Seven years in Tibet

For seven long years the PSOE has occupied the position of government in Spain. The elections of the rapidly approaching November 20 will, in the view of the analysts, present the Spanish people with an alternative government formed by the PP. The party at present in opposition might win these imminent elections with a majority sufficient properly to govern the country without having recourse to the autonomies – those careless, spendthrift former regions whose reckless extension of debt has done a great deal of damage to the economy: possibly irreparable damage.

The Lower House has just voted (by 90%) to amend the Constitution suitably to prevent such abandoned and thoughtless community spending. Naturally both Cataluña and the Basque Country tried to stop the reform by begging for a referendum (unnecessary) and subsequently leaving the House during the vote, accompanied by the less timid of other deminutive parties. It did not work, and the proposition will now be open for debate in the Upper Chamber.

A few happy events have made the future seem less bleak; the constitutional court in Cataluña has given the educational authorities just two months to correct the abnormnal situation whereby Catalan is used to teach all subjects in educational institutions, with Castilian ignored. Both languages must now be used, as is right and proper since Spanish is the mother tongue of ALL Spaniards, as well as being the third most used language in the world. Catalan, like Valencian, is a localised version of a major language. Only in the Basque Country is the language (Vascuense) totally different from Spain’s mother tongue, with its own vocabulary and rules of grammar. Artur Mas and his separatists will have to think again, which of course they will do.

My reference to Tibet in the title of this piece is not provocative. It is perfectly true to say that to all extent and purposes, Mr Rodríguez and his associates in the governance of Spain appear to have been lost in Tibet for seven years. None of them has the slightest knowledge of what an ordinary Spanish man or woman’s everyday life is. ZP has locked himself in the Moncloa Palace, surrounded by admiring toadies who always say yes with a smile.