In this essay, I argue for the place of local political platforms in grounding policy, and that these should resist being co-opted or, more benevolently, superseded, by national initiatives. Even where politics are local, ideas aren’t. This is as it should be. Ideas, including the idea of the local, are universal. However, there are vicious as well as virtuous examples of this. Leftists the world over have dutifully adopted the language of ethnic, sexual, and gender conflict to the detriment of class and material conditions, just as conservatives more often invoke the language of Locke or Mill than that of any properly conservative thinker. These flavors of right and left are now universal. Just so, polarization around even recent developments, like immigration or COVID-19, occur along the same fault lines, no matter the country. Media is the culprit, but the psychological lure used to entice conformity is often, subtly, that of status: the desire to belong to that forward-looking portion of humanity represented by Obama and Hollywood actors motivates the local progressive—just as the conservative’s adoption of a soft, free-market economic determinism is more a function of the prestige exerted by the anglo-sphere than by any genuine resonance between these ideas and his intellectual tradition. Ideas, then, become universal when they are perceived as prestigious, as a mark of high-status.
In this context, it may be surprising that the relatively un-prestigious recess of provincial politics is gaining traction in Spain, with apparent aloofness from prevailing ideological categories. A host of local parties have sprung up, all seeking to address the population loss in rural areas. There is a potential here to make ideas prominent not because they represent a successful branding exercise by American universities, for example, but because they represent genuine grievance: When a myriad of local voices make the same complaint, we are in the presence of a genuine (as opposed to media generated) universal.
However, even this can be co-opted. In reality, the phenomenon of local, rural parties has so far followed a familiar pattern in which genuine social discontent, transversal to existing political poles, is imitated by a new political formation that quickly aligns with established interests. We have the example of Podemos. It began as a kind of spectral parody of the 2011 ‘indignados’ protests, but proceeded to diligently pursue social division and economic ruin. Thankfully, we now find more unity between its opponents and disaffected ex-supporters than disunity between opponents and supporters.
Today, as the countryside’s demographic drain proceeds, and as the sequelae of its long history make themselves felt, a cultural reaction is underway. The recently minted España Vaciada, (Empty Spain), wants to present itself as the champion of this reaction. It was constituted as an extension of a provincial party, called Teruel Existe, led by one Tomas Guitarte, which called for recognition of local problems overlooked by national politicians. The party disappointed voters when it, somewhat anticlimactically, proved decisive in allowing the presently ruling coalition to enter government, led by the Socialists (the PSOE).
In understanding this decision, it is suggestive that the architecture firm of its leader’s wife, Arquilab, has become tremendously lucrative by virtue of its contracts with local governments under socialist rule. A few years ago, the company was not doing well, “[w]ith assets valued at around four million euros, over recent years Arquilab has seen its turnover reduce, falling from more than one million in 2010 to just 70,085 by the end of 2017.”
This situation has significantly improved thanks to “two large contracts that have to date earned [Guitarte] half a million euros, courtesy of the coffers of the Aragon government and the Valencian courts, both presided by the PSOE.” All the same, “[i]n mid-December [of 2020] the deputy [Guitarte] affirmed that this project ‘would not condition’ his voting during the, then still hypothetical, investiture of [socialist leader] Pedro Sánchez.” Notwithstanding, “the acting president received Guitarte’s support, with whom he had previously signed an agreement to achieve a State Pact for repopulation and territorial rebalancing.”
Guitarte has since taken this brand beyond the province of Teruel, announcing the formation of the national platform España Vaciada late last year. However, equivalents of the original Teruel Existe have cropped up in numerous localities suffering from the demographic gravitational pull of larger cities, and have been quick to strike out against what they perceive as an operation of electoral engineering. The electoral gambit here, on the one hand, is to attract voters that feel let down by the government’s spectacularly poor economic performance and the Socialist party’s willingness to form a coalition with separatists and former, but vocally unrepentant, ETA terrorists. On the other hand, it hopes to attract those considering voting for the right, including VOX, which has taken up the cause of the countryside.
