BY
ED GEORGE
LEON The February 15 anti-war mobilisations were huge all over the world; in the Spanish state they were truly enormous. If one tots up the 1.5 million who marched in Madrid with the 1 million plus in Barcelona, and then add in the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets in cities such as Seville and Valencia, and the tens of thousands in countless other Spanish towns, one realises that there must have been around 4 million an unprecedented one in 10 of the population marching on that day in Spain.
Trouble was looming for the conservative Partido Popular (PP) government of Jose Maria Aznar as early as the beginning of this month when the Goyas, the Spanish version of the Oscars, turned into a veritable anti-war protest, as the Spanish cinema glitterati declared itself almost unanimously against the government.
The Aznar government has found itself almost completely isolated over the war issue: not only have the major trade union federations and the Communist Party come out against the war, but the February 15 mobilisations were also backed by the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE).
Within the European Union, Spain forms a key part, along with Italy and Britain, of a pro-US imperialism axis. Indeed, Aznar often tries to boost his kudos as a world statesman by public references to "mi amigo Tony Blair". And when newly elected US President George Bush junior made his first visit to Europe, Spain was his first port of call on the reasoning that, no matter how tough things might get later, at least in Spain he was sure of a soft landing and an easy ride.
Yet the February 15 mobilisations are only one indication of the difficulties facing the Aznar government. The rot began to set in with the Prestige supertanker oil-spill off the coast of Galicia at the end of last year, to which the response of the government appeared to be one of complete disinterest. In addition, since Aznar long ago decided not to present himself in the next elections as the prime ministerial candidate, over the last year and a half the PP has suffered unseemly internal warfare over who will lead the party in the general election early next year.
Unassailable in the opinion polls since it won its first absolute majority in the Spanish parliament in 2000, the PP has now been overtaken by PSOE, previously regarded as rudderless, leaderless and peripheral.
Whether the present mobilisations can really be transformed into an electoral defeat for the PP, and whether this in turn can bring about a reverse in fortunes for Spanish working people, currently suffering the highest rates of unemployment and casualisation in the European Union, will depend upon whether the left and the social movements are prepared to maintain the spirit of February 15 alive.
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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