Why a coalition now?

Since the 1978 Constitution was adopted, the Spanish government of the day has normally enjoyed a majority in the Congress of Deputies, the Spanish lower house. This has taken the form of a one-party majority or of a confidence-and-supply deal with minor parties that supported the government’s agenda.

The first coalition deal came only in January 2016. It was sealed between Pedro Sánchez, then leader of the opposition, and centrist Albert Rivera (C’s, RE), but it was voted down 131-219 in Congress. As no government could be formed at that time, a general election was triggered in June, and conservative Mariano Rajoy (PP, EPP) remained in power with the support of C’s and PSOE’s controversial abstention amid a severe internal crisis.

In 2018, Spanish politics would be shaken by the no-confidence vote to replace Rajoy with Sánchez, as parties on PSOE’s left, as well as nationalists, put their differences apart to oust the conservative. The leftist Unidas Podemos (GUE/NGL) and its leader, Pablo Iglesias, who had voted against Sánchez only two years before, supported the PSOE leader without any ministerial demand.

Back to the polls

Pedro Sánchez’s ministers either were PSOE members or independents with great prestige such as Pedro Duque, the first Spanish astronaut, who became Minister for Universities and Science. Be it as it may, the government lacked support in the legislature to pass the budget law as some of the parties that supported Sánchez in June 2018 rejected the spending plan on account of regional demands such as an independence referendum for Catalonia. This triggered the April 2019 general election.

That election returned a hung parliament with PSOE and Unidas Podemos (hereafter, UP) close to a majority. Coalition talks stalled just hours before the parliamentary vote, with the later abstaining. The main causes of disagreement were Pablo Iglesias’s role in government as well as the cabinet departments to be given to UP members. Their failure to reach a deal, together with the lack of any viable alternative, triggered the November general election.

In the wake of the vote, Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias appeared on TV to lay out the guiding principles of the coalition deal to be reached, putting their differences aside. When enough parties either announced their support for the deal or their intention to abstain in the vote, the motion was put before the lower house, and now Spain has a new government.

The new government’s structure

For the first time in democratic history, Spain has four deputy Prime Ministers, one of which is UP leader Pablo Iglesias. Their role is not only to highlight key policy areas but also to coordinate the government’s agenda in departments related to theirs.

Pedro Sánchez is the Head of Government. He was first elected PSOE leader in 2014 while in opposition and resigned as his party decided to abstain in order to facilitate Rajoy’s confirmation in 2016, to win back party members’ support in the following primaries. He has long been a proponent of federalism for Spain and laicity for Spanish education. Both his first and his brand-new cabinet are markedly pro-European, leaning towards the centre in economic policy, and socially progressive. Before holding high public office, he obtained a PhD in Economics and worked as an associate lecturer at Universidad Camilo José Cela.

Carmen Calvo (PSOE) remains Sánchez’s first deputy and serves now as Minister for Relations with the Cortes (Spanish Parliament) and Democratic Memory. She worked in socialist Zapatero’s cabinet as Minister of Culture and retired from public life to return to her lectures in Constitutional Law in 2007. She has effectively worked as Sánchez’s right-hand in all key negotiations, including this coalition deal. As many Spaniards who were killed by firing squad in the Civil War remain in unknown locations, she has pledged to offer their remains a dignified burial. Another of her pledges is to audit properties illicitly taken by the Franco regime in order to return them to their legitimate owners.

Pablo Iglesias (UP) is the junior partner’s leader in this coalition. He is second deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Social Rights and Agenda 2030. He founded the left-wing Podemos in 2014, when he was a junior lecturer in Political Science at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He then won 5 MEPs in the European Parliament election with a radical left manifesto. He has emphasised the right to affordable housing and better labour conditions, as well as better redistribution of wealth. One of his party’s main shared goals with PSOE is the repeal of the Law for the Protection of Public Security, which restricted the right to demonstrate and to oppose police action by giving the police the power to impose fines without judicial oversight. Even if Iglesias did campaign in the 2016 referendum for the UK to remain in the EU, he defends the strong need for reform in the EU.

Nadia Calviño (independent, proposed by PSOE) is elevated to third deputy Prime Minister. She retains the Economy portfolio and assumes Digital Transformation responsibilities. She graduated in economics and law to work as a civil servant. Her career took her to become the Director-General of the Spanish Competition Commission. She went on to become deputy Director-General for Competition in the Prodi Commission, single market (Barroso Commission), and Director-General for the Budget in the Juncker Commission. She is not only highly respected in Brussels, but also a guarantee that Spanish economic policy will follow EU guidelines.

Teresa Ribera (PSOE) is the fourth deputy in the coalition. She remains the Minister for the Ecologic Transition and takes on demographic challenge duties. This green portfolio aims to curb the effects of pollution on the climate and to promote renewable and clean energy in Spain and abroad. One of the issues that appeared for the first time in this general election is the lack of public services and infrastructure in rural areas of Spain, which is pushing people in the tens of thousands to move to cities. She worked as a civil servant in the Environment Ministry under the PP administration in 2000. She assumed political office as State Secretary for Climate Change during Zapatero’s premiership and chaired the Institute for Sustainable Development in Paris (2014-18) before becoming a minister in Sánchez’s first cabinet.

Who is in charge of Europe?

Arancha González Laya (independent, proposed by PSOE) replaces Josep Borrell as Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union, and Cooperation. This post was vacated by her predecessor’s nomination as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. One of her priorities will be to continue Borrell’s work to restore Spain’s reputation overseas, tarnished as it was by the Catalan question. She will also be tasked with shaping the future relationship of the UK with the EU in the aftermath of Brexit and with the challenges posed by migrations.

She has worked as Executive Director of the International Trade Centre, a joint organism of the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations, and as Pascal Lamy’s Chief of Staff when he was WTO’s Secretary-General. She also enjoyed a career as a civil servant before holding public office. González Laya is expected to keep practising economic diplomacy, as she will be tasked with promoting Spanish companies’ economic interests abroad, especially for those in the process of internationalisation.

Spokesperson and High Offices

María Jesús Montero (PSOE), Minister of Finance, replaces Isabel Celáa as Government Spokesperson. As Finance ministers tend to be discrete while spokespersons are exactly the opposite, it is unprecedented in Spain for these two offices to be held by the same person. She drafted and negotiated with the new coalition partners Unidas Podemos the failed 2019 budget, labelled as the most social budget in Spanish history. Her prior expertise in politics consists of several regional ministries she held in Andalusia: Health and Social Welfare (2004-13), and Finance and Public Administration (2013-18).

• Juan Carlos Campo (PSOE), Minister of Justice, is new to the cabinet. He worked as a judge in the Cádiz Provincial Court before becoming Law Professor and working for the Andalusian government. He served as Secretary of State for Justice between 2009 and 2011.
• Margarita Robles (independent, proposed by PSOE) remains Minister of Defence. She enjoyed a successful career in the judiciary, becoming a Magistrate of the Supreme Court in 2004. Her term expired in 2016, and then she jumped into politics with Pedro Sánchez. Despite announcing her intention to cancel armament contracts with Saudi Arabia on human rights concerns, these would eventually go on to protect Spanish jobs. With the impending creation of an EU army, her post gains European relevance.
• Fernando Grande-Marlaska (independent, proposed by PSOE) keeps the Interior portfolio. He also came to prominence as a justice, presiding the Criminal Chamber of the Audiencia Nacional between 2013 and 2018, when Sánchez became PM. His nomination was met with surprise, as he had been conjectured to lean towards conservatism in view of his particularly harsh rulings against the terrorist group ETA. He is openly gay and married his husband at the earliest opportunity following the passage of the same-sex marriage act in 2005, being involved in the fight against LGBT-phobia.
• Irene Montero (UP), new Minister of Equality, will be tasked with designing public policies aimed to tackle the different inequalities faced by Spaniards for reasons of gender, sexual orientation, origin, and other reasons. She graduated in Psychology and has a background as an activist following the housing market bubble’s burst.

Other Portfolios to Keep an Eye On

• Yolanda Díaz (UP) becomes Minister of Labour. For the first time, Labour and Social Security are not under the same minister’s direction. She worked with UP leader Pablo Iglesias as early as 2012 and has been a member of the Communist Party of Spain (a member of United Left, part of UP) since her youth. As Rajoy’s Labour Law (2012) was heavily contested by UP and PSOE, it is expected that a new one is in the makings. She is expected to tilt the balance of collective negotiation in favour of employees and to raise working standards.
• Pedro Duque (independent, proposed by PSOE), Minister of Science and Innovation. His cross-party reputation cemented Sánchez’s first cabinet’s public image, as he is the first Spanish astronaut. During his tenure, he has already managed to simplify access to funds by researchers and has kept in touch with the scientific community. His office has sought the fulfilment of the objectives of Horizon 2020, the EU’s largest scientific research programme to this day. It is soon to be replaced by the more ambitious Horizon Europa.
• Manuel Castells (independent, proposed by UP) is to become Minister of Universities. He is a world expert on information society and a long-time proponent of new technologies. His previous publications hint that he advocates for technological transformations to be involved in education, as is the case of Finland.
• Reyes Maroto (PSOE), Minister of Industry, Trade, and Tourism and Luis Planas (PSOE), Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food, retain their portfolios. There is uncertainty surrounding the future of the Common Agriculture Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy, in which the later will be involved. The former’s office will play an active role in shaping future EU trade deals with third countries, including post-Brexit Britain.

