Irish incommodate Spanish ambassador with questions about torture and democracy

The visit of the Spanish ambassador in Ireland to the city of Cork was not any pleasure for her it seems. Upon her arrival to the University of that city, she was received with banners that over here would have caused, no doubt, at least a riot police charge or several. But not in Ireland, what makes me wonder if the Irish are not sufficiently "democratic" as they do not beat, arrest and torture pro-Basque demonstrators enough it seems.

Over here it is common knowledge that "democratic" worth is measured only by the degree of hostility towards Basques. The more shamelessly aggressive and intolerant, the more "democratic". These Irish certainly seem to need a course on "democracy" by great Spanish "democrats" like Manuel Fraga (minister of interior with Franco, responsible of several deaths by police in workers' protests) or Felipe González (widely known to be the top chief of the death squad GAL).

 

In her conference at the university, where she seems to have attempted to correct the Irish "democratic defects" by exposing the excellences of Spanish most advanced "democracy", she was forced to face many disturbing (and no doubt "undemocratic") questions which would never be tolerated in an advanced "democracy" like the Kingdom of Spain. 

A Kurdish student asked: "If Spain is democratic, why is it not allowed that Catalan and Basque peoples make a referendum to find out if they want or not independence?"

Another student asked: "Why don't you negotiate with the Basque independentist movement now that ETA is making a truce?"

Obviously they do not understand what "democracy" means: a label to be waved on any occasion by whoever is the boss. regardless of anything else. Even Franco had his own style of "democracy"... it was called "organic democracy". No doubt Spaniards were already five hundred years ago teaching the "undemocratic" American natives lessons of "democracy": work, obey and shut up. 

Source: La Haine, via Cuestionatelotodo. Sarcasm is to be blamed upon me alone.

Note: the protests were organized by the Committee of Solidarity with Euskal Herria and Ógra Shinn Féin.

Condemning violence? Depends who, when... which was the question?

José Luis also makes another excellent point today at Cuestionatelotodo: if the Law of Political Parties demands that, for a party to be legal, it has to condemn violence, then how come the main Spanish political parties are still legal? 

According to the latest revision of the Law of Political Parties if a party or elect representative does not condemn violence, they will be punished with the expulsion of the institution he/she has been elected for (town hall, provincial, regional or state parliaments) and the illegalization of the political organization. 

The issue is raised in regard to the ongoing violence of Morocco against Sahrawi civilians specifically, which the ruling Spanish Worker Socialist Party (PSOE, the terms "worker" and "socialist" are just fancy archaisms) refuses to condemn, in spite of Spain still being the administrator of West Sahara (per UN legal assessment). 

As José Luis well says, neither the ruling PSOE nor opposition Popular Party (PP), condemn the massacres in Afghanistan nor Iraq, they even applaud them shamelessly. They do not condemn state terrorism in Colombia or Israel/Palestine either. 

I would add that they do not even condemn violence in Spain, such as Franco's dictatorship (in the case of the PP), the several death squads or systematic torture in police stations and prisons.

Technically there are many reasons to get both of them illegalized and their elect representatives banished from all kind of government institutions. Yet the sad fact is that we know well that the law will only be applied against dissidents such as Basque nationalists and never against the institutional duopoly.