One example of this fresh crop, Palencia Existe, puts it as follows: “We are not going to allow ourselves to be manipulated by the left,” noting that such manipulations have occurred before, especially in the runup to an election:
[The Party’s] spokesman, Basilio Camacho, goes further and warns that Palencia Existe “is not going to be” like Teruel Existe, the latter being a ‘lover of the Sánchez Government, existing for the use and enjoyment of the PSOE.” Palencia Existe seeks its niche in the electorate, and encourages the dissatisfied voters of PP and Ciudadanos [parties usually described as center-right] to give their vote to the candidacy of Palencia Exists. To send the message that “the ideology of Palencia is rural Palencia.”
We may interpret this in different ways. On the one hand, attracting disaffected center-right voters may weaken the opposition or be interpreted as a block against those drifting towards VOX. On the other hand, a local brand may attract voters who would otherwise buy into España Vaciada, since the center-right has been the most popular in the province (the current mayor of Palencia city is from Ciudadanos). The last phrase is striking, however. The party seems to claim rurality as its ideology.
We find a similar example in the province of Segovia, where Segovia Existe, which also emerged recently (again keeping to the Teruel Existe formula, for some reason), has been disavowed by Segovia Viva,” the latter existing under the España Vaciada umbrella, of which the former is decidedly not a part:
Given recent information and news presented in the press, wherein the citizen movement of España Vaciada has been related to the recently created political party in our province Segovia Existe, we want to clarify that said group is not Segovia Viva, nor is it part of the España Vaciada movement … neither at the provincial, nor regional, nor national level.
It seems, then, that a prominent grievance, more organic than the problematics invoked by mainstream politics, has been unsuccessfully co-opted and now finds itself splintering into a myriad of parties and platforms. That the nascent brand should find itself so immediately contested could well have been predicted. For one thing, it was always going to be difficult to sell rural voters (and urbanites wanting to facilitate life in the country, with a view to moving there) on politicians happy to support separatism, given that, in Spain, separatism is precisely one of the instruments by way of which government has justified the neglect of certain regions. With the (despite appearances, quite hollow) threat that the country might split, government after government has accepted and added to the privileges of the Basque and Catalan political class, their special fiscal regimes and structural asymmetries, not to mention failing utterly to redress centuries of uneven investment by Madrid in these regions compared to others. Catalonia, for its part, may now also be receiving a large share of European funds assigned by the government, no doubt owing to their separatists being key partners in the ruling coalition (these are overrepresented on account of a gerrymandered electoral map).
All the same, we may question why the problem of a depopulated countryside should manifest in a host of local parties. It is not really local, after all, as factors leading to depopulation in one rural province are likely to be the same as in another, and so are best addressed cohesively from the national level. However, there are local idiosyncrasies too. In order to ensure that hard-hit regions are not driven over the edge, politicians must address them directly, ensuring that the benefits of favorable national policies do not accrue in some regions rather than others. To this end, so long as newly created parties survive, they may exert pressure on national politicians by threatening to capture votes, and by operating as wild-cards during coalition talks. So long as provinces fear being left out of any future solution, it makes sense for them to retain some party-political presence.
At the same time, a too literal or too one-sided approach to the countryside’s woes will have its own negative consequences. There is a danger, for example, that addressing the rural plight will take the form of investments or subsidies that make the countryside more, not less, dependent on cities. Further, calls to repopulate the country can be used to justify mass migration or to deemphasize the need to try and re-industrialize urban rust-belts. In these respects, it makes sense for a reversal of demographic decline to be accompanied by the promotion of rural economic self-sufficiency, local folklore, and identity, and to go hand in hand with strengthening manufacturing sectors. Specific measures such as fostering the creation of businesses in the countryside, providing tax-incentives for agro-business, investing in transportation such that people in small villages are well connected to basic services, guaranteeing the water supply to drier areas (now facing desertification, a recent development), generating internal tourism, and reforestation should all be weighed. VOX’s platform, for example, includes almost all of these points, and a few more.
If this can be brought to term in some theater, it will provide a case study with which to gain the trust of a long-neglected portion of society. National initiatives and indices can be massaged to show progress where not much has been achieved: instead, we will need these concrete, local case studies to tell the story of how the countryside can be effectively repopulated. Local political platforms should not serve to inform national ones, disappearing in their wake, but should remain in order to keep the emphasis firmly upon on-the-ground successes. As the example of Guitarte illustrates, in order to exert this function, local platforms must bring a measure of idealism to the table, and resist being bought off. We began by pointing out that even where politics are local, ideas are universal. We end, therefore, with the inverse: universal ideas need local politics if they are to make an impact.