A Recap

There are as many as seven independents out of twenty-two ministers. A vast number of ministers have held high positions in Spanish or European civil service before ever holding public office, and many of them are renowned experts in their field, including university lecturers. This combination should allay fears that Pedro Sánchez might be forming a radical cabinet by including members of the Communist Party in the Council of Ministers. On the contrary, technocrats hold key positions such as Economy and Social Security, with two ministers having been picked for prominent roles by conservative ministers. It is expected that their first decision will be a moderate increase in the minimum wage, currently set at €900.

However, the hazards ahead are diverse. Parliamentary votes are expected to be tight as C’s (Renew Europe), PP (EPP), and Vox (ECR) have announced their hard opposition to the coalition. Sánchez will not only need to keep his coalition together but also win the support of smaller parties, including the Catalan pro-independence left-wing ERC and the Basque nationalist PNV. The first stepping stone in the coalition’s agenda is the passage of the budget law, to which ERC have announced their intention to vote against unless an independence referendum is held in Catalonia. However, the constitutional reform that would make that referendum possible can easily be blocked by the opposition parties vehemently opposing such a vote.

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The exhumation and reburial followed a decision by the Spanish Supreme Court a month earlier to allow the government to remove Franco’s remains. In a filing before the court Franco’s family rejected the exhuming but also expressed a preference in the case of reburial, the Almudena Roman Catholic Cathedral, adjacent to the Royal Palace in central Madrid.  Reburial would then occur alongside his daughter, rather than in the more modest El Prado cemetery. The government wished to exhume the body and avoid a reburial site that could lend itself to promoting a cult of Francisco Franco.

The court ruled in favor of the government on both counts. The reburial was the culmination of a promise made by the governing Socialist Party in 2018. If this were Italy or even Germany and the remains of Mussolini or Hitler reburied, a national crisis would occur. Spain remains eerily quiet, troubled more by the judiciary’s reaction to Catalan separatists.

Francisco Franco and his legacy

Franco’s reburial comes in a complex political context. Spain was the last country in Europe to harbor a popular extreme right wing movement since the fall of Franco and Portugal’s Salazar in the mid 1970’s. The exhumation was a dramatic background to the latest elections, although over shadowed by the events in Catalonia. No one is at all sure either in what way the feelings about the exhumation may have influenced the vote, if at all.

It was not until the regional elections of last year, in December of 2018 in Andalusia, that a far right wing party, Vox, penetrated the Spanish political system again, gaining 12 seats out of 109 in Andalusia. In the national elections of May 2019 the party continued its success gaining 24 seats, or 7% of the Spanish Parliament’s 350 seats. In the European Parliamentary election of 2019 Vox reached 6% of the Spanish vote, gaining 3 seats out of a total of 54. Though founded in 2013, and presenting candidates in the election of 2014, this was the first time Vox or any far right wing party had electoral success in Spain since the end of Franco’s regime. This does not mean that there was no far right wing sentiment after the experience of Franco, but simply that the country was too shocked by the experience of the Falangist dictatorship to allow it national expression.

On March 28, 1939, some eighty years ago, the duly elected Spanish Republican government and its allies suffered final defeat on the outskirts of Madrid. This marked the end of a three year old civil war, won by Franco’s Falangists and their Nazi and Italian Fascist allies. So began thirty-six years of Falangist one-party rule in Spain.  Franco’s rule was marked by score-settling, imprisonment and torture for many who had defended the properly elected Republican government. With Franco’s death in 1975 his regime came to an end. The Spanish people are still trying to come to grips with the civil war which tore the country apart.

Today Spanish politicians are still arguing over the now accomplished  removal of Franco’s body from the enormous war memorial and mausoleum honoring the fallen on the outskirts of Madrid. The decision was taken in August 2018 by the Socialist government. The Vatican, though hardly all Spanish Catholics and clergy, weighed in affirmatively, backing the government’s decision even though Franco was a staunch Catholic, supported by the Spanish Catholic Church. A complex pas de deux between the local Bishop, family and government as to whether he could be reburied in the Cathedral in Madrid, next to his daughter in a family crypt,  was finally resolved by the Supreme Court, much to the relief of the government.

Meanwhile the remains of captive republicans who provided the labor to build the memorial are already being removed. Families are lobbying for the right to exhume more bodies, those of their loved ones deceased in the civil war and buried elsewhere, often scattered in common graves around Spain. They want to give them proper burial, which had long been forbidden in a desire not to reopen the old wounds of war. The dead numbered in the hundred thousands, but travel around Spain and you would see nothing of all these emotions seething underneath the surface. Some things take a long time to re-emerge.

In 1977, a few years after Franco died, Spain passed an amnesty law referred to as The Pact of Forgetting meant to ease the transition to democracy.  It was temporarily effective in burying passions and recriminations from the era, but also legitimate demands for justice, for example those stemming from torture. It has since been challenged by Spanish judges but upheld by the Supreme Court, all while the UN has urged Spain to repeal it, affirming that crimes against humanity cannot be amnestied.

In Argentina a judge is investigating under international law crimes committed under Franco. Jurisdiction is yet to be determined.  In 2004 the Socialist government succeeded in passing The Memory Law which invalidated all Franquist laws and banned Franquist symbols.  Some argued it did not go far enough as immunity remained.  A socialist-initiated government office exhuming and reburying victims was closed when the conservatives took power.

The return of Eternal Fascism

It would not be saying too much to say that fascism is the tune that has played the piper, at least the contre-temps, in the 20th and 21st centuries. Surprising, but only if one is too literal, as the term “fascism” is not well liked nor understood. But look out objectively and you will be sure to recognize fascism’s signature throughout contemporary history, since fascism’s inception ninety-seven years ago in 1922 with Mussolini’s march on Rome, and continuing on today.

In a remarkable essay titled Eternal Fascism, by Umberto Eco, an Italian scholar took this historical knowledge and showed the common threads in all of these movements. Eco concluded that fascism was a form of political philosophy that has reared its ugly head repeatedly in our times, even when it has not adopted the name. It is a type of sickness or behavior that recurs in different forms, but with a remarkably similar typology.

Today we are again looking at movements that claim their allegiance to “fascist principles”, rally around decades-old fascist symbols and revere the fascist founders. The widespread and enduring importance of fascism allows us to see the Spanish civil war in a new light. Franco’s dictatorship, which fractured Spanish society, and to some extent still does, is not an anomaly in the past history of the West – one which we can leave behind safely to be forgotten and remembered only by specialist historians – but rather a key event in the consciousness of the West. A moment that the West not been successful in forgetting.

Tales from the Spanish Civil War

Tucked into the pre-war period and the Great Depression from 1936-1939, the Spanish civil war was a living hell for the country’s citizens. Into this hell rallied International Brigades bringing mostly young recruits from among artists, elites and working class volunteers all around Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia, to as far away as China – joining with communists, socialists, anarchists, simple workers and peasants to seek a better life and try to protect democracy.

What was the attraction of assisting in this slaughter, risking one’s life?  The story is complicated, much more than a battle between fascists led by Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini and anti-fascists aided by the Soviet Union, communists, anarchists and Inter-nationalists. Why didn’t the West, soon to fight Hitler himself, come to the aid of Spain’s democratically elected Republic?  Why has this failure been covered up by years of silence while the much less important one, the concessions to Hitler at the Munich Conference – though it was in Hitler’s own back yard and much more difficult to affect than the situation in Spain, –  is described as a failure to this day? Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakian territory with a largely German population, agreed to at Munich, is seen as appeasement that encouraged further aggression. Giving Hitler, Mussolini and Franco free reign to destroy a democratically elected government in Spain, only a nautical hour from Britain and a mountainous traverse from France, strangely, is not.

This is where the bourgeoisie consciousness of the West begins to fray, trying to hide from scrutiny and self-scrutiny. It has done so successfully, except for the resurgence of a problem that has never really gone away. You see, while the Republic’s government was democratically elected, it was also socialist and reformist – not something the major land, industrial or Church interests in Spain and the West wanted to deal with, much less accept. It was also supported by communists and aided by the Soviet Union, which brought into play major power politics and bitter ideological rivalry.

This was not the first or last time that the West neglected or actively undermined a democratically elected government of the left, but it was another with dramatic consequences.  Mossedeq in Iran was similarly impaired, and the consequences are being felt to this day.  The assassination of Lumumba resulted in civil war in Congo.  Chile suffered a brutal dictatorship after a coup engineered by the CIA against the elected Socialist government of Allende.  The refusal to recognize the Muslim parties elected in Algeria in a democratic election, or Hamas in Gaza are some additional examples of elected  governments which have not been to the West’s taste and subsequently not diplomatically recognized by it.

