Within the lexicon of Spain’s populist proper, there’s a phrase that concentrates all of the dreads of identitarian nationalists: mena, an acronym for menor extranjero no acompañado (unaccompanied international minor). This legalese refers to migrants below 18 who arrive in Spain with out their households and for whom the state has to take duty.
Extremist circles are pervaded by rhetoric about mena, which even seems in posters on the street and on public transport. The minors in query are accused of being violent, of intimidating their peaceable neighbours, of draining welfare help to the detriment of the natives. Briefly: they’re a nuisance and must be expelled.
The speaking factors are spurious, however they resonate with a sure section of the inhabitants. Based on the most recent information (April 2024) from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, a public physique in command of polling society’s preferences, 10% of Spaniards would vote immediately in a normal election for Vox, the far-right occasion that emerged simply over a decade in the past from a cut up within the Partido Fashionable (PP), Spain’s mainstream conservative occasion. Vox already sits within the coalition governments of a number of Spanish areas. In a rustic whose geographic location makes it a gateway to Europe from Africa, Vox has made the demonisation of underaged migrants certainly one of its foremost political trump playing cards.
Confronted with this rhetoric of racial animus, Spain’s civil society has responded with a profitable marketing campaign that has managed to virtually drown out Vox’s thesis. The Esenciales motion, supported by greater than 900 NGOs, final month received Spain’s decrease home of parliament to simply accept a legislative initiative to enact exactly the alternative of what the extremists advocate: it will regularise greater than 500,000 undocumented migrants. The invoice handed its first studying with an awesome majority: 310 votes in favour and 33 towards. And the entire episode has provoked little or no media controversy. How was this doable?
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Based on Gonzalo Fanjul, analysis director of the porCausa Basis and one who spoke in defence of regularisation in Congress, the technique has been to “generate a story that replaces that of the far proper” with out responding to its postulates. “We’ve got no real interest in arguing with those that consider that the Earth is flat”, says Fanjul.
‘Part of society has understood that it’s not affordable that political events ought to get us caught up in collective hysteria for electoral functions’ – Gonzalo Fanjul, porCausa Basis
The initiative, which emerged from migrant communities themselves, garnered greater than 600,000 signatures from unusual Spaniards. It appeals not simply to solidarity but additionally to financial motivations, such because the promise of migrants’ tax contributions. Even the Catholic church and enterprise organisations ended up supporting the invoice, which nonetheless has to face legislative hurdles however might nicely move into legislation.
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“Part of society has understood that it’s not affordable that political events ought to get us caught up in collective hysteria for electoral functions”, argues Fanjul. He believes that Vox and the far proper “haven’t understood something as a result of they’ve an essentialist and hyper-identitarian concept of Spain that displays a rustic from a century in the past that now not exists”.
Defending historic reminiscence
The story of the Spanish Civil Conflict, whose ninetieth anniversary might be in 2026, continues to be unfolding immediately. Virtually 5 many years after the top of Franco’s dictatorship, the reminiscence of the defeated aspect stays in lots of instances actually buried. Latest centre-left governments led by the Socialist Occasion (PSOE) have been able to finance the exhumation of the 1000’s of mass graves throughout Spain that maintain the stays of Republicans who died in battle and from reprisals. However the far proper, and even mainstream conservatives, are torpedoing these efforts.
“In Spain there was no denazification like in Germany as a result of right here they gained”, says Enrique Gómez, president of the Asociación por la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica in Aragon. This area in northeastern Spain enjoys intensive self-government, in keeping with the nation’s decentralised structure.
After final 12 months’s regional elections, a coalition of PP and Vox got here to energy in Aragon for the primary time. Among the many first measures taken by the brand new authorities was the repeal of Aragon’s legislation on historic reminiscence. The impact was to make it tougher to exhume mass graves and even to provide informative talks to kids in faculties. “They legislate towards the legislation”, says Gómez. He recounts how his organisation was even denied chairs at a routine occasion to pay tribute to the fallen of the anti-fascist aspect within the Civil Conflict.
The reply from Spanish civil society has been to redouble efforts at training and to determine hyperlinks with associations in different areas. “Oddly, we’re extra lively than ever,” says Enrique Gómez. Commemorative exhibitions abound, whereas college principals are defying the ban and introducing the difficulty into the varsity curriculum. He’s happy with this response: “There are individuals who perceive that we simply need to bury our useless, and they’re taking a stand.”
LGTBI rights in danger
Even in Madrid, certainly one of Spain’s most welcoming locations for the LGBTI neighborhood, far-right discourse is on the march. Two legal guidelines aimed on the transgender neighborhood have been accepted by the regional PP regional authorities. In an election final 12 months, the PP gained an absolute majority that enables it to manipulate alone.
One of many legal guidelines removes the idea of “gender id” from the legislation and so, in response to Amnesty Worldwide, reopens the door to the applying of conversion therapies repudiated by quite a few worldwide our bodies. Spain’s nationwide authorities has criticised the legislation and is contemplating interesting it for violating the structure.
However the first response has been on the streets, the place activists have demonstrated within the centre of the capital. And their motion will, in all chance, be a conspicuous a part of the homosexual satisfaction parades in July.
With the assist of the Heinich Böll Stiftung European Union