LO LLAMAN DEMOCRACIA, PERO NO LO ES

When thinking and debating on democracy the appearance of a huge variety of meanings, such as inclusion, equality of opportunities, living in peace or the promotion of participation seem to be principals of democracy at every time. These pillars, directly related –as it must be- with Human Rights, are those promoted as well by the Council of Europe, and where the ones that we strongly considered in our online state debate last Monday in order to analyse the quality and the situation of the Spanish democracy.

Spain’s democratic background is unfortunately something recent and seemingly poor, considering we have suffered a fourty-years-old dictatorial system headed by Francisco Franco after a civil war pulled by the fair-right side of the army, and with the direct purpose of breaking the country’s most democratic lapse in history, the second republic which took place from 1931 until 1936. As a consequence, society seems nowadays to have fallen in the conformism and the frighten for change due to a constant propaganda focused on remembering that 40 years ago we didn’t even have the minimums a democracy requires, and that we live in the best of the possible sceneries with the risk of losing what we have achieved by asking for more.

As a result, we have a king we didn’t vote for, and whose daughter is involved in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country, and we have a pointless combined system of old and new institutions full of corruption, lack of transparency and with a deep hole when it comes to organisms of external control.

But not everything is bad, our generation, born in democracy, more or alternatively informed, and less scared about those apocalyptic messages displayed in the media represent a real opportunity for the change and renovation our democratic system needs.

As an example here it is the three of us, with a different democratic and personal background writing this lines, with which we are sure most of the people from our time strongly agree.

José, from Madrid, describes his begins on the matter like this -In 2003 I participated in huge demostrations against the Spanish participation in the Iraq war. A government elected four years before were acting against the public opinion and there weren´t options for the people to decide in that matter. Then I realized that democracy means nothing without participation, information and social capital.

I’ve joined some other protests as well as I have participated in many assemblies, groups and seminars. After 2015 I started acting in the global level too, making mine the Seattle (1999) motto “think global, act local”-.

María, from Vigo, clearly remembers –I was 15 and I took a six-hour-bus to Madrid from my place to protest against the Iraq war, I started as José, with this unfair situation and a government whose intention wasn’t to respect democracy at all. After that, I started to became involved in social movement actions.

When I started travelling I realised that problems in my country weren’t different of those happening abroad. And that was how I started to be increasingly interested on democracy and human rights and how I began to participate and collaborate on different initiatives, trainings, seminars & protests in order to achieve a bigger social equality-.

And Mateo, from Ferrol, younger than José and María (better than José María, which is the president who made a deal with Bush and Blair and involved our country on the referred Iraq’s war against the public opinion) and whose background is the following:

–For me the Prestige environmental disaster (whose blameables are still free of punishment) and the Iraq war were as well the beginning of a democratic reflection, but from a child perspective.

I perfectly remember the Galician coast full of petrol while our president was hunting and going to a balneary to relax, saying that there was just small pieces of black staff, whereas hundreds of fisher’s families were crying looking throw the window of their houses to the Atlantic, thinking on how to afford their life’s expenses. I remember as well how, once the crisis was solved (thanks to the thousand of volunteers came from all around Europe) members of the government came to Galicia and bought the population’s memory by giving them considerable sums of money so that they won the elections again. It was so obvious that things needed to be changed.

Then, during my teenager time I became involved in a left-side students organisation and in a small left side political party where I’m still collaborating with. I worked as well with a cultural association which fights for preservation of Galician language against the Spanish nationalist policies and their constant attacks to diversity by considering it a threaten for the preservation of an artificial unity, and right now I’m starting to collaborate with a catalan association which fights for human rights and to force institutions to make an effective welcoming program for refugees-.

At the time we were debating about challenges and opportunities, we three agreed on the creation of the following list:

-As challenges, we believe that the promotion of a democratic educational system, focused on plurality and diversity would lead into a less influential society, taking into account that nowadays democracy in not a main topic in our schools.

We strongly think that a informed and well educated society is the key for a REAL DEMOCRACY.

-As an opportunity, Spanish political situation right now, with a Parliament composed without majorities could be the perfect opportunity to force a change, making the government remove those laws who have been enforced in the previous period by conservators, and which result extremely dangerous for a healthy democratic system, such as the new educational law “LOMCE” or the famous “LEY MORDAZA” which reduces the freedom of assembly and expression.

In relation to this, the creation of a European youth network (like YPbM) seems to be the perfect tool for organising the people of our generation and to make pressure.