Non-democratic, but populist reform governments with widespread support, are also targets of Western repression, when they lean to the left. The coup d’etat against the Socialist reform government of Sankara in Burkina Faso, although coming to power in a military coup itself, replacing a monarchy, set off civil wars throughout West Africa.  Castro’s Cuba underwent world wide isolation from the West and their allies for well over a half-century, which is now being renewed by the U.S. after earlier detente.  A similar fate is being experienced by the Venezuelans. The result of undermining the popular will has usually been bad, in Franco’s Spain predictably so.

The Spanish Republic before the War

What makes Spanish example important in our history of fascism is the scale of the ensuing slaughter and the destruction of the hope that the Republic represented. For on quite a number of issues the Republic breathed new life into Spain, which was why it inspired so much international support from individuals, artists, intellectuals, and simple working and middle class people, if not from their governments.

The Republic was years ahead of anywhere else on women’s, workers, gay, democratic and economic rights, and many of its reforms have endured to be copied elsewhere – though often without the fullness and pride of ownership of the Spanish republicans. Rather similar reforms in Western societies have come about grudgingly and piecemeal, often leaving class division and antagonism as bad as they were before, or displacing these antagonisms on the new groups affirming these rights. LGBT people, women, workers, the poor and immigrants, have often gained rights in Western societies only to remain marginal, and occasionally still subject to scorn.

The main argument against the Republic, at least the most rational one, was that the republicans wanted to go too far and too fast. This was certainly a risk with communists, anarchists and socialists all vying for power and pushing in different directions.  But by snuffing out and literally killing off any remaining Republican sympathizers, rather than letting their internal struggles run their course, Franco set back Spanish society by half a century – the scars will remain for much longer than that.

Children of socialist and communist families were taken from their parents to be raised by “good” Catholic families. These children have sometimes just begun to realize their real identities. Fathers and brothers were taken away to be assassinated, their remains buried in secret graves. Families are just beginning to recover the “missing” remains.

For their part, republicans, although not officially the Republic, assassinated many priests and religious friars, some of whom were certainly innocent of the machinations of the Church hierarchy, allied with Franco. The divide between Catholic and atheist Spain is, as a result, wider than ever.  Recently, when the dual nationality (British-Spanish) author Giles Tremlett was researching a book on the consequences of the conflict, Ghosts of Spain, many Spaniards refused to accompany him inside a Catholic church in the course of his research, preferring to wait for him outside because of their enduring hatred of the institution.  Republican combatants were hardly choir boys and girls either. Communists were doctrinaire and undemocratic, revenge and ideological killings by partisans were not uncommon. It was civil war with all that implies.

And yet, until very recently in Spain, all this had been swept away in silence, not taught, books and histories of the period banned, buried in economic growth and hopes for the future, but unfortunately not going away.  And in the rest of the West, Spain was treated as an irrelevant footnote to history made elsewhere. Yet for 44 years since Spain was practically the only country in Europe without a popular extreme right party. The exhumation and regional passions seem to have awakened the dead.

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Congress

All 350 seats in Congress are up for election on a provincial basis. Electoral law gives each of the fifty Spanish provinces two MPs, while the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa get one each. The remaining 298 seats are apportioned according to the largest remainder method, resulting in the distribution in the picture below.

General elections in Spain run on a closed list system combined with the d’Hondt method, also known as Jefferson’s. Thus, the result is, in principle, proportional in each constituency. However, practice brings some unexpected results.

As it turns out, 145 MPs come from constituencies where fewer than seven MPs are elected, which is very unfavourable to a nation-wide proportional outcome, as vote is fragmented in almost all the constituencies. This has a detrimental effect on parties that lack a vote stronghold despite polling decently at the national level. Indeed, this system has historically favoured the two mainstream parties, the conservative PP and the socialist PSOE, as well as the nationalist parties radicated the Basque Country and Catalonia.

Senate

The upper house, which consists of 266 members, has all its 208 directly elected seats open for contest in this election. The remaining 58 are appointed by the autonomous communities’ legislative bodies and their terms depend on the regional assemblies’ confidence, not on the result of a direct vote. They will retain their seats irrespective of what happens on Sunday.

The Constitution gives each mainland province four senators, irrespective of its population. The larger islands elect three while the smaller islands or groups have one representative. Ceuta and Melilla are apportioned two senators each.

In the case of this house, the system in use is plurality-at-large: the ballot paper consists of all the candidates standing for election in the pertinent constituency, and electors pick a maximum of three (two in the islands electing three senators, Ceuta, and Melilla; one in the islands electing one).

It is common that voters pick all three (or two) candidates endorsed by their favourite party, so most constituencies have three senators from the party winning the Congress election and one from the second, as Senate votes are highly aligned with Congress ballots.

Traditionally, the Senate has only acted as a second-reading chamber, so it has customarily received little to no attention (indeed, Senate results are given a few minutes of coverage every electoral night, compared to the hours Congress gets). However, this house has acquired renewed prominence following the Catalan crisis in 2017: it has exclusive powers when it comes to Section 155 of the Spanish Constitution, that is, the central government imposing direct rule on an autonomous community. This may bring about renewed voting patterns, and several tactical voting initiatives are becoming viral these days.

Main parties

For the first time ever, as many as five nation-wide parties are contesting the election and are expected to get at least 10 seats. They are scattered across the left-right spectrum and their stance on hot topics like the regions’ powers tends to be more prone to centralism the more on the right they are, but their differences trascend this divide.

There are also regional parties on both the right and left of the political spectrum in many parts of Spain, with a view of their region’s status in Spain ranging from defending the status quo to the active seeking of their independence. Not all of them are expected to be politically relevant in this general election, especially those that will contest it in coalition with larger parties, but those from Catalonia and the Basque Country have been especially relevant as they have often been kingmakers in Spanish politics, and that is the reason why they are given some attention in this article.

Partido Popular (People’s Party, EPP)

They are currently the largest party in Congress, with 137 out of 350 MPs and command a strong majority in the Senate, with 148 out of 266 seats. Their leader, Pablo Casado, was elected following the no-confidence motion that forced Rajoy out of the premiership and his subsequent resignation as party leader.

Contrasting with Rajoy’s general preference for moderation and general reluctance to tackle social issues or the Catalan crisis, Casado describes himself as a man of action and has promised to impose home rule in Catalonia from day one. While the People’s Party are not supportive of further decentralisation, they do not advocate for a stronger central state but for more harmonisation by means of national law. The party is also in favour of close ties with the Church and of promoting traditions, especially those that stem from religion.

Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party, PES)

They are the second party in Congress and the Senate, with 85 and 61 seats respectively. This is the party supporting Pedro Sánchez’s government, relying on the parliamentary support from their partners on the left.

PSOE are a socially progressive party in areas such like LGBT and women’s rights, encompassing this view with a respectful attitude towards the Church and other confessions. They favour a smooth transition towards renewable sources of energy. With regards to Catalonia, they reluctantly supported direct rule once independence had been declared, but here is where the similarities with PP end. PSOE have a federal vision of Spain where the regions enjoy more powers and the different nationalities within Spain have a stronger entity.

Unidas Podemos (United We Can, GUE/NGL)

They are represented by 71 MPs and 20 senators, being the third force in both houses of the Cortes Generales. Their leader, Pablo Iglesias, is a former political sciences lecturer, and often a controversial figure at the time he is widely regarded as an excellent speaker. They supported Pedro Sánchez in the no-confidence motion to oust Rajoy, and they have regularly backed the Prime Minister’s proposals.

Unidas Podemos has economic proposals ranging from social democracy to socialism, and feminist and environmentalist features in most of their policy areas. Unlike PSOE, they lack any government experience -notably, they are junior coalition partners in some regions, but they are yet to assume a national department – and have a stronger push for democratic regeneration and the fight against corruption.

They have a confederal vision of Spain, supporting a looser union between the regions than PSOE. They never agreed to impose direct rule in Catalonia, not even as independence was being declared from the regional parliament, and they do support a referendum on independence. This centrifugal stance is brought to the spotlight way more often in regions with nationalist movements than in the rest of Spain, where they focus more on social issues.

Ciudadanos (Citizens, ALDE)

This is the fourth party in Congress, with 32 MPs but one of the smallest in the Senate, having only have 4 seats in the upper chamber. This party was born as an scission of the Catalan branch of PSOE in 2006 and encompassed a progressive agenda with a rejection of regional nationalism.

They have, with time, become part of national politics and joined the liberal coalition ALDE, and their economic stance varies nowadays from liberal to slightly conservative on most issues. With regards to the territorioal problem, they are opposed to further devolution and advocate some recentralisation of public services, and they enthusiastically voted for direct rule in Catalonia during the 2017 crisis. Albert Rivera, a former lawyer, has led the party since its inception.

Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia, Greens-EFA)

They are the fifth delegation in Congress with 9 MPs and the fourth group in the Senate, with 12 seats. This party is older than the Spanish democratic regime itself and has long been Catalanist, left-leaning, and republican. When short of a majority, socialist governments have traditionally relied on their support, as they generally see eye to eye with them on social issues and economic policy.

It was in the last decade that they brought the Catalan question into the mainstream debate, advocating for an independent Catalonia. In Catalan politics, they have propped up the regional government since 2012 with their leader, Oriol Junqueras, as deputy First Minister until Catalonia was put under direct rule in the aftermath of the 2017 crisis.

