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| Carlos Fabra, your typical Spanish political mafioso*. |
I was chewing on this specifically for Spain but then you look at Greece, at Italy and even the whole of the European Union and the situation is all the same: the conservatives (Christian-Democrats, People's Party, Tories...) are essentially corrupt and wasteful: they use public funds to favor their cronies and fill their own pockets.
Britain should brace for the post-Olympic reality check but the situation is clearly worse in Southern Europe where the importance of tourism in the economy inflates the tendency towards corruption even more, becoming paradigmatic.
Of course I do not wish to present the Bersteinian pseudo-Left of the Party of the European Socialists or even the real Left with institutional responsibility as clean: power corrupts almost invariably, but Left-leaning voters are more critical and ethic, so these parties are more likely to pay heavily for corruption and not delivering in elections.
Instead the Right seems almost impervious to any criticism and the case of the Spanish People's Party (PP) in the Valencian Country is paradigmatic. The former regional president (Francisco Camps) and several other key politicians in the country were all involved in horrible corruption scandals in the previous term, however the PP managed to retain the government without losing a single seat! They did lose some voters but the opposition lost even more... so they got away.
The PP of Valencia is not just culprit of a large number of scandals and corruptions, but it is also central to the Spanish financial crisis. Bankia was set up by them and their colleagues of Madrid essentially, transforming successful semi-public savings banks into a depraved hole of private corruption and cronyism.
Finally the PP of Valencia has been the first one to ask for a bai-out to the central government, causing an even greater deepening of the Spanish fiscal crisis and a crazy climb-up of the Spanish debt's risk premium to Irish levels.
The story is the same in Greece, where the Conservative government managed to suck the country dry with the help of Goldman Sachs, get the opposition "socialists" to face the problem and then return to power with their support.
And it is also the same in Italy where the Berlusconi government got the country trampled in a spiral of debt, debt he and his cronies suck for bunga-bunga parties and the like, and now someone else is supposed to fix the problem. Not that Monti will fix it nor that he is not a right-winger himself but wouldn't be because Berlusconi is just too old to make a comeback... he would most probably. Some other populist Right like that Beppe Grillo will instead.
Why?
The real problem seems to be that there is a sociological sector that is so brainwashed by churches and media that cannot support anything else but a very reactionary discourse. Those people do not vote economy or jobs... but kissing the ring of the bishop or the imaginary ass of Ronald Reagan's economic nonsense. Stuff like that.
In the Spanish case there is about 1/3 of the citizenry who invariably vote to the Right. No matter what.
And they just love to see the public money wasted in corrupt public works for show. When the money has run out, they expect someone else (the unemployed, the immigrants...) to pay for it. It is never their own fault: self-criticism is beyond their reach.
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* The Fabra clan has been ruling the destinies of Castelló Province since the 19th century:
Victorino Fabra Gil commanded the Liberal troops in the Carlist Wars, becoming tax collector in 1843, position from which he climbed to provincial president in 1874, persisting in it by means of changing party once and again until his death in 1893.
His nephew, Victorino Fabra Adelantado was provincial president in 1895.
Another nephew, Hipólito Fabra Adelantado was provincial president most of the time between 1897 and 1906.
José Fabra Sanz, son of Victorino Jr., was mayor of Villareal (now Vila-real), second most important town of the province.
Luis Fabra Sanz, brother of the former, was provincial president between 1918 and 1922. He founded the Regional Agrarian Right, which joined other similar parties in the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wings (CEDA), which became the fascist party after the military uprising after a convenient name change.
Carlos Fabra Andrés in the 1930s. This one founded Catholic Youth in the Valencian Country and joined the Fascist forces as soon as he could in 1936, becoming the leader of the National Movement (fascist single party) in Castelló, occupying diverse key political roles in the province.
His son Carlos Fabra Carreras owns an attorney office, an insurance company and several other business. Since 1983 he is also an active conservative politician, holding control of the Provincial Government of Castelló between 1995 and 2011. His most infamous corruption case is the building of an expensive airport that is still waiting for its first airplane to land. He is involved in many other corruption cases, some of which have already prescribed.
Current Spanish President, M. Rajoy, said of him in 2008 that he is "an exemplary citizen".
His daughter Andrea Fabra Fernández is national deputy by the People's Party, holding political positions since 2004. She is married to a former councilor of Madrid Autonomous Community, whose President, the infamous Esperanza "Espe" Aguirre, is a key accomplice of the Valencian authorities in the Bankia affair.
She starred recently on TV yelling in Congress "fuck them!" to the unemployed as her boss announced some of the most draconian cuts to unemployment subsidies ever.
(It is disputed if the current President of the Valencian Generalitat, Alberto Fabra Part is a relative or not).
This family alone explain why Spain is what it is: junk.
But I blame also those who vote them.
