In the final lead-up to Spain's general election this Sunday, The New York Times has published a Spanish-language article by Argentinian writer Diego Fonseca that analyzes Spain's current political moment - and gives a devastating verdict. The writer lambasts the three leading candidates Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), Pablo Casado (PP) and Albert Rivera (Cs) and warns that Europe is likely to find it "has another problem" with this country. "Spain is an insular country without a foreign policy, provincial and outlying, lacking ideas and leadership to solve the crises that it confronts, with the extreme right having woken up, and Catalonia expectant," he says.
For the commentator, current Spanish politics "projects an unease" and he warns that the solution can only be found through "permanent negotiation and dialogue" and not through the attitude that political leaders have taken up till now. The article portrays a Spain where "the spectacle eclipses the politics" and accuses Spanish politicians of forgetting what situation their country is in: "The Catalan conflict has ended where it should not have ended: with a trial against the independence process. The country has still not emerged from the 2008 economic crisis, it has an unemployment rate above the European average, thousands of precarious jobs, depressing wages ... ".
España no se resolverá con el espectáculo patético de acusaciones de los debates, opina @DiegoFonsecaDF, sino cuando todos sus partidos acepten que la fragmentación y la diversidad son inherentes a una nación. https://t.co/UALML3T6Lj
— NYTimes en Español (@nytimeses) 25 d’abril de 2019
Translation:
"Spain will not resolve itself with the pathetic blame game of the [electoral] debates, says @DiegoFonsecaDF, but rather, when all parties accept that fragmentation and diversity are inherent in a nation." — NYTimes en Español
"Three children having a playground fight"
The article gives a severe dressing-down to the attitude of the three leading candidates for the prime ministerial job, Albert Rivera, Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Casado, describing them as "immature politicians incapable of taking charge of the nation." The article labels the two electoral debates held in the last week of the campaign as "shameful" and complains that none of them addressed issues such as education, gender issues, health, migration or pensions. "Everything was swept away in a river of hyperbole and empty sarcasm. Every time one of them introduced a proposal, another was responsible for trashing it. Ideas got left behind among childish interruptions," says the article.
In this regard, he underlines the figure of Pablo Iglesias - leader of Unidas Podemos, the party currently ranked fourth - who, he says, managed to stay out of this aggressive mud fight. "It is revealing that the only candidate who acted as a mature politician was the pony-tailed rebel who scares the establishment. It is a worrying symptom."
The rise of the far right, too
If this was not enough, The New York Times also notes that Sunday's general election will be marked by the extreme-right party Vox. "The new right is the child of Spain's oldest and most rancid [right]: the never-brought-to-justice Franco regime," he says.
Given all of this, the author ends his piece by saying that a resolution to the Spanish situation will only come through "permanent negotiation and dialogue". "If that doesn't happen, then, Europe, you have another problem," he concludes.