The world is living through times as fascinating as they are terrifying. Spain, unfortunately, especially so.
Certainties, loyalties, laws—the Constitution chief among them—all are being abolished, ignored, or violated in our homeland.
It is, alas, far from indulgent catastrophizing to say that Spain is today suffering a political, economic, social, moral and territorial decomposition only comparable to the process suffered during the Second Republic and the five disastrous years that led directly to our Civil War (1936-39).
A growing number of Spaniards are convinced that our democratic constitutional monarchy, based on reconciliation and good faith of a kind that has provided our country with its longest and most prosperous era of peaceful freedom, is doomed.
The process of disillusionment has been long and gradual. It began on March 11, 2004, when, three days before our general elections, the detonation of four trains triggered the biggest massacre since the Civil War and forever changed the history of Spain. The sure winner, Mariano Rajoy, was defeated, and the Socialist candidate, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, with no chance before the attack, emerged victorious.
Spain has since slid in an almost Venezuelan fashion towards a different system. The so-called ‘progressive alliance’ between the Left and the separatists is undermining our constitution, territorial integrity and equality between regions. So too with our basic freedoms and fundamental rights, resulting in the effective abolition of all truthful communication between power and the people.
Following the disastrous economic crisis that brought an end to José Zapatero’s socialist government (2004-2011), the supposedly more conservative replacement, led by the PP’s Mariano Rajoy, did more or less nothing to alter the direction of travel set in motion by the Left in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings.
Their objective was to create the conditions for a regime under which there would be no thinkable alternative to the alliance between the Left and Catalan separatism. If Pedro Sánchez manages to stay in power, we will enter what could be the last phase of this dismantling of the 1978 regime and its constitution.
I would like to point out that the European Union, which has been imposing sanctions on countries with conservative governments such as Poland and Hungary for actions much less harmful to the rule of law, has nevertheless handsomely financed this social-communist Spanish government that has put all national institutions at its service and destroyed their credibility in the process.
Spain can be seen, as in the 1930s, as at the forefront of the global progressive march towards the abyss. All over the world, the illusions of an easy world that we believed had begun in the 1990s, with the celebrated universal triumph of liberal democracy and the free market, are now in the past and seem remote, if not ancient.
We thought that the criminal absurdity of communist ideology had ended forever with the fall of the socialist tyrannies. So did Margaret Thatcher, founder of New Direction, the think tank of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group to which VOX is attached. Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II were three decisive figures in a radical change that brought much freedom and landed a tremendous, seemingly final blow against totalitarian power. They are historical personalities to whom we owe much, but who today seem immensely distant and alien to the new scenarios we face.
We now know that the forces we thought were vanquished forever have managed to recover with devilish speed and return under multiple guises with new forms and tactics, although their objective is the same: the Marxist yearning to erect an uncontestable power over the peoples under the firm dominion of uniformity, dependence, control, scarcity, ignorance, and disinformation.
Many things have happened since Gramsci diagnosed the failures of Leninism and the Gramsci-inspired Frankfurt School, after being exiled from Nazi Germany, flooded the best American universities, and later the European ones, with its most ardent followers.
They conquered first the educational system, then the cultural industry, journalism, information in general, communication and entertainment, public administration, state institutions and even the upper levels of large private corporations. The Western elites are not even aware that their Weltanschauung is the product of a generational indoctrination going back to these old German Marxist professors.
What have conservatives been doing in the meantime? They focused on their private lives, business, economics, and fiscal management without seeing that they themselves were promoting, provided that they were profitable, the very ‘fads,’ ‘new ideas’ and ‘messages’ that fueled a slow but colossal and massive offensive against traditional values, as well as their own cultural power and legitimacy.
And so it came to pass that, since the 1960s, conservatives have been in permanent retreat and progressive forces on the offensive. The objectives are, as we said, the same as those of Lenin’s Revolution—not, however, by assaulting the state, but by effectively using the penetration of 80 years of action without reaction, of advancing in the conquest of social space without encountering resistance.
They move differently in different environments. We have a Vegan Left, as I would call von der Leyen or Donald Tusk, and a Cannibal Left represented by the narco-communist leaders of Ibero-America, such as Diaz Canel, Maduro, or Morales (let us not rule out Sánchez becoming the first of these on European soil). Between these extremes there exists a whole range of diverse actors, but observed in the right way, they are all rowing in the same direction.
Hugo Chávez used to say that the revolution needed the people to remain poor. “The poor vote for us. The middle class does not vote for us. The poor must remain poor with hope.”
Globalist social democracy thinks in the same way. In case you hadn’t noticed, the Western left is now neo-Malthusian and degrowthist. The enemies of growth are now in power in Brussels and their social engineering plans are increasingly ruthless and disregard the interests and needs of the people almost like Caribbean dictators. That is why we must fight the centralizing momentum of Brussels just as much as the alliance forged between organized crime and drug trafficking and the social-communist movement, which has already set foot in Europe. We are in this fierce fight, with Fundación Disenso, Foro Madrid, and the Political Action Group ECR Eurolat.
The objective of our rivals is the impoverishment of our popular classes. The excuse is the fight against climate change: for ‘the good of the planet’ not everyone can eat meat, fly by plane, or travel by car. What the socialist economic model promised to the masses, but never delivered, has now been anathematized. All force and imposition is justified for the sake of saving the planet.
And for this impoverishing project, the sovereignty of European nations presents a stubborn obstacle. It is, in fact, the great obstacle.
When, three decades ago, the French socialist Jacques Delors, then President of the Commission, expressed his desire and intention to transform the European Economic Community into a federation of states, Lady Thatcher’s answer was unambiguous: “No, no, no!” The disciples of Delors are already preparing a modification of the treaties in a federal sense—that is to say, in a centralist sense—and we, as admirers of the late Thatcher, must answer “no” with the same vehemence.
Neither the perversity of the totalitarian project we are facing, nor the formidable nature of our enemy, which has become so strong in the European institutions and has placed them at its service, nor the hijacking of the Popular Party in Spain, always docile and short-sighted, should be allowed to tempt us into defeatism.
There are reasons for hope. Fifteen years ago we had no diagnosis. Today we do: the objective of the European Left is to dispossess the majority, and the method to achieve it is the concentration of power in Brussels. Having an accurate diagnosis, as I believe we do, is the first cause for optimism.
The second is that we have articulated an alternative proposal that inexorably passes through the defense of national sovereignty, a dike of containment against the impoverishment project we are facing.
And the third reason is that, in June next year, when we are called to vote, we will have the unbeatable opportunity to change the correlation of forces in the European Parliament, and thus tip the balance in favor of our sovereigntist, conservative, and free market project.
Therefore, let no one despair. Remember that Lady Thatcher could not stand crybabies. Neither can we.
This text is based on a speech given September 21 at the 3rd Annual Think-Tank Central conference, organized by New Direction, under the theme of “Advancing Freedom.” It has been translated and edited for clarity. It appears here by kind permission.
