A View into Spanish Politics

This just doesn’t happen in the United States

On Saturday leaders of the Spanish Socialist party, PSOE, ran each other into the ground trying to determine in what direction their party, and by consequence their country, should go. Inside party headquarters, the representatives were besieged for half the day by decisions and votes as two factions desperately tried to slither around each other without being bitten in a dance of coup/counter coup. Outside, the building itself was besieged with protesters backing Pedro Sanchez, the Secretary General of the Socialist party. People shouted, chanted, and waved signs, but mainly they just milled about as minutes turned into hours.

There were conversations to be had about Spain, politics, and the future of the party itself. People spoke nostalgically about their own history of activism on behalf of the PSOE. Occasionally someone would get restless and holler out something about how Susana Díaz, leader of the intra-party coup attempt, was a puta. As the day wore on, these exclamations were followed by protesters turning to one another to say what they would do to the golpistas if they could force their way into the building. One man next to me mumbled something to his friend about the Bastille. (Oddly enough, these threats did not seem to be much of a concern to the security. The police appeared to be more content hanging around the edges and redirecting traffic than standing between the mob and its target. As for the PSOE’s private security, it consisted of about four men standing in front of the two entrances. If the crowd wanted to make good on its vows, their primary barrier would be a portly 50 year-old man with glasses and stubble.)

The few moments of excitement came when the delegates appeared outside to take a break. The reaction of the crowd was almost mechanical. A tall person in the front would see the door open and someone of medium importance exit, prompting that person to start shouting. This was the signal for the rest of the crowd to join in with pro-Pedro chants. The primary hiccup was that the people in the front tended to be quite trigger-happy. The mere sight of the door opening at all was met with a volley of shouts.

A much better cue tended to be the media. With their equipment and sheer numbers, the media seemed to occupy more space than the crowd itself. They preferred to hang in the back, setting up camp in the bars across the street. When someone from their network said the word, cameramen would surge forward like a hardened rook through the crowd’s slender pawns. Their battle station was a line of 2-step ladders set up just outside the main entrance. They would film important people leaving the building and being chased by a group of protesters. Afterwards, they would turn the cameras around to get stock footage of the crowd before abandoning their position and retreating to base camp. Like the crowd, the press became more anxious as the day progressed, with the reporters wanting to get in on the action. At first, it was a free for all, as people with microphones and cameras descended upon the crowd like vultures to a carcass. They mindlessly dragged aside anyone they could find to interview. This included pedestrians, voters from other parties, and even me (unfortunately the reporter was looking for party members and passed on the chance to talk to an American college student watching foreign democracy in action). Eventually, the press became capable of rational thought and realized the best people to interview were the ones who shouted the loudest. Thus the vultures ceased to pester us nails and eyeballs and instead concentrated on the meat. As it turned out there was plenty of meat to go around, as the loudest protester was also the tallest, at six-foot-five at least, and well built. Back in his day (which looked to be about thirty years ago) he was probably first choice center back on his football team. Today, he was first choice for an interview. Second choice was a group of well-dressed and intellectual-looking students. And they, in an intellectual manner, spoke about how the left needed to unite against conservative president Mariano Rajoy. They probably backed Podemos, the far left party whose rise to prominence in recent local elections condemned Pedro Sanchez to suffer through an Ides of March in early October.

Something that must be understood by someone new to Spanish politics is that PSOE is the old school leftist party. It’s not Podemos, which caters to the idealistic college student and your unemployed communist uncle (along with leftists who still want to vote yet have been driven away from the PSOE due to its systemic corruption). PSOE is for the old timers who were socialists during Franco’s dictatorship, socialists during the transition to democracy, and have stayed that way ever since. Most probably had family members that fought with the republicans during the civil war. This was the Old Guard, today trying to hold their ground on the pavement of Calle Ferraz instead of on the hills of Waterloo. The bulk of the mob was north of 50 in age, with the loudest and most passionate contingent being the 70 and 80 year olds. A group of grandmothers kept chants alive and spoke out vociferously against the dreaded Susana. The elderly men of the protest hunted down reporters with the vigor of their great grandsons, determined to make their thoughts known. A couple others danced around with large signs taped to the sweeping ends of brooms.

The most moving sight was that of an old gentleman hunched over by the weight of both time and the bag on his shoulder, packed as densely as possible with homemade signs reading, “No ES No” and “NO PP,” which stands for Partido Popular, the Conservative party whose last obstacle to the presidency was Sanchez’ suborn opposition. He was not the talking sort (nor did it look like he could be), so instead he had labored away making himself heard in a different manner. He looked to have made over half the signs present in the crowd, which was surely no easy feat.

The most bizarre sight for a foreigner like myself came when I turned around to face the other side of the road. Here was the classic Madrid street: pretty narrow with bars lining the sidewalk and providing bases for the apartments above. It was a quiet residential area, not a major thoroughfare in a downtown business district. Turning back around, the PSOE headquarters could easily slip under the radar as an apartment building as well if not for a red sign with PSOE on it. All of this was happening on a quiet street that would normally blend in with any other from the neighborhood.

The community feel only ramped up as night drifted in, bringing with it people who decided on politics over nightlife. The ranks of the protesters swelled from a few hundred to maybe about a thousand, all waiting for the same resolution. Unfortunately, that result did not come. Sanchez was ousted as party leader, information that steadily made its way from journalists into the crowd. Anger and despair set in, as people began venomously scolding the coup plotters from outside. A man in the front tried to attack a delegate as he came out of the building, only to be pushed back by the portly security guard with glasses, who proved himself to be no slouch. One woman on the verge of tears wailed repeatedly that Sanchez should continue to struggle against his enemies. This really was the poetic climax of the whole occasion.

The imminent success of the coup had hung over the protest for the whole day. Pedro Sanchez did all the fighting he could— for eleven hours nonetheless! There was no more to be done. He was fighting an unwinnable battle against the inevitable, with cruel fate really only dragging out the affair for the 9 o’clock news. He had lost; the plotters had won. However unlike in most coups, the victors did not have his physical dead body to wave around as a sign of their resounding success. Sanchez lived, and so did, for the next few minutes, that woman’s hope that he could resurrect himself at the eleventh hour.