Empty Villages, Open Fields: How the Plight of Rural Spain is Opening the Political Landscape
In this essay, I argue for the place of local political platforms in grounding policy, and that these should resist being co-opted or, more benevolently, superseded, by national initiatives. Even where politics are local, ideas aren’t. This is as it should be. Ideas, including the idea of the local, are universal. However, there are vicious as well as virtuous examples of this. Leftists the world over have dutifully adopted the language of ethnic, sexual, and gender conflict to the detriment of class and material conditions, just as conservatives more often invoke the language of Locke or Mill than that of any properly conservative thinker. These flavors of right and left are now universal. Just so, polarization around even recent developments, like immigration or COVID-19, occur along the same fault lines, no matter the country. Media is the culprit, but the psychological lure used to entice conformity is often, subtly, that of status: the desire to belong to that forward-looking portion of humanity represented by Obama and Hollywood actors motivates the local progressive—just as the conservative’s adoption of a soft, free-market economic determinism is more a function of the prestige exerted by the anglo-sphere than by any genuine resonance between these ideas and his intellectual tradition. Ideas, then, become universal when they are perceived as prestigious, as a mark of high-status.
In this context, it may be surprising that the relatively un-prestigious recess of provincial politics is gaining traction in Spain, with apparent aloofness from prevailing ideological categories. A host of local parties have sprung up, all seeking to address the population loss in rural areas. There is a potential here to make ideas prominent not because they represent a successful branding exercise by American universities, for example, but because they represent genuine grievance: When a myriad of local voices make the same complaint, we are in the presence of a genuine (as opposed to media generated) universal.
However, even this can be co-opted. In reality, the phenomenon of local, rural parties has so far followed a familiar pattern in which genuine social discontent, transversal to existing political poles, is imitated by a new political formation that quickly aligns with established interests. We have the example of Podemos. It began as a kind of spectral parody of the 2011 ‘indignados’ protests, but proceeded to diligently pursue social division and economic ruin. Thankfully, we now find more unity between its opponents and disaffected ex-supporters than disunity between opponents and supporters.
Today, as the countryside’s demographic drain proceeds, and as the sequelae of its long history make themselves felt, a cultural reaction is underway. The recently minted España Vaciada, (Empty Spain), wants to present itself as the champion of this reaction. It was constituted as an extension of a provincial party, called Teruel Existe, led by one Tomas Guitarte, which called for recognition of local problems overlooked by national politicians. The party disappointed voters when it, somewhat anticlimactically, proved decisive in allowing the presently ruling coalition to enter government, led by the Socialists (the PSOE).
In understanding this decision, it is suggestive that the architecture firm of its leader’s wife, Arquilab, has become tremendously lucrative by virtue of its contracts with local governments under socialist rule. A few years ago, the company was not doing well, “[w]ith assets valued at around four million euros, over recent years Arquilab has seen its turnover reduce, falling from more than one million in 2010 to just 70,085 by the end of 2017.”
This situation has significantly improved thanks to “two large contracts that have to date earned [Guitarte] half a million euros, courtesy of the coffers of the Aragon government and the Valencian courts, both presided by the PSOE.” All the same, “[i]n mid-December [of 2020] the deputy [Guitarte] affirmed that this project ‘would not condition’ his voting during the, then still hypothetical, investiture of [socialist leader] Pedro Sánchez.” Notwithstanding, “the acting president received Guitarte’s support, with whom he had previously signed an agreement to achieve a State Pact for repopulation and territorial rebalancing.”
Guitarte has since taken this brand beyond the province of Teruel, announcing the formation of the national platform España Vaciada late last year. However, equivalents of the original Teruel Existe have cropped up in numerous localities suffering from the demographic gravitational pull of larger cities, and have been quick to strike out against what they perceive as an operation of electoral engineering. The electoral gambit here, on the one hand, is to attract voters that feel let down by the government’s spectacularly poor economic performance and the Socialist party’s willingness to form a coalition with separatists and former, but vocally unrepentant, ETA terrorists. On the other hand, it hopes to attract those considering voting for the right, including VOX, which has taken up the cause of the countryside.
