A lifeline for Feijóo, farmers, and the semantics of terrorism
Spanish farmers didn't lead in the European wave of rural protests but are now riding their tractors in Madrid. A judge tries to charge Puigdemont with terrorism before the amnesty bill is passed.
In this edition…
✌️Feijóo gets a much-needed victory, courtesy of his homeland
🚜 A tractor’s revolt. Spanish farmers block Madrid
🤔 A judge tries to peg terrorism on Puigdemont.
Galicia provides a lifeline for Feijóo
Things haven’t been hunky-dory for Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, now Spain’s leader of the opposition, ever since he moved to Madrid to become the national leader of the Partido Popular (PP) in April 2022. At the time, with the PP in shambles, it was the equivalent of leaving a cushy, guaranteed job for a risky, troubled venture. Feijóo, a seasoned and middle-ground politician with a stellar track record of winning elections in Galicia, was a safe choice for the PP. They saw him as the white knight they needed to defeat Pedro Sánchez.
He won the elections, but his crowning glory never came. It was finally Sánchez who managed to cobble together a parliamentary alliance that won him the premiership, leaving Feijóo knocked out. Not only did the PP leader make mistakes during the campaign for the national elections last year, but he also made the whole country lose time by attempting a doomed bid to become prime minister. Later, the press revealed that he had tried to get the votes of Catalan separatists, which are the type of alliances he usually criticises Sánchez for. Feijóo promised moderation but ended up engulfed by party politics. His other problem is that, as moderate as he may be, the only significant party willing to be his ally in parliament is Vox, a far-right group that many Spaniards reject.
Feijóo was in much need of a victory, and it was his own land that delivered it. Alfonso Rueda, a protegé of Feijóo, won a majority in the elections in Galicia held on 18 February. The victory is less impressive when you take into account that Galicia has steadily given a majority to the PP since 2009. But the PP can boast that their power in the regions, their best asset right now, remains strong (the PP governs in 11 -out of 17- autonomous communities).
The socialists suffered a crushing defeat in Galicia after losing many votes to a local left-nationalist party, the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG), whose candidate, Ana Pontón, had become popular and a familiar face (it was the third time she ran in the elections). This contrasts with the socialists’ failed strategy of recruiting or elevating a new leader every four years in the regional elections.
Galicia has also rejected the parties in the extreme: Podemos Sumar and Vox won no seats.
Feijóo’s risky confession
Days before the vote in Galicia, Feijóo called in some journalists to let them know details about the conversations he had had with Junts per Catalunya, a Catalan separatist party, back in the summer of 2023, when he was trying to become prime minister.
Feijóo told the journalists that he would be willing to pardon Carles Puigdemont and the other politicians escaping Spanish justice abroad if certain conditions were met. Among them are that the former Catalan president would return to Spain to face justice, that he would express repentance for the events in 2017 and that he would promise to honour the Spanish Constitution.
If you know anything about Feijóo and his opposition, you might be confused right now. We all were. The PP has based its opposition strategy on flatly refusing Sánchez’s alliance with Catalan separatists, even coming close to questioning the legitimacy of any party that proposes an independence referendum.
The mere suggestion that he was willing to go as far as granting a pardon left many of his own supporters in awe. What’s even more confusing is understanding why he would share this information just before that crucial election in Galicia. The day after the articles were published, Feijóo rejected the headlines of the press articles that reported on his own leak, prompting journalists to spill the beans on how the encounter went. Stellar comms job by the Popular Party.
Why call the meeting in the first place? We don’t know, so we can only speculate:
Junts threatened to reveal the offer the PP made them in the summer negotiations and put the Galician election at risk
Feijóo throws a bone to Junts in case the amnesty bill fails. He might see a chance to offer Junts a similar path to that of the amnesty bill and still get their votes to become prime minister.
But this is just speculation. What we know for sure is that Galicians didn’t care much and had the interests of their region in mind when casting their votes. Feijóo may not yet have his finger on the pulse of Madrid, but he knows his homeland well.
Tractors in the city
Following their European peers, Spanish farmers hopped on their tractors to block roads and march on cities across the country. With continued protests since the start of February, the farmers seem determined to make a lot of noise—honking their horns, parking in front of institutions and heckling politicians—from here until the European elections.
The demands of farmers in Spain, where agriculture represents a significant 2.6% of the GDP, are pretty similar to those in the rest of the EU. Their costs are increasing, for example, the cost of fertiliser, which has notably increased due to the war in Ukraine, among other expenses; and their benefits are shrinking (partly because governments are combatting food inflation and the climate crisis). They think a little less regulation and a little more support from the administration would make what’s already a demanding profession more manageable.
On 21 February, the farmers drove hundreds of tractors across Madrid and headed to the Ministry of Agriculture to present their demands, a protest they repeated on 26 February.
Here are their main demands:
Relaxing environmental regulations, such as reducing fertilisers and other chemicals, as well as the requirement to reserve some land for organic farming, as set in the European Green Deal.
Reducing their bureaucratic burden to access vital financial aid from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Farmers in Spain often receive aid from state and regional administrations and the EU. Recent changes are about to increase the paperwork.
Unfair competition from third countries. Specifically, farmers complain that third countries —in Spain, Morocco is often mentioned— are more competitive because their farmers are not subject to that many regulations and yet the EU imports their cheaper agricultural products.
A young protesting farmer interviewed on the radio put it this way: "Bureaucracy means that I need to stop farming to become an administrator—maybe one day I need to go to the administration to hand over an unnecessary document. But that same day, one of my cows might give birth to a calf that will die".
