Spain’s still-dead dictator Francisco Franco must be rolling over in his grave tonight due to two major events in Spain — one that has attracted lots of publicity and one that has not.
Spain’s Parliament has given the green light to gay marriage — and even that is jarring for several reasons:
(1)Spain is the latest of several countries that have moved to legalize same-sex marriage.
(2)Up until a quarter of a century ago Spain was perceived as among the most conservative countries in Europe — particularly on anything that might possibly put itself at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.
But how times have changed:
The Spanish parliament approved a same-sex marriage law Thursday, handing a major victory to the governing Socialist Party and angering such opponents as the Roman Catholic Church, which denounced the measure as “unjust.”
Spain’s action follows similar moves by the Netherlands and Belgium, where same-sex marriage has been legal for some time. On Tuesday, Canada’s House of Commons also passed a gay marriage bill, which now awaits Senate approval. Several European countries have sanctioned civil unions for homosexual couples.
Prediction: this will be another issue that will put the U.S. at odds with some segments of Europe since you can see the beginnings of a deeper official cultural divide. MORE:
Gay marriages will be permitted in Spain as soon as the law, which passed the Congress of Deputies in a 187 to 147 vote, is published in the official government registry, according to the parliamentary press office. The Spanish law also gives same-sex couples the right to adopt children and receive inheritances.
The vote was held after Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero unexpectedly took the floor of parliament to speak in its support. “We are expanding the opportunities for happiness of our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends and our relatives,” he said. “At the same time, we are building a more decent society.”
Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the opposition Popular Party, who was denied the opportunity to address parliament after Zapatero’s surprise appearance, accused the prime minister of dividing Spanish society.
“I have the firm conviction that if Zapatero had called together all the parties, we would have created a law that would have majority support in parliament and among Spaniards,” he said.
The Popular Party, which has favored recognizing civil unions without using the word marriage, said it would consider an appeal to the Constitutional Court, Spain’s highest tribunal.
So essentially the Popular Party wanted a kind of “don’t tell” policy on this issue. To many they key significance of this may be the actual vote on gay marriage But the BIGGER ISSUE is how this symbolizes a total shift in Spain from the days a quarter of a century ago when Francisco Franco still clung strongly to power. His power didn’t really begin to abate until the day he died in October 1975.
How huge is this development? MONUMENTAL.
In 1975 I was living in Madrid writing as the Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor (which they defined as “fulltime contributor”). Spain was then considered one of the most traditional and conservative Catholic countries in Europe. Socially, it was considered supremely conservative.
When Franco died it wasn’t just a political death, it was the beginning death throes of an entire era and of part of a culture. If you look at this not even considering the actual ISSUE of gay marriage, the move by Spanish politicians to take this stand is a solidification of the “new” Spain — and also, in a sense, Spain returning a bit more to pre-Civil War Spain (in which the Socialists also ruled).
The second change is tied in with this item:
Spain’s ruling Socialist party was on Tuesday celebrating the conquest of the northwest region of Galicia following a cliff-hanger election that ousted the centre-right Popular party and its octogenarian president, Manuel Fraga, from power.
The contest in Galicia a conservative bastion and the birthplace of Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, as well as the present Popular party leader, Mariano Rajoy had all the drama and suspense of the Florida vote recount in the 2000 US presidential elections.
Mr Fraga’s Popular party, which he founded after Franco’s death in 1975, won 37 seats in the regional parliament, one short of an absolute majority. The Socialists, which made big gains in the regional election, are expected to form a coalition government with Galician nationalists.
Mr Fraga’s defeat marks the end of an era in Spanish politics. After more than half a century in public office, he was the longest serving politician in Spain, a survivor who embraced democracy after serving the Franco dictatorship as minister of education, minister of information and tourism, and as Spain’s ambassador to London.
“Fraga was the great white hope of the Spanish right when Franco died, but he committed the biggest mistake of his life by accepting the post of interior minister in the first post-Franco government,” says Charles Powell, a historian at the University of San Pablo-CEU in Madrid.
As the chief enforcer of law and order, Mr Fraga became associated with the repression of strikes and political protests that preceded Spain’s transition to democracy. “The street,” Mr Fraga boasted in 1975, “is mine.”
“Fraga lost his chance to lead the transition and become the country’s first democratic prime minister,” Mr Powell says.
I interviewed Fraga during those days when he was Interior Minister and, indeed, he was considered the man by Francoists who wanted “evolution without revolution.” But his phrase “el calle es mio” (the street is mine) stuck. And, in the end, the demonstrations did him in by marking him as passe, forever branded as a Francoist…and Spaniards turned to other leaders, eventually even installing Socialist Felipe Gonzales as PM.
Gay marriage…the end of Fraga’s career? Unthinkable. But — no matter how people view each issue — these are definitely signs of change in Spain a country that has experienced a sea of change.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.