My Cana­dian friend Alex asked me about them, so I wrote this reply:

Alex: Out of curio­sity, what are your thoughts on the riots/protests in Spain? Do you iden­tify with them? Have you ever been a part of any demons­tra­tions (at any point, not just recently)?

Fran: I’ve been to seve­ral, 15M the last one. I remem­ber still the huge demos­tra­tions against joi­ning the Iraq war and after the Madrid bom­bings. Pro­tests are actua­lly fre­quent, but often very poli­ti­zed or very union-centric. Valen­cia is a con­ser­va­tive city which is often seen as very cola­bo­ra­tive and sub­ser­vient of the cen­tral gover­ment, and more inter­es­ted in enter­tain­ment and party life than in poli­tics; save for the latest stu­dent strike, pro­tests here have little weight com­pa­red with Madrid, Bar­ce­lona or Bil­bao. Often pro­tests are orga­ni­zed in Madrid only, and peo­ple is expec­ted to tra­vel there to join them.

I had yes­ter­day this same con­ver­sa­tion on skype with Lena. Nor­ma­lly, both the riots near the Con­gress and the inde­pen­den­tist pro­tests in Bar­ce­lona would have been lar­gely irre­le­vant. In the first case they would have been dis­mis­sed just because of num­bers (there’s been pro­tests in Madrid with more than a million peo­ple, even sports cele­bra­tions; the one in front of the Con­gress was in the lower tens of thou­sands). In the second one, because it still is in fact a popu­list move by the con­ser­va­tive “inde­pen­den­tist” party, who has made very sharp cuts and has been caught in cases of corrup­tion; that party is very pro busi­ness and they have been his­to­ri­ca­lly very com­for­ta­ble with a “I get to govern auto­no­mi­ca­lly my region, but also con­di­tion the Spa­nish poli­tics and bud­gets”. For a foot­ball analogy, it’s like Bar­ce­lona Foot­ball Club chan­ne­ling and exploi­ting the natio­na­list sym­bo­lism, but actua­lly having no inten­tion of lea­ving La Liga and pla­ying only against cata­lo­nian teams. A large deal of Catalunya’s busi­ness is with the rest of Spain, and they would take a large eco­no­mic hit if only because of Spa­nish boy­cotts; their debt rating is way worse than Spain’s, and with the EU’s nega­tive to accept them right away as an inde­pen­dent coun­try, they would have no access to Euro­pean res­cue funds.

The pro­blem is… Rajoy. The current gover­ment is extre­mely weak. They can pass any law by them­sel­ves, but, by now, they are almost dele­gi­ti­mi­zed. They have almost sys­te­ma­ti­ca­lly rever­sed every elec­to­ral pro­mise, their sup­port in polls has fallen already from 46% to 30% (on a tra­di­tio­na­lly ridicu­lously immo­bile sup­port base), they are seen as una­ble to trans­mit any con­fi­dence to the mar­kets or stand against euro­pean impo­si­tions, they have inter­nal rifts going on with ultra libe­rals and ultra con­ser­va­ti­ves bai­ling out or split­ting to run their own par­ties. Rajoy’s regio­nal “barons” often try to dis­tance them­sel­ves from him to avoid asso­cia­ting them­sel­ves with the aus­te­rity cuts.

This weak­ness con­text is the reason the N inde­pen­den­tist mar­ches and a small pro­test around the Con­gress are actua­lly making peo­ple ner­vous and aren’t beign dis­mis­sed right away. There’s also a fee­ling that peo­ple is tired already of the inef­fec­ti­ve­ness of the pro­tests, and to show up in front of the Con­gress is seen as a step towards higher hos­ti­lity against the poli­ti­cal class.

I do think that this gover­ment will even­tua­lly ask for res­cue funds, and they will have to announce early elec­tions. If the date is too far away, peo­ple will lose the patience and you’ll see mas­sive pro­tests again. They should be lar­gely pea­ce­ful, but I’m sure there would be some mate­rial dama­ges. By the end of year we’ll know already if the party lost or not seve­ral regio­nal elec­tions, inclu­ding the referendum-light that the elec­tions in Cata­lunya will be; depen­ding on what hap­pens they may feel or not they have the strength to keep going a bit furt­her. Very bad results would make it very dif­fi­cult to last 2013. If they don’t ask for res­cue funds nor announce early elec­tions then it’s all in the mar­kets’ hands: if debt inter­ests spike back up, if the ban­king res­cue fails and they are liqui­da­ted, if there are more cuts to public ser­vi­ces… the big elep­hant in the room is reti­re­ment bene­fits: that’s where a lot of the voter sup­port comes for this party, and it’s the last pro­mise to break. A cut in reti­re­ment bene­fits would implode the party.

Ove­rall though the Spa­nish popu­la­tion is way too civic to esca­late things too much, at least not before the gover­ment collap­ses on its own. My worst worry is that this same weak­ness may ener­gize some of the latent extre­mist groups, which may take exam­ple from the his­to­ri­cal cases of vio­lence and terro­rist actions.

Fran: I didn’t ans­wer if I iden­tify with them. I do iden­tify with the ones pro­tes­ting against the aus­te­rity cuts. I do think there’s lots and lots and lots of waste to cut, but this gover­ment is being extre­mely soft with the energy, real estate, finan­cial sec­tors, and the tax eva­ders, pro­perty owners and 1% higher ear­ners, while “making every­body carry a share of the bur­den” by hur­ting peo­ple that had no res­pon­sa­bi­lity in the cri­sis, inclu­ding the youn­ger gene­ra­tion, and ove­rall killing the eco­nomy for the sake of a short term res­cue for the zom­bie banks.