The government has already made some concessions to farmers on issues that are under their direct control. For example, the minister of Agriculture has agreed to review laws to protect farmers against delayed payments and unfair pricing practices. The minister has also picked up the issue of simplifying the administrative process to get funds from the CAP, which he is bringing to Brussels for discussion with his European peers.
For an interesting look at the evolution of the agricultural sector in Spain, eldiario.es has prepared a series of great infographics. Not surprisingly, the ones having it harder are small farmers. In the meantime, large companies are increasing their share of the market: Fifty-four per cent of agricultural companies in 1999 had more than 100,000 hectares (247 acres), but in 2023 those increased to 58%.
Tractors going all directions - even the far right
The vast majority of farmers are protesting the specific issues mentioned above and lack political affiliations or interest in party politics. They come together in independent associations and unions that defend their interests. Lacking clear leadership so far, the movement feels like a herd of headless chickens struggling to organise effective actions and to present a unified front with coherent demands.
In this context, an obscure organisation, Plataforma 6F, has been drawing much media attention. Led by a nurse who owns some agricultural land and used to be affiliated with Vox, the platform bangs the drum of the far right. For example, their manifesto claims that they reject Agenda2030 (which has little to do with farming) and emphasise a stark rejection of climate legislation. The platform was quickly put together when the European protests began, and they aspire to become spokespersons on behalf of Spanish farmers.
Nevertheless, most protesters seem to be rejecting their lure, as the latest actions they called have failed to draw a crowd. Their media attention is also waning. The way things look now, the traditional agricultural associations seem to carry more weight with the farmers.
The semantics of terrorism
Spain bears the scars of terrorism. Decades of killings and terror by the Basque separatist band ETA, as well as the attacks carried out by Islamist militants in Madrid and Barcelona, weigh heavily in peoples’ memories. It is impossible to forget the pain, but Spanish society has gradually turned the page on those darker, more violent times.
One of the marks left by our violent past is a particularly stringent hate speech and anti-terrorism legislation. The criminal code restricts freedom of expression in many instances; for example, in insulting the Spanish monarch, burning the national flag, desecrating state symbols, blasphemy, praising terrorists, and defaming government officials. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against Spain’s restriction on freedom of expression, and NGOs also criticise the country’s restrictive legal framework. Activists, rappers and other artists have had to pay hefty fines and even end up doing jail time for such offences.
Another trait of Spain’s criminal code is a broad and vague definition of terrorism. This has allowed a judge investigating the protests organised by the pro-independence movement in protest of the 2019 court ruling that jailed the Catalan politicians to request the Supreme Court to investigate Carles Puigdemont on the grounds of terrorism.
A little backstory is necessary here: In the wake of the 2019 court ruling regarding the 2017 push for independence, an online group of Catalan separatists named Tsunami Democràtic organised a series of protests to express their discontent with the jailing of Catalan politicians. You may remember almost daily street riots in Barcelona, maybe the fiercest expression of what’s otherwise a peaceful movement.
Tension reached its highest boiling point during a takeover of Barcelona’s main airport, a protest stunt copied from that of the Hongkongese movement protesting Chinese rule earlier that year. While no one died as a direct result of the protesters’ actions, a French tourist suffered a stroke and passed away during the protests.
This death is one of the key arguments underpinning the judges’ decision to consider the airport’s protest a terrorism act. And the judge considers Puigdemont and Marta Rovira, another Catalan separatist leader residing in Switzerland to avoid facing Spanish justice, to be the leaders of Tsunami Democràtic. Hence the potential accusation of terrorism against both of them.
As in the aforementioned cases of restricting freedom of expression, here’s where the Spanish judiciary system stretches its interpretation of legislation and events to pursue goals that little seem to do with justice:
First of all, this accusation comes with impeccable timing. Puigdemont will be one of the main beneficiaries of the amnesty bill that could be approved very soon. If approved, the law would strip all his pending charges and allow his return to Spain. But this amnesty does not cover—you guessed it— terrorism charges. Furthermore, the judge has been investigating the 2019 protests for over three years, yet only now has he suggested those actions could be terrorism.
Pinning terrorism on Puigdemont and Rovira is a stretch. He is indeed one of the main leaders of the Catalan separatist movement. But there is no proof that he was giving the orders at Tsunami Democràtic. This was Switzerland’s reply to a query sent by the Spanish judge requesting the confederacy to locate Rovira. The Swiss didn’t see a connection between Rovira and Tsunami and suggested that the charges were “of a political nature”.
This is also causing controversy among the judiciary, as different actors are sending mixed signals on this. Even if the judge seemed set on indicting Puigdemont as a terrorist, the prosecutors in the Supreme Court were not so convinced. The prosecutor managing the case first accepted the accusation of terrorism and then backtracked. A second prosecutor at the Supreme Court argued against the terrorism charges.
Overall, this seems like the attempt of a single judge to attach a terrorism tag to the Catalan independence movement and Puigdemont himself. This does not mean that the Catalan 2019 protests are innocent in themselves (material damages were considerable), but they were not terrorism. The turmoil in 2019 was certainly more intense than the farmer’s protests described above, but not that different in nature (blocking roads, burning tyres, etc.). And no one is going to accuse the farmers of terrorism (I hope).
Suffice it to say that the latest news from the judiciary isn’t helping in getting the amnesty law passed. Junts rejected the bill in its first parliamentary vote and still negotiates changes with the PSOE. One of Junts’ key demands —not surprisingly— is to include terrorism charges in the amnesty law. The bill will go back to parliament in the coming weeks.