Junts per Catalonia (Together for Catalonia, non-inscrits)

They currently have 8 MPs and 4 senators, and they are the successor of Convergencia i Unió (Convergence and Union, ALDE), the traditional Catalanist party on the right, commanding the regional government of Catalonia ever since 1980 except for the 2003-2010 hiatus, when a socialist-led coalition took control. It was only after the 2012 Catalan election that CiU bidded for independence, amidst the economic crisis in Spain and with their popularity in historical lows in the region.

Their current leader and former First Minister of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, keeps pushing for the region to unilaterally pursue independence, so the party might end up isolated in the Cortes Generales as Esquerra Republicana are seen as more pragmatical. Throughout Spanish democratic history, they have been able to strike confidence and supply deals with either PP or PSOE, proving themselves to be a reliable partner in the days before they decided to put a question mark on Catalonia being part of Spain.

Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party, ALDE)

Currently represented by 5 MPs and 6 senators, they have been in control of the Basque government since its autonomy’s restoration except for the 2009-2012 term. Defenders of all-things Basque and, especially, the singular fiscal compact the Basque provinces enjoy by tradition, they have never spoken in favour of independence nor have they committed to the Basque Country remaining a part of Spain forever.

They support the Catalan question being resolved by means of a referendum and always push for further powers being transferred to the regions, but they put the focus away from the territorial question. Socially, they lean towards conservatism yet they are not opposing modernisation, and they do support a liberal economic policy.

Euskal Herria Bildu (Build the Basque Fatherland, GUE-NGL)

With 2 MPs and 1 senator, they are one of the smallest forces in the Cortes Generales. They caucus with PSOE and Podemos in most social and economic issues, their biggest differences with them arising in their vision of the Basque Country, as they are boldly in favour of its independence from Spain. They are also strong proponents of the Basque language and culture, and they put an accent on anti-capitalism as well as ecologism and feminism.

Vox (Voice)

Currently unrepresented in the Cortes Generales, this party was created in 2013 by People’s Party defectors on the right wing on the party. Their founders left the party as Rajoy, with a majority in both houses, moderated his party’s stance on social issues and refused to deal harshly with the Catalan question. Their main focus is recentralising the state and they are grousingly nationalistic.

Unlike the other parties, they oppose the Schengen acquis and want powers to flow back to Madrid from the EU. Their leader, Santiago Abascal, is fervently Catholic, and has aligned himself with the likes of Matteo Salvini and Steve Bannon. The party has a traditionalist vision of Spanish society without room for feminism or LGBT rights; notably, this party opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, adoption of children by same-sex couples and trans persons having their names changed. On the other hand, they take a hard stance on immigration, having pledged to build a wall with Morocco in Ceuta and Melilla.

This party gained widespread national attention in two key moments: one, in the aftermath of the 2017 Catalan crisis, as they took part in the trial following the declaration of independence; and secondly, in December 2018, when they polled at 11% and took twelve seats in the regional elections in Andalusia, more than any of the polls had predicted.

Polls

As a result of electoral law, no polls may be published in the five days prior to the election, so the latest data available came out on Monday night, following the first of two debates between Pablo Casado, Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Iglesias, and Albert Rivera. It is understood that PSOE will win the election, and PP will come in second. The battle for the third place is expected to be closely fought between Unidas Podemos, Ciudadanos, and Vox, and the nationalist vote will not undergo significant change where regional parties contest the election.

As the chart suggests, there are broadly two ideological blocs: on the left of the political spectrum, PSOE and Unidas Podemos; on the right, PP, Ciudadanos, and Vox. Each party’s gains have usually been at the expense of others in the same bloc.

There have been three trends in the run-up to the electoral night: PP’s decline starting in October 2017, coinciding with the high of the Catalan crisis, which say Ciudadanos rise both in vote share and seats until Pedro Sánchez took office (June 2018). Following that, Pablo Casado was elected as the new PP leader and pollsters understood some voters would come back to the conservative formation, but both PP and Ciudadanos have been steadily losing ballots to Vox, especially since the Andalusian election in late 2018. Lastly, PSOE have gained popularity at the expense of Unidas Podemos in the last months; however, a shadow is cast on some of the polls involved, since their projections offer substantive differences with most other surveys in favour of the governing party.

What will happen after the election?

It is hard to tell beforehand what will the future government look like, and what follows is pure speculation based on what the different parties have said in the last weeks and simulations carried out by El País.

According to this news report, the most likely scenario would land Spain with the following seat distribution: PSOE, 129 (102-155); PP, 78 (57-103); Ciudadanos (Cs), 46 (24-64); Unidas Podemos (UP), 35 (21-52); Vox, 30 (11-50); and others, 32 (27-37). In brackets, the 90% confidence interval is given, which means that there is a 90% certainty that each party’s tally of seats will fall within these intervals.

The bloc on the left (PSOE and Unidas Podemos) is given a 30% chance to secure a majority and it would be surprising for them not to reach a deal. They might need the support of the Basque and Canarian nationalists (additional 15% chance), and then the negotiations would likely be more complex.

On the assumption (10% probability) that the bloc on the right will obtain a majority, it has been pointed out that PP and Ciudadanos will likely make a deal with each other following the electoral night, but they would need the right-wing Vox to secure the legislative’s confidence.

It is also too early to rule out a PSOE-Ciudadanos government, which would be viable in 19% of the simulated scenarios. They already secured a deal back in early 2016, but it was voted down by Congress, and Pedro Sánchez has dodged the question of whether he would govern with Ciudadanos or not.

This leaves the prospect of a government with a different composition or an impromptu general election, if such an option is not invested with the lawmakers’ confidence. This scenario is the outcome of 27% of the simulations.

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The socialist Pedro Sánchez (PSOE, S&D) is exceptional in many ways. Not only is he the first Spanish PM who is not a member of the Spanish Parliament (Cortes Generales), but he is also the only one so far who has made it to the executive by means of a motion of no confidence.

The Spanish Constitution contemplates motions of no confidence as a procedure for the lower house to ask for the cabinet’s responsibility – i.e. to vote them out of office. However, this requires a majority of the house not only against a sitting PM but also for a replacement for the incumbent. Parties and MPs do not find it easy to change their minds on who they want to run the administration, so such an exceptional event may only happen after quite exceptional circumstances.

The origins of such a perfect political momentum trace back to Rajoy’s tenure. This article will attempt to capture the salient events which have brought Sánchez to the executive.

The first Rayoy government

Mariano Rajoy, Sánchez’s predecesor in Moncloa Palace, took office in late 2011 after his party, the People’s Party (PP, EPP), won a majority in the last bipartisan election to this date. Back then, only a few minor parties -most of them regionalist – held seats that were not under PP or PSOE control, amounting to barely one seventh of the total seats.

In most parliamentary regimes, the Prime Minister must win a motion of confidence in order to take office. In the case of Spain, they are sworn in if they win a majority in the first ballot or a plurality in the second ballot, which takes place two days after the first ballot fails. If both ballots fail, MPs have two months to find a new Prime Minister, or Parliament is dissolved and another election is called.

His first term in office proved to be an unpopular one. Early in his tenure, Rajoy’s credibility was severely damaged by a number of corruption scandals affecting prominent People’s Party figures, the most notable of them receiving the name of Gürtel case. However, in this initial period, nothing had been proven in court and the political momentum to oust Rajoy simply was not strong enough.

On top of that, Rajoy was seen with animosity by a number of Spaniards, since his government’s management of the Euro crisis saw poverty and unemployment skyrocket. It was indeed as a reaction to his administration’s austerity that a new left-wing party, Podemos (GUE/NGL) was born three months before the 2014 European elections and polled at 8% on a hard-left Eurosceptic anti-austerity and anti-corruption platform. A new centre-right party, Ciudadanos (ALDE), also emerged in the mainstream in 2014, in response to this perceived maladministration.

The 2015-16 political crisis

Due to this discontent, the general elections in December 2015 returned a hung parliament with no chance of a governing coalition being formed. A lot of parties were however united in their common dislike of Rajoy’s administration. Consequently, Pedro Sánchez sealed a deal with Ciudadanos aimed at forming a coalition government, but it failed to pass secure the lawmakers’ confidence.

Given these results, Rajoy remained in power until a fresh election was automatically called, as Congress had failed to provide Spain with a new Prime Minister.

The June 2016 election saw Rajoy’s PP make gains in terms of popular approval at the expenses of PSOE, compared to the election barely half a year previous. Despite this, it still didn’t have the numbers to govern alone. Hence, Rajoy attempted to strike a deal with the centre-right Ciudadanos, as Sánchez had done. This deal again fell short of a confidence majority when it was put to Congress for the first confidence ballot.

The date of a third general election in a row was looming. The polls were signalling a bad turn for PSOE – already on a historic low of 85 seats – and the party’s patience with their leader, Pedro Sánchez, was wearing thin. After a traumatic and divisive party assembly, it was decided that the socialist MPs would abstain in an eventual second confidence ballot with Rajoy as candidate, thus facilitating Rajoy’s appointment as PM.