One example of this fresh crop, Palencia Existe, puts it as follows: “We are not going to allow ourselves to be manipulated by the left,” noting that such manipulations have occurred before, especially in the runup to an election:
We may interpret this in different ways. On the one hand, attracting disaffected center-right voters may weaken the opposition or be interpreted as a block against those drifting towards VOX. On the other hand, a local brand may attract voters who would otherwise buy into España Vaciada, since the center-right has been the most popular in the province (the current mayor of Palencia city is from Ciudadanos). The last phrase is striking, however. The party seems to claim rurality as its ideology.
We find a similar example in the province of Segovia, where Segovia Existe, which also emerged recently (again keeping to the Teruel Existe formula, for some reason), has been disavowed by Segovia Viva,” the latter existing under the España Vaciada umbrella, of which the former is decidedly not a part:
It seems, then, that a prominent grievance, more organic than the problematics invoked by mainstream politics, has been unsuccessfully co-opted and now finds itself splintering into a myriad of parties and platforms. That the nascent brand should find itself so immediately contested could well have been predicted. For one thing, it was always going to be difficult to sell rural voters (and urbanites wanting to facilitate life in the country, with a view to moving there) on politicians happy to support separatism, given that, in Spain, separatism is precisely one of the instruments by way of which government has justified the neglect of certain regions. With the (despite appearances, quite hollow) threat that the country might split, government after government has accepted and added to the privileges of the Basque and Catalan political class, their special fiscal regimes and structural asymmetries, not to mention failing utterly to redress centuries of uneven investment by Madrid in these regions compared to others. Catalonia, for its part, may now also be receiving a large share of European funds assigned by the government, no doubt owing to their separatists being key partners in the ruling coalition (these are overrepresented on account of a gerrymandered electoral map).
All the same, we may question why the problem of a depopulated countryside should manifest in a host of local parties. It is not really local, after all, as factors leading to depopulation in one rural province are likely to be the same as in another, and so are best addressed cohesively from the national level. However, there are local idiosyncrasies too. In order to ensure that hard-hit regions are not driven over the edge, politicians must address them directly, ensuring that the benefits of favorable national policies do not accrue in some regions rather than others. To this end, so long as newly created parties survive, they may exert pressure on national politicians by threatening to capture votes, and by operating as wild-cards during coalition talks. So long as provinces fear being left out of any future solution, it makes sense for them to retain some party-political presence.
At the same time, a too literal or too one-sided approach to the countryside’s woes will have its own negative consequences. There is a danger, for example, that addressing the rural plight will take the form of investments or subsidies that make the countryside more, not less, dependent on cities. Further, calls to repopulate the country can be used to justify mass migration or to deemphasize the need to try and re-industrialize urban rust-belts. In these respects, it makes sense for a reversal of demographic decline to be accompanied by the promotion of rural economic self-sufficiency, local folklore, and identity, and to go hand in hand with strengthening manufacturing sectors. Specific measures such as fostering the creation of businesses in the countryside, providing tax-incentives for agro-business, investing in transportation such that people in small villages are well connected to basic services, guaranteeing the water supply to drier areas (now facing desertification, a recent development), generating internal tourism, and reforestation should all be weighed. VOX’s platform, for example, includes almost all of these points, and a few more.
If this can be brought to term in some theater, it will provide a case study with which to gain the trust of a long-neglected portion of society. National initiatives and indices can be massaged to show progress where not much has been achieved: instead, we will need these concrete, local case studies to tell the story of how the countryside can be effectively repopulated. Local political platforms should not serve to inform national ones, disappearing in their wake, but should remain in order to keep the emphasis firmly upon on-the-ground successes. As the example of Guitarte illustrates, in order to exert this function, local platforms must bring a measure of idealism to the table, and resist being bought off. We began by pointing out that even where politics are local, ideas are universal. We end, therefore, with the inverse: universal ideas need local politics if they are to make an impact.
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