Last post on the impending elections before the big day. By the way, did you know that the Spanish vote in local schools? All the classrooms become voting stations – I always go along with Marina as it provides a glimpse into a little bit of a Spain past that I obviously don’t have. Perhaps this weekend I can get some photos.
Talking to my Spanish mother-in-law the other day, she mentioned a friend, a female, middle class, 60-something friend, who declared they would be voting for the Partido Popular – ‘por lo de la inmigracion’ (because of all the immigration).
Now this is a sad, and very likely widespread, state of affairs. There is a sector of the Spanish population that is going to vote for the previously ousted right-wingers because they don’t like the scale of immigration they’ve seen over the past 4 years.
The press has to take a lot of the blame for this, reporting with glee any crime that has anything to do with anyone that isn’t 100% Spanish.
But it does show an unbelievable shortsightedness on the part of people that are taking this stand point. I’m willing to bet that most of them have cleaners from Ecuador, or have friends with grandchildren being looked after by a girl from the Dominican Repulic, or Peru. The tomatoes in their salad were likely harvested by Moroccans working in horrendous conditions in Almeria, long after all the Spaniards became the boss, or were able to go off and earn far more in Madrid. And who do they think is going to be paying their pension? Taxes from the Spanish alone couldn’t take the burden.
P.S. For those that enjoyed/want to relive the recent great debates between Rajoy and ZP, you can now download all of ZP’s famous charts from the PSOE website. Click here to download what they’re calling ‘The White Book’ pdf – aka whopping propaganda machine, allegedly light on real facts and heavy on artful invention. Be warned: it’s pretty dull, though some of the charts are kinda pretty 🙂
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 