Spanish electors did indeed punish their rightwing government in the aftermath of the terrible carnage in Madrid but one or two neglected statistics suggest that there may have been more to the Popular party’s defeat than the Iraq war and the revanchist ambitions of Al-Qaeda.
Voters in Spain’s historic ‘nations’ – Catalonia, the Basque country and Galicia turned up in even greater numbers than the rest of Spain to humble the PP’s candidates.
In Catalonia, for example, an unusually high turnout gave the PSOE, the Socialists nearly half a million more votes and more indeed, than they achieved in the golden years of Felipe Gonzales. In Euskadi, as the Basque region is now known, the PP also suffered heavily at the hands of local moderate nationalists and even in Galicia, long a Bastion of the right, regional sentiment powered an unprecedented Socialist success.
The explanation for this powerful political reverse lies not in Baghdad but the small French town of Perpignan. It was here, just over the border with Spain, where Josep Carod Rovira, number two in the Catalan regional government, held a secret meeting in January with ETA, the Basque terrorist group back in January.
His meeting was revealed to the press and Carod Rovira, who leads a leftwing Republican Party, was sacked from the coalition headed by the Catalan socialists. Thus ETA and how to deal with it became an election issue long before March 11. The Popular party condemned the left as being ‘soft on terror ‘ and wrapped itself in the flag of Spanish unity. For a while it looked as if this tactic was paying dividends. But the election showed that the PP had simply given its opponents another reason for going to the ballot box. Carod Rovira was elected to the Spanish Cortes and with eight seats, now heads the fourth largest party in the chamber. But the Caso Carod and its aftermath still has the potential to unpick another stitch in Spain’s increasingly frayed system of devolved government – an unravelling which has powerful lessons for devolutionists in the UK.
The first lesson is that devolution is a process, not an event. When Spain’s fledgling democracy created powerful regional; governments in the historic Basque and Catalan nations, the hope was that autonomy would satisfy the nationalist hunger that had riven the Spanish Republic. But Catalonia, the Basque country and to a lesser extent Galicia, have all continued to demand and have been granted, extra powers from Madrid.
Secondly, a nationalist or indeed, regionalist presence will not necessarily be confined to the local stage. For eight years, between 1990 and 1998, nationalist parties used their votes in the Spanish parliament to demand concessions from successive minority governments – first from the Socialists, then from the PP.
Thirdly, hard line attitudes towards nationalist sentiment seem to have proved counterproductive. Since 1998 Spanish premier Aznar’s tough line towards the Basques has been blamed for driving the traditionally moderate Basque Nationalist Party, the PNV into a collision course with the government. The PNV is planning a referendum on union with Spain – and was heading for a major constitutional crisis that will still prove a headache for the new Socialist government. In Catalonia, the PP has managed to unite all parties in the region against it – even its former conservative allies in the Catalan nationalist party to demand that Spain’s democratic constitution of 1978 be torn up and rewritten.
Finally, there’s a lesson for national parties on the left, like Labour, which tend to favour devolution. Any significant degree of autonomy will create tension between the centre and the devolved regions. Careful management is required if that tension is not to explode into open conflict. In his handling of the Carod case, the Socialist PM of Catalonia came under fire from his colleagues for not dumping his deputy earlier. The criticism came not only from Madrid, but other parts of Spain, where regional leaders have long envied the extra powers that Barcelona has gathered. The resulting angry, and public, exchanges may yet sour the PSOE’s victory celebrations. The new Spanish PM, Zapatero, has shown himself amenable to further change in the relationship with the historic regions, but he will find himself at odds with powerful elements in his party.
If all this sounds like a warning to halt the devolution train, it’s not. Spain’s autonomous regions make its politics exciting and vibrant and have powered much of the country’s economic success – which is far more evenly distributed than in the UK. But this particular Spanish lesson means that future Labour prime ministers will have to worry not just what the Opposition is up to – but what’s happening in the party headquarters of Edinburgh, Cardiff and, perhaps one day, Manchester and Newcastle, too.