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POLITICS

Strains test Spain’s leftist coalition government

In office for just over a year, Spain's leftwing coalition grouping the Socialists and hard-left Podemos is showing signs of strain with constant bickering between the two camps.

Strains test Spain's leftist coalition government
Image: SERGIO PEREZ / POOL / AFP

The latest clash between Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialists and his junior partners was triggered by this week's violent protests over the jailing of a rapper for controversial tweets with the demonstrations applauded by Podemos.

“All my support to the young anti-fascists who are demanding justice and freedom of expression in the streets,” Podemos MP Pablo Echenique tweeted on Wednesday, February 17th, night as the clashes were raging in Madrid.

Tensions were already evident earlier that day when Socialist lawmakers failed to applaud a parliamentary intervention by Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, also a deputy prime minister. He has irritated the Socialists in recent weeks with his insistence that Spain lacks “democratic normality”.

Sanchez hit back on Friday when he finally broke his silence over the unrest. “In a full democracy – which Spain is – the use of any kind of violence is unacceptable. There is no exception to this rule,” he said.


Reluctant partners

There has been constant friction between the two parties since January 2020 when they formed Spain's first coalition government in modern times.

Sanchez only reluctantly joined forces with Podemos, admitting just a few months beforehand that forming a coalition with them would keep him up at night.

But in recent months the sparks have flown with greater frequency and over more issues, such as the Catalan regional elections on February 14th, said Anton Losada a political scientist at Santiago de Compostela University.

The main disagreements have been over social policy and immigration, portfolios held by the Socialists, with Podemos denouncing the treatment of thousands of migrants who have landed on Spain's Canary Islands, for example.

The tension doesn't surprise political consultant Euprepio Padula, who says there are “squabbles” in every coalition government, especially when an issue is ideologically important to one of the parties.

Political scientist Sonia Andolz of the University of Barcelona said Podemos would be “failing its electorate” if, for example, it did not criticise the jailing of rapper Pablo Hasel.


'Guerrilla war'

The friction in the coalition stems from the fact that the Socialists, as the majority partner, believe they should have the monopoly on government action “while the smaller party feels constantly threatened and feels the need to claim its space,” said Losada.

The Socialists have 120 seats in Spain's 350-seat parliament, while Podemos holds 35.

Jose Ignacio Torreblanca of the European Council on Foreign Relations said Podemos is “afraid of being rendered irrelevant” so it lashes out “viciously to maintain visibility and try and show there are two partners with the same strength”.

Despite the tensions, analysts believe the coalition could see out its term which ends in 2023. “I don't think there will be any significant government crisis,” said Padula.

One reason is there's “no alternative” on the right where the battle for dominance between the rightwing opposition Popular Party and the far-right Vox “is in full swing,” Torreblanca said. Podemos would be weakened if it left government, he said.

The party suffered setbacks in regional elections in Galicia and the Basque Country in July, and barely made a showing in the weekend election in Catalonia where the Socialists came in first, he said.

But both coalition parties risk losing support if their “guerrilla war” carries on and becomes the norm, Losada warned.

Voters get tired of “fights that they often don't understand or that have no relevance to their daily problems,” he said.

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CULTURE

Almodovar’s love affair with Madrid explored in new exhibition

Oscar-winning director Pedro Almodovar's decades-long love affair with Madrid is the focus of a new exhibition in the Spanish capital which has appeared in all of his feature films to varying degrees.

Almodovar's love affair with Madrid explored in new exhibition

“Madrid, Almodovar Girl”, which runs until October 20 at the Conde Duque cultural centre, features 200 photos from his 23 movies, as well as notebooks, movie props and the first camera Almodovar bought, a hand-held Super-8.

This year marks the 50th anniversary since Almodovar began his film career in Madrid in 1974 with the release of his first short film.

“The story of Pedro Almodovar and Madrid is a story of requited love, Pedro Almodovar is Pedro Almodovar thanks to Madrid,” Pedro Sánchez, the commissioner of the exhibition and author of a book on the director’s links to the city, told AFP.

“Almodovar has paid back to Madrid in spades what the city has given him by being his muse,” he said, adding that many foreigners’ first contact with Spanish culture and Madrid is through Almodovar’s works.

A huge chart at the exhibition shows what percentage of the action in each of Almodovar’s films takes place in Madrid.

It ranges from just six percent in 2011 drama “The Skin I Live In”, about an amoral plastic surgeon who seeks revenge on the young man who raped his daughter, to 100 percent in seven films.

These include his international breakthrough, the 1988 romantic black comedy “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”.

Cemeteries and bars

Almodovar moved to Madrid from a small village in Castilla-La Mancha, an arid and rural region in central Spain, in 1967 during the final years of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco when he was just 17.

“I have never felt like a stranger here,” he has said.

After Franco’s death in 1975, Almodovar became a key part of the cultural movement in Madrid dubbed “la movida” which saw artists break the Roman Catholic dictatorship’s many taboos.

Sánchez said that like Madrid, Almodovar has a “transgressive, multifaceted, critical, open, fun, cosmopolitan and friendly personality”.

The exhibition features a map of Madrid marked with the 272 locations that have appeared in his films.

Spain’s most famous director tends to avoid famous landmarks, preferring working-class areas like Vallecas and places such as hospitals, taxis, bars and cemeteries where people go about their daily lives.

One of his most iconic scenes was shot outside the facade of the building housing the exhibition – the moment in the 1987 film “Law of Desire” where a city street cleaner hoses down Carmen Maura’s character on a hot Madrid summer night at her request.

Adoptive son

Almodovar is known for using vivid colours, which he has said is “a way of taking revenge” on the grey years of the Franco dictatorship, Sánchez said.

He reproduced his Madrid flat for the 2019 film “Pain and Glory” about an ageing film director, even using some of his armchairs.

When he visited the exhibition before it opened to the public on June 12, Almodovar reportedly said “this is my life”.

The 74-year-old won the Oscar for screenwriting for his 2002 movie “Talk to Her”, about two men who form an unlikely bond when both their girlfriends are in comas.

He also picked up the best foreign language Oscar for the 1999 movie “All About My Mother” about a woman struggling with the sudden death of her teenage son.

The exhibition ends with a video of part of the speech he gave when Madrid city hall in 2018 declared him to be an “adoptive son” of the city.

“I came mainly to get away from the village, to urbanise a bit and then to go and live in Paris or London, but without realising it, I stayed,” he said.

“Now I can say that both me and my characters will continue to live here.”

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