Minutes after the public knew of this decision, Sánchez resigned as party leader and quit his seat in Parliament. Fifteen fellow socialist lawmakers defied the whip and voted against Rajoy, but it did not prevent the PP candidate from securing a fresh mandate for a second term in office.

The vote of no confidence

And so, 2016 saw Mariano Rajoy emerge from the political crisis with a second term in office, and Pedro Sánchez neither the PSOE leader nor a lawmaker. But this didn’t mean that Rajoy had a strong majority in his support.

In April 2017, Podemos tabled a first motion of no confidence against him, but it was heavily defeated as not even PSOE backed this move, being as they were yet to elect a new leader and significant policy changes could not be ruled out. One month later, Pedro Sánchez once again won the PSOE’s leadership race, and Podemos encouraged him from day one to try to assemble a majority to force Rajoy out. All they needed was an event with enough magnitude to turn the noes to Rajoy into ayes for Sánchez.

As it is the case in Germany or Belgium, votes of no confidence must be constructive in Spain. This means that the house must not only vote that they have no longer confidence in the sitting executive but they must, at the same time, vote that an alternative person has the house’s confidence to become PM. Until this point, Rajoy’s cabinet had remained in power because there was no other candidate enjoying the support of the majority of the Congress.

In May 2018, the Gürtel case received a sentence ruling that PP had profited from an illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme involving many of Rajoy’s former party collaborators. According to the sentence, the party helped establish since its foundation in 1989 ‘a genuine and effective system of institutional corruption through the manipulation of central, autonomous, and local public procurement’ and that Rajoy had failed to be ‘truthful’ when he testified as a witness during the trial. That’s when opposition parties agreed that Rajoy had to go. 

On the 25th of May, PSOE tabled a motion of no confidence in Rajoy’s government, with their leader, Pedro Sánchez, as alternate candidate. The vote took place on the 1st of June, and narrowly passed with 180 votes in favour (the opposition), 169 against (PP, Ciudadanos, and local affine parties), and one abstention (Canarian Coalition). Pedro Sánchez was the new Prime Minister of Spain.

Sánchez and his premiership

Unfortunately, the new prime minister’s majority faded as he took office. The only thing his backers had in common was that all of them wanted Rajoy out and had no excuse to oppose the motion. So, Sánchez inherited Rajoy’s problems and was still short of a majority to pass laws, most notably the budget.

And it was not only the budget, but also Catalonia what has been making Pedro Sánchez’s agenda during his premiership. On Catalonia, there were conversations between his government departments and those of the Catalan regional government, but these were bounded to stall as one of the government’s red lines was not to grant a referendum on independence. This alienated the support of the Catalan parties, leaving Sánchez short of the majority any law requires to be passed.

These problems came as a surprise to no one, and it was perhaps due to their anticipation that Pedro Sánchez’s tenure has been characterised by gestures and the use of the executive prerogative to shape the way legislation is implemented rather than by law reforms. For the first time in history there have been more female than male ministers sitting in the cabinet room, ministerial nominations fell upon two openly gay men, and up to a third of the ministers are not affiliated to any political party. This is a notable feat in a country where elections run on closed-list systems and party apparatus have great control of candidacies.

In February 2019, a majority in Congress voted a key budget measure down, thus leaving Sánchez with no practical support to carry on without calling a general election, which is due to happen this Sunday.

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Catalonia’s villages – ancient hidden pearls in the hinterland

Barcelona is a splendour stifled by its own beauty. Girona being a key film location in the Game of Thrones made it a place of pilgrimage. While celebrating high school graduates crowd Costa Brava, but behind the facade of bread and circuses lie romantic villages that have been spared from tourism.

If you reminiscence about the golden days of the Middle Ages, you should not miss a trip to Besalú. This village is known for its romantic flair and ethnic diversity. The medieval atmosphere comes from Gothic churches, a monastery, and a synagogue. If you miss the sound of breaking waves, take the train to Pals. The Romanesque clock tower, a millennial church, well-preserved defence towers, narrow streets, and fairy-tale fountains are its landmarks. Moreover, the Mirador Josep Pla, a viewing platform, offers a breath-taking view over the hinterland of Costa Brava. From here, the Salzburg of Catalonia – the village of Peralada can be admired. Besides Castell de Peralada festival, the town is also famous for its castle and monastery. Today, it houses an important library, which, among other things, has antique editions of Don Quixote, as well as a glass and wine museum.

Catalan nature – where the treasures are buried

For those who prefer physical activity, Catalonia offers both waters and mountains. The Camí de Ronda, a former historic escape route between villages and beaches, is highly recommendable for lovers of the sea. The name goes back to the border guards who turned their laps to track down smugglers (ronda = engl. round). Nowadays, millennials enjoy excellent day-to-day transportation along the coast after a frolicsome party night. Altogether, the distance is about 43 kilometres, starting in the picturesque Sant Feliú de Guíxols and ending in the fishing village of Begur.

Els Tres Monts is a true midwinter night’s dream. The walking path in the backcountry of Barcelona runs through the enchanted forests of the three nature reserves: Montseny, Sant Lorenç i l’Obac, and Montserrat. Six stages with lengths of between 24 and 3.5 kilometres impress with untouched landscapes, marvellous panoramas and quaint villages along the way.

Summiteers can climb the Camí dels Bons Homes. “The good men” allude to the Cathars living in France until the 13th century. The Albigensian Crusade of the Catholic Church forced the Christian movement to flee across the Pyrenees. Once a journey into the unknown is today one of the most beautiful cross-border routes with a comfortable infrastructure and numerous hostels. Santuari de Santa Maria de Queralt is the starting point, the so-called “balcony of Catalonia”. After several idyllic highlights, the trail ends in the French Occitania, the home of the Cathars.

If the sea, forest, and mountains were not enough, La Garrotxa, a volcanic landscape might entice you. The trail network Itinerannia impresses with lava flows in mixed woodland. Here, there are twenty-eight trails covering everything Catalan: flora and fauna, castles and ancient churches. During winters, the trails have a particularly mystical atmosphere.

Catalan culture – Golden jewellery and glittering colours

To round off all the acquired cultural, architectural, and geographic knowledge, the end of a winter trip through Catalonia leads to Sitges, a lovely little town on the coast. Sitges is the carnival stronghold of the country. This year, the celebration of the fifth season will take place from 28^th February to 6^th March 2019 and will be opened by the crowned Carnival King; for most Catalans, the more honourable King.

Unlike the carnival of Vilanova i la Geltrú, which is celebrated more festively and traditionally, Sitges is known for its eccentricity. The carnivalists carry feathers and glitter costumes, following the Brazilian model. The back-story of the big party in the small town was once the rivalry between two clubs that wanted to make their carnival more colourful, lush, and louder than the other. Ultimately, it was megalomania of a hundred years ago that brought Sitges to this popularity. In other words: celebrate, dance, and show the world the second side of Catalonia’s face!

However, it does not matter which village, trail, or costume you choose. They all are a bloom of Catalan history and the cultural wealth of the Iberian Peninsula. With a freshly tapped Sant Jordi and a plate of Patates Braves, you can unwind, enjoy the seclusion, or party all week – Bon viatge!

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1 – The official currency of the United States, the U.S. dollar, got its name from its Spanish counterpart. Prior to American independence, Spanish silver coins were widely accepted in North America as Spain had more silver than any other country in the world. This is why the US opted to pick the so-called “Spanish dollar” as a model for both its design and the name.

2 – The world’s most expensive ham is made in Spain, with a single leg costing no less than €4.100! Made in the southwestern province of Huelva, this jamón won the annual Biofach award in 2016, which is basically the cured meat equivalent of winning an Oscar.

3 – Spain was the last country in the world that executed people with a garrote, which is a sort of strangling device. The last execution happened in 1974, when two men were strangled to death for killing police officers.

4 – After the Spanish Civil war, many Republicans fled to exile in France. During World War 2, more than 60,000 Spanish Republicans joined the French Resistance and Free French Forces. The first allied division that entered Paris upon its liberation in 1944 was the 9th Armoured Company of the Free French Forces, and was almost entirely made up of Spanish volunteers.

5 – In 1966, two US Air Force planes collided over Spain during mid-air refueling. One of the planes, a B-52G, was carrying four nuclear bombs. Three of them hit land and one of them was later found in the sea. The non-nuclear parts of two of the bombs actually did detonate upon impact, which contaminated a two-square-kilometer area with plutonium.

6 – The small village of Castrillo de Murcia has a very special yearly ritual to baptise new-born babies. Once a year, babies are laid out neatly in rows over pillows in the streets. Men dressed like devils then proceed to jump across the pillows, leapfrogging the babies. The baby jumping festival is known as El Colacho, and is considered a traditional baptism ritual by a number of Catholic families.

7 – The 1918 influenza pandemic, a calamity that killed up to 100 million people around the globe, is also known as the ‘Spanish Flu’. The pandemic didn’t actually originate in Spain, but due to wartime restrictions on freedom of the press, neutral Spain was the only country where the media could openly report on the outbreak. This gave a false perception of Spain being the only country that got hit by the flu.

