez had been proving a scourge
to the Mayoress. At this point she resigned and not before time. The reason given was to make an
accord between the parties. But the two PP members who tried to negotiate
included the councillor who wanted to slay the cats and who had not been on
good terms with José Lopez judging by other stories on the internet.
Relations broke down almost immediately.
In the days that followed, Movimiento Ciudadano provided a list of mínimum
conditions for an alliance. It was a bold strategy. There seemed to be brief
accords with the other parties apart from PP. In the last day or two all seemed
to have gone wrong with what appeared to be a power struggle for the position of
Mayor between MC and PSOE. The Cartagena Si Se Puede councillors offered to
mediate. On the 13th, I was depressed, thinking victory would go by default to
PP. Even the body language confirmed this with José Lopez looking angry as he
voted. I watched it streaming online as all places in the town hall were taken
by relatives. In a moment of high drama it turned out that there was a last
minute alliance between 3 parties. I began to get an inkling when the ladies of
Cartagena Si Se Puede put their votes in the urn with a look of satisfaction.
They reminded me of the Graces with their quiet role in all this. Ciudadanos it turned out had agreed to turn
in blank votes to help. José Lopez, the scourge of corrupt politicians, is now
Mayor for two years, while the head of PSOE, Ana Belén Castejón will be
Mayoress for the following two.
What a wonderful fairy tale ending that
the baker´s son who was given the worst room in the Ayuntamiento to wage his lone
war against corruption is now the man in office. I also felt some satisfaction
seeing the look on the face of the would-be cat slayer. His expression closely resembled
that of a toad that had sat on a grenade. Viva Cartagena.
All over Spain, interesting stories are
unfolding from towns sick of corruption. What a wonderful world it could be if
all the Mayors were decent. Let´s hope Spain can show the way.
Fiona Pitt-Kethley