8 – During the Spanish-American war of 1898, the Spanish government failed to communicate to its manned fortress in Guam that a state of war existed between Spain and the US. When the American Navy came to conquer the island, they fired thirteen rounds at the fortress. Instead of returning fire, the Spanish sent out a ship to the American fleet to show their friendship and welcome these visitors. The Spanish apologized to the Americans for not returning their salute shots and asked if they could borrow some gunpowder so they could return the salute. The Americans then told them that they were in fact at war with each other and that they had just become prisoners of war.

9 – In the Paralympics of 2000 in Sydney, Australia, Spain won a gold medal in basketball for athletes with intellectual disabilities. However, thirteen years after this victory, the Spanish athletes were found guilty of fraud as they had fielded not one, not two, but ten people who posed as mentally disabled.

10 – In 1873, during the Contal rebellion, a city in the southeast of the country supposedly declared its independence from Spain. What makes this declaration of independence especially weird is the fact that the city also sent out a letter to the US president Ulysses Grant, asking him permission to join the United States. This was an attempt to get the Spanish forces to stop bombing the city.

Did you enjoy learning more about Spain? Do you want to find out more curious facts about other European countries? Check out its neighbour Portugal, or its old dynastic partner Austria!

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The Road To War

The Thirty Years’ War began when three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire were thrown out the window of the royal castle in Prague in 1618, sparking a continent-wide religious conflict. The following thirty years tore the heart out of Europe, killing nearly a quarter of the entire German population and devastating Central Europe to such an extent that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from Russia were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the battles rapidly spiralled out of control, with armies giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers, spreading plague and murder.

The Thirty Years’ War can be roughly divided into four parts: the outbreak of hostilities with the Bohemian War, the Danish intervention, the Swedish intervention, and the French intervention. To begin, some of the issues that lay behind it must first be understood. The road to war began with a local conflict, internal to the Holy Roman Empire, which then exploded into a massive war that would lead to millions of deaths and the destruction of hundreds of villages and cities. By the war’s end, mostly Swedish and French forces could move around the Germanies almost at will, taking and burning what they wanted. The tides of war led to the quick decentralization of the Holy Roman Empire, and to a peace of great historical significance.

Christianity Divided

The roots of the war are grounded in the Peace of Augsburg, established in 1555. Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor/Charles I of Spain) made abortive efforts during 1540-1541 to enforce a compromise agreement between the Protestants and the Catholics within the Holy Roman Empire, which threatened to tear the realm apart. When these and other conciliar efforts failed, he turned to military solutions. In 1547, imperial armies crushed the Protestant Schmalkaldic League. The emperor established puppet rulers in Saxony and Hesse and issued an imperial law, the Augsburg Interim, which commanded Protestants everywhere to readopt Catholic beliefs and practices. The effort came to naught: the Reformation was too entrenched by 1547 to be ended even by brute force. Charles, already weary from three decades of war, relented when he was confronted by fierce Protestant resistance.

In September 1555, the treaty made the division of Christendom permanent. This agreement recognised in law what had already been established in practice: “cuius regio, eius religio,” meaning that the ruler of a land would determine the religion of the land. Lutherans were permitted to retain all church lands that had been forcibly seized before 1552. Those who were discontented with the religion of their region were permitted to migrate to another.

It is worth noting that Calvinism was not recognised as a legal form of Christian belief and practice by the Peace of Augsburg. However, Calvinists remained determined not only to secure their right to worship publicly as they pleased but also to shape society according to their own religious convictions. They reacted by orchestrating national revolutions throughout northern Europe.

In 1609, Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria (1573-1651), organised a Catholic League to counter a new Protestant alliance that had been formed by the Calvinist Elector Palatine, Frederick IV (r. 1583-1610). When the League fielded a great army under the command of Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly (1559-1651), the stage was set, internally and internationally, for the Thirty Years’ War, the worst European catastrophe since the Black Death.

Protestants Take Up Arms Against The Empire

The defenestration of Prague became the signal for a general rebellion in predominantly Protestant Bohemia. It started in Prague but soon spread to the other territories encompassing the Crown of Bohemia, stretching into Austrian territory. In the summer of 1618, the revolt had already gained footholds in Silesia, Lusatia and Upper Austria. The first actual battles in the Thirty Years’ War took place near the city of Pilsen (modern Plzeň, Czechia) where many Catholics had taken refuge. To stop the Catholics from receiving reinforcements, the Bohemian rebels under Ernst von Mansfeld marched towards Pilsen, and the siege thus began in September. Like the first battle, the first siege also ended with an overwhelming victory for the Protestants.

The Winter King on the Retreat

The victory gave the Bohemians an upper hand, but they had to strike while the iron was hot. To do this, they had to gather as many allies as possible and strike into the heartland of the Habsburgs in Austria. However, few neighbours were willing to risk a European war to aid the Bohemians. Only one Western European State, little Savoy, supplied the Bohemians with economic assistance – but it was not enough. After constant fighting that stretched for years, the Bohemians were eventually handed a crushing defeat at the Battle of White Mountain.

For the Bohemians, this battle was a disaster. Their lands were returned to the Catholics, and the Jesuits took control of the University of Prague. Countless people were executed as traitors and rebels, hundreds of thousands of people fled. Bohemia would then remain a stable part of the Habsburg Empire for three centuries.

While the Habsburgs were under assault from several directions, the Transylvanians under Gábor Bethlen took the opportunity to invade Hungary from the East. The crisis continued to escalate: the Swiss lent aid to rebels in Northern Italy, and the Palatine and the Bohemians also pushed hard from several directions.
By 1621, however, the Habsburgs were victorious everywhere. Order had been restored in Bohemia, Hungary, and Valtellina in Italy. In the Palatine, Frederick V (dubbed the “Winter King”) lost fortification after fortification. To outside eyes, the conflict looked all but over. But nothing could be further from the truth.

A General European War: Danish Intervention

Emperor Ferdinand II and his advisors bear the brunt of responsibility for the continuation of the war. A compromise could have been reached if they had  been satisfied with depriving Frederick V of the Bohemian Crown, but seeing the prospect of a complete and total victory, the Habsburgs fought on, persuading Frederick V to carry on.

Meanwhile, seeing the triumphs of the Catholics, Spain saw an opportunity to settle its score with the Dutch. With Northern Italy and the Palatine firmly under Catholic Habsburg control, the road to the Netherlands lay open. The instigators of this war were the Count-Duke of Olivares, Ferdinand II; Cardinal Richelieu of France, and Gustav II Adolf of Sweden. They were responsible for prolonging the conflict.

When Christian IV of Denmark intervened in the Thirty Years’ War, he was at the peak of his power. Income from the ransom of Älvsborgs Castle and the Sound Dues made it easy for him to cough up money for military expeditions. He also had personal reasons for intervening. He had hoped that a quick and decisive strike into Germany would land him the territories of Bremen, Verden, and Schwerin for his two sons.

Emperor Ferdinand II secured the assistance of Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583-1634), who raised an independent army of 50,000. The combined forces of Wallenstein and Tilly defeated Christian IV in 1626, and then proceeded to occupy the duchy of Holstein. The Treaty of Lubeck, signed in 1629, restored Holstein to Denmark, but the Danish king pledged not to intervene further in German affairs. The Danish period of the war, like the Bohemian period, thus ended with a Habsburg and Catholic victory. Protestants everywhere were alarmed by the Catholic victories. The Emperor’s triumphs endangered the independence of the German princes, while the French Bourbons were concerned about the growth of Habsburg power.

Turning Point: Swedish Intervention

King Gustav II Adolf (r. 1611 – 1632) of Sweden became the new leader of the Protestant cause. In the summer of 1630, the Swedes made landfall in Germany. This marked one of the turning points of the Thirty Years’ War, but it must be emphasized that Swedish intervention was not a foregone conclusion. By 1630, the war had raged for twelve years. Denmark had been swiftly defeated upon intervening.
It would have been easy for Gustav II Adolf and his Lord High Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, to stay neutral and focus on the campaign they really burned for: fighting against Sigismund III Wasa of Poland.

As the name implies, Sigismund was of Swedish origin. He was the son of the Swedish king Johan III, and of the Polish princess Catherine Jagiellon, but he lost the crown. However, he still planned to reclaim Sweden. Gustav II Adolf could have focused on ending this threat, but chose instead to steer Sweden towards the Protestant cause, and against Germany.

Sweden’s intervention also presented a useful convergence of interests with France, which remained embroiled in its own goal of limiting Habsburg power and agreed to provide Gustav II Adolf with an annual subsidy of 400,000 talers to maintain an army in the conflict. After consolidating his position across the Baltic, the Swedish king led a stunningly successful campaign, culminating in the battle at Breitenfeld in 1631. This battle destroyed an Imperial army under the command of General Tilly and gave Gustav II Adolf a dominant position in northern Germany, inflicting the first massive defeat to the Imperial forces. He then consolidated his position and conducted a lightning campaign to wrest much of present-day Germany from Imperial control. His success, however, met an abrupt end with his death at Lützen in 1632, having fought Wallenstein’s army to a draw in the process.

Thirty Years And No Sign of Peace

Three years later, in 1635, the Thirty Years’ War could well have ended, thanks to the Peace of Prague. This treaty was signed by Ferdinand II and the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg I. The Peace was important because Saxony was one of the largest and most powerful of the German Protestant states, and their support for Sweden had been instrumental in the efforts of the Swedish to build a network of alliances across Germany.

In 1631 and 1632, Sweden saw great victories and gains, and to a degree this continued in 1633 and 1634 even after the Battle of Lützen. All of this was swept away inthe Battle of Nördlingen, a true disaster for Swedish forces. Without active support from Richelieu, king Louis XIII’s chief minister, the Swedish could have been smacked back across the Baltic Sea, and the officials of the Holy Roman Empire hoped that 1635 would be the year that resulted in peace and German unity. Instead, the exact opposite happened: 1635 became the watershed that expanded the Thirty Years’ War to its final phase, when France actively got involved in the fighting.

The many theaters of the Thirty Years’ War – the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany – were intertwined, causing the war to spread with no peace in sight. Ferdinand II had viewed the Peace of Prague as a compromise: the fortunes of war could change rapidly as evident from the Battle of Breitingen and then from the Battle of Nördlingen. However, Ferdinand II now had an excellent opportunity to restore much of the positions lost to Gustav II Adolf of Sweden. This required the sacrifice of certain principles – the alternative was to go through a new round of war against all the Protestant states and Sweden, after all. Thus, Ferdinand abandoned many of the religious edicts that had propelled German anger into a full-blown conflict. He reinstated “cuius regio, eius religio,” paving the way for Protestant rulers to practice their faith in the open. This in turn meant that in 1635, the Thirty Years’ War lost the final claim it had to being a war of religion.

Spiralling Out of Control: French Intervention

France’s official entry in the war followed a long history of rivalry against the Habsburgs. Richelieu and Louis XIII had chosen a side long before 1635, in line with the traditional anti-Habsburg politics of France. They had supported the Netherlands and Sweden financially, and they had intervened against the Habsburgs directly on several occasions as evident from the Mantuan Succession War. Furthermore, Richelieu had strengthened France’s political situation by creating allied buffer States; the most obvious example was the Duchy of Savoy. The Savoyan rulers, however, had continually shown that they would rather make deals with the Habsburgs than bow down to Paris. By the mid-1630’s, though, the Duchy of Savoy was essentially a French satellite State whose interests aligned with Richelieu’s.

Another example is the German Archbishopric of Trier which accepted protection from France, granting Paris access to three strategically important fortresses– Koblenz, Ehrenbreitstein, and Phillipsburg.  A final example is Lothringen (modern-day Lorraine), then part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Duke of Lothringen, Charles IV, had a habit of cutting deals with the Habsburgs and broke promises made to France; thus allowing the Habsburgs to occupy strategic sites along the border to France. Finally, in 1633, this caused the French to invade the duchy and occupy it. By achieving all of this pre-1635, Richelieu had prepared for the French intervention, which aimed to break the Habsburg encirclement of France.

Despite many failures and disappointments during the first few years, especially when Spanish and Austrian troops came dangerously close to Paris after beating back the French in the Netherlands and from the Rhine, French intervention kept the war going. However, neither the Habsburgs nor the French alliance were able to strike a decisive blow until 1640, where the situation favoured the Swedish, the French, and their allies. While they were still unable defeat the Habsburgs, they kept up the advantage until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

The New Power Balance

The treaties that comprised the Peace of Westphalia had important ramifications for Europe. The end of the war cemented France as the premier land power on the continent, a position it would keep until the defeat in the Napoleonic wars; and it consecrated Sweden as a European Great Power, a status that Stockholm would keep until the end of the Great Northern War.

For Austria, two important things came from the Peace of Westphalia. Firstly, Cardinal Jules Mazarin (Chief Minister of the French King) was adamant in his demands that the Habsburgs of Austria be forced to cut ties with the Spanish Habsburgs, leaving Spain out of the peace treaty. France wanted Philip IV of Spain to lose all Austrian support. Ferdinand III of Austria was therefore forced to solemnly swear to withhold any and all aid to his Pyrenean relatives.

The Austrian ruler was reluctant, and for good reason. The alliance between Madrid and Vienna was old and connected the Habsburg house. However, during the Autumn of 1648, Ferdinand was forced to agree to the terms. The Spanish defeat at the Battle of Lens, and the Swedish conquest of half of Prague made continued warfare look extremely grim for Austria.  Another year of war could lead to even greater demands from the Swedish-French alliance, and so, Ferdinand grudgingly accepted.

Secondly, the peace established that the German rulers of the various duchies, kingdoms, counties, and cities throughout Germany were given a large degree of autonomy from the Holy Roman Emperor. However, no longer anchored to the warlike preferences of the Spaniards, and with fewer means to directly interfere in German politics, Austria was now able to pursue her true destiny: the East, where the dangerous behemoth known as the Ottoman Empire stood not far away from Vienna itself. In this way, Westphalia turned out to be a surprising blessing in disguise for Austria, allowing the Empire to increase its territory and consolidate its status as a Great Power over the next two centuries.

The Treaties that Changed the World

The legacy of Westphalia, however, goes well beyond the peace itself and the new order it brought to Europe. The Treaties established new legal principles that had major ramifications for the international order. The key novelty is the rejection of the universalistic ideas of the Middle Ages: the Church and the Empire, and their respective claims to ecumenism.

By effectively outlawing crusades between European nations, and establishing each country’s right to pick a religion without outside interference, Westphalia defined sovereignty and put the nation-State at the center of the political system for the very first time. In the post-Westphalian world, there is no authority that ranks above sovereign States, save for those that States themselves recognize as superior through a treaty. This is known as Westphalian Sovereignty, and is the basic framework that defines the entirety of international relations, and remains a core mechanic of international law to this day.

The norm-based European order that arose from the Thirty Years’ War would eventually grow in complexity and normativity, and would spread to the rest of the world in the wake of European imperialism and global preeminence during the two following centuries. With religious tolerance codified on a legal level, and States recognized as the primary agents of the international system, European diplomacy began to move towards the so-called peace conference system: the creation of fora for States to interact and resolve disputes. This system would peak during the European Concert, and the current United Nations are built on the strengths and weaknesses displayed by the conference system over the centuries.

The Thirty Years’ War began as the largest religious war in European history, but the Peace that ended it became the turning point of international relations. At Westphalia, European countries first plotted their course towards the international system as we know it today.

Did you enjoy reading this article? You may also like  On this day in 1933: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of the German Reich or On this day in 1741: the War of Austrian Succession.

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There are two teams above all else in Spanish football (well, some might say 2.5 with Atletico Madrid). The Champions League final article touched on the rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona, and what they represent. Mostly the Spanish style of football has been defined by Barcelona in the recent decades. Spain plays a game, where the ball is passed around often and at a fast pace. Play moves forwards and backwards, and from side to side. The aim is to keep possession of the ball and simply wait for opponents to make a mistake. This requires a high technical level of all players on the pitch, players who know each other and the style well, and the willingness to work defensively as well. All players must always be active and move to aid their fellow teammates.

Spanish football is at times both praised for its technical skill, but also criticised for being boring. The style seems interesting and great if that is your thing and your team is playing that way. However, it can also just be 90 minutes of Spanish players doing passing exercises as if it was during training. Either you love it, or you hate it.

Where do the Spanish play?

6 Real Madrid, 3 Barcelona, 3 Atlético Madrid, and 1 from different foreign and national clubs. Those are the three big clubs, and the only reason why it is not more from those teams is likely because they also employ a high number of foreigners. All three attempt to compete for European club competitions each season, and therefore they must have the best player in the world. Which also means the main star of the three teams is a Portuguese (Ronaldo, Real), a Argentine (Messi, Barca), and a Frenchman (Griezmann, Atletico).

Spanish players mainly play in their own league, but a few play in other European clubs. However, as with any of the major leagues, players tend to stick closer to home, unless an extraordinary opportunity arises.

Political influence and national narrative

Also covered in the Champions League final article. Spain is to some a kingdom of Madrid with colonial-like power in the regions, and to others it is a unitary country. The divisions can split regions almost down the middle between autonomy/independence/regionalism and national/centralist perspectives. So if your local team plays Real Madrid, then it is your region and city against the central authority. For some this is part of the fun of the game, and for others it is deadly serious.

Regional divisions, however, only last so long. When Spain wins a World Cup, then suddenly all of Catalonia is Spanish, and the Barcelona players are just as Spanish as the Real Madrid players. Victory on the pitch means unity outside of it. And regionalism in Spain is different in each and every region. Spain is a country of many influences, and a country that has influenced much of the world. More than half a billion people speak Spanish, and only 10% of the native speakers live in Spain. And in Spain you have other local languages such as Basque, Catalan, and Galician.

The Spanish duality is going to be important. Especially following the ongoing Catalonian crisis that started last year. Spanish football and their National Team might be the best hope their country has for healing those wounds. There will be a lot of pressure on them to deliver.

Group and expectations

On the day before the tournament starts and two days before facing Portugal in likely their hardest group game. Spain fired their manager. He had signed a contract for the following season with Real Madrid without informing or consulting his employer, and the action was swift. This is either going to cause chaos, or create a spirit of fighting with what they have. The ultimate challenge is Portugal, but in the second game they face a tricky and hard to read Iran. If they win both then then there will be no problems, and Spain will be a contender for the title.

If they do not get the results on the pitch, then there will be war in the media. The football association, the players, the fans, the journalists… It could be a real mess, and Marocco might be out for colonial revenge in the final game, and to vindicate themselves after not getting the 2026 World Cup (announced days ago). Spain really have to beat Portugal today to keep it together.

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Spain has won two times in its long career, the first time in 1968 with Massiel and the song La, la, la. The second time the following year in 1969 with Salomé with the song Vivo cantando.

Last year the country was represented by Manel Navarro with the song Do It for Your Lover  that achieved the amazing result of the last place with five points.

This year Spain will be represented by the duo Alfred & Amaia with the song Tu canción.

Amaia Romero and Alfred García are the winner and finalist of the latest edition of Spanish TV talent show Operación Triunfo.

Amaia started studying piano at six years old at Pablo Sarasate’s Music Conservatory, and at 10 she was already auditioning for her first talent show.

Alfred has been passionate about music from a young age, he is a talented songwriter who has released three self-edited albums, despite his young age.

Tu Canción is the perfect embodiment of Amaia and Alfred’s real and enchanting love story.

Did you enjoy this article? You may also like Montenegro: Road to Eurovision and Norway: Road to Eurovision

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Defining Decentralisation

The definition of decentralisation changes accordingly to different States and constitutional traditions, but generally, decentralisation means the transfer of legislative powers to subnational bodies, as well as fiscal and administrative powers. Sometimes, decentralisation includes all of these three elements, but sometimes not.

Federalism on one hand and devolution/decentralisation on the other are two concepts which are strictly interconnected, but essentially different. Indeed, federalism means that State sovereignty is distributed across different level of government, according to a combination of self-rule of the constituent units, and shared rule through federal institutions. Normally, this process of distribution happens country-wide: all territories are affected by the new framework at the same time.

More importantly federal principles must be legally protected within the constitutional framework, so that, while asserting the unity of the federation, the self-rule of its constituent states is intrinsically part of the federal constitutional framework. A constant feature of federal States is that the Upper Chamber/Senate represent the interest and the opinions of constituent units in the law-making process, therefore they must follow subnational boundaries.

Unlike federalism, devolution is the conferral of powers in some limited areas to subnational parliaments. Despite being democratically legitimate bodies, said parliaments remain legally subordinate to the supremacy of the central parliament. This means that, theoretically, the central parliament can recentralise said powers just following an ordinary constitutional procedure or even by simply issuing a parliamentary act. Shared rule is also very limited or non-existent, so that the territorial units have very limited say in the shaping and implementation of nation-wide policies. Additionally, while federalisation is applied to the whole state, devolution can be applied to only one territory or more territories, but not necessarily all of them.

Ultimately, devolution implies a narrow subset of competencies for devolved entities; more importantly, it doesn’t enjoy the same degree of constitutional protection as constituent units in federalism.

Two Ways To Decentralise

Federalisation and devolution are two different ways to perform decentralisation and manage internal differences. In light of these differences, federal States are those that adopt federalism, while decentralised, regionalised or devolved States are those that adopted some form of devolution. Watts collected all the latter under the definition of decentralised unions (Watts 2007: 16): i.e. unitary states adopting some form of decentralisation without being federal.

The difference in constitutional guarantees and conformity to a framework does not necessarily imply a difference in levels of autonomy. On the contrary, it can happen that a region in a decentralised State has relatively the same or even more autonomy than a constituent unit in a federation. Some scholars for instance agree that, although Spain is not a federal State in a classical term, Catalonia has a degree of autonomy that is somehow comparable to that of constituent units of federal States (Ferran Raquejo, 2017). The same can be argued for Scotland within the UK.

There are at least three cases of devolved/decentralised States in Europe: these are the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy. All three have some common patterns, but very different features. The Netherlands too represents another case of decentralised unitary state, even if the Dutch case will not be explored in depth here.

The United Kingdom

The UK is the quintessential case of a devolved State. The country is the result of the merger of two kingdoms in 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, leading to the dismissal of the Scottish Parliament and its merger into Westminster. Similarly, the acts of Union of 1800 led to the merger of the Parliament of Ireland into the Parliament of the United Kingdom, a settlement that lasted until Irish independence.

Centuries after this merger, the United Kingdom underwent a process of devolution beginning in the 1990s. In this process, the Scottish Parliament was re-established. In the following years, through a series of acts, the Westminster Parliament conferred a series of fiscal, political and administrative powers, previously the prerogative of Westminster, to Holyrood. After the 2014 independence referendum, and following the report of the Smith Commission, Scotland was given more powers over some fiscal and administrative areas.

Wales underwent a similar process and, after a devolution referendum in 2011, it enjoyed a further increase in competences. Similarly, Northern Ireland enjoys self-rule and devolved powers. The United Kingdom remains a strongly asymmetrical system, since Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have three different forms of devolution and, unlike the others, England does not have a national parliament. Westminster makes laws for England thanks to an “English Votes for English Laws” procedure. Ultimately, because of the absence of a written constitution, devolution is guaranteed by parliamentary acts only and the ultimate authority rests with the UK Parliament.

Spain

The case of devolution in Spain has sparked considerable debate. In fact, even though some scholars argue that Spain is a de facto federation, others (Gagnon-Keil-Mueller 2015, Requejo 2005, Filippov–Ordeshook-Shvetsova 2004, Griffiths-Neremberg 2002, 2005, Watts 1999, Stepan 1999, Elazar 1991) argue for the opposite: i.e. that it is a devolved system, including many elements of federalism, but not entirely a federal State. Therefore, some define Spain a quasi-federation.

The Spanish Autonomous Communities are not constituent units. Some of the current communities have deep historical roots, others were artificially created after the new constitution came into force. The judicial power is still centralised, and the Senate, unlike Upper Chambers in federal systems, is not linked to the Autonomous Communities; thus, reducing their role in making state-wide policies.

Similarly, on the field of taxation, autonomous communities (with the sole exception of the Basque countries) have limited tax-raising powers, which remain in the hands of the central government, providing for redistributing fiscal resources to the Communities. Again, Autonomous Communities have no official role in the constitutional reform process, which remains mostly in the hands of the central parliament and to State wide referendums. These main elements are the reason why, although Spanish Autonomies display a high degree of agency that is typical of federal States, classifying Spain as a federation is inaccurate: its constitution simply does not reflect it.

Italy

Italy is an asymmetric system combining both elements of federalism and devolution at the same time. The result is that Italy shows traits of being a federal State under development (Palermo, Woelk 2007), stuck between those two different solutions. The federalisation of Italy has been a very long process, but the turning point is represented by the constitutional reform of 2001, amending the 5th Title of the Constitution, and increasing the competences of ordinary regions.

Italy is divided into twenty regions, five of which are designated as Regions with Special Statute (RSS). The remaining fifteen are Regions with Ordinary Statute (ROS). While the statutes of the Autonomous Regions are ranked with the Constitution in the hierarchy of Italian laws, the statute of the other ordinary regions ranks as ordinary law, and therefore subordinate to the Constitution. This disparity makes Italy an asymmetrical political system following two different tracks of decentralisation: the one applied to the RSS, modelled after a federalist paradigm; and the one applied to the other fifteen regions, modelled after a devolved system. It’s a devolutionary, asymmetric federal hybrid system, still in development. (Palermo, Woelk 2017).

In addition to this fundamental element, RSS have both exclusive and residual legislative powers, while ROS only have residual ones. Ordinary regions enjoy limited fiscal autonomy, although their degree of administrative autonomy is relatively high. In fact, while the Special Statute Regions have a constitutional right to their fiscal revenues, the other regions do not, and are subject to State transfers.

Unlike Spain and the United Kingdom, the Italian Senate follows a regional allocation criterion, as stated by Article 57. Nevertheless senators are not elected by regional bodies, and generally do not represent regional or subnational interests, but normally follow national partisan lines. Regional minority parties in Special Statute Regions are an exception to this.

The many attempts to change the nature of the Senate into a House of Regions have so far met with no success. Currently, the Senate isn’t the chamber of local interests and autonomy, but a perfect equivalent in powers and prerogatives as the Chamber of Deputies. The Permanent State and Regions Conference plays that role of forum for the national and regional governments, but it is a consultative body, with no role in the law-making process.

For these reasons, Italy is strongly regionalised but mostly decentralised unitary state, since it lacks the features that most federal States have.

Conclusions

Devolution and federalisation represent two possible paths of distributing powers within a polity. They are conceptually different systems, but hybrid solutions are possible; more, they can both lead to the outcome of boosting and securing local autonomies and manage internal diversities. There is no better or worse option, since the final outcome of both processes very much depends on a series of factors: like, for instance, the different cultural, economic and institutional backgrounds, the way it is introduced and the constitutional framework underlying.

This article is the second of the series “United, But How?”, which aims to illustrate key concepts of federalist theory. For the first episode, click here.

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