Spaniards went to the polls last month to vote in a general election, and failed to give a clear mandate to either the Right or the Left. Prior to the vote, opinion polls indicated that the two major right-wing parties (Partido Popular and VOX) would do well enough to be able to form a government, but in the end the vote was much closer, with neither bloc having a clear majority.
The mainstream parties considered it of utmost importance to keep VOX out of the government, so they formed a cordon sanitaire around the “right-wing extremists”, in much the same way the PVV is kept out of the government in the Netherlands, or Vlaams Belang in Belgium.
The following video shows the announcement of the formation of the new government, which was made possible by the participation of the Catalonian party. The speaker turns the occasion into a celebration of multiculturalism, Spanish style, by repeating the word “speaking” in four different languages — Castilian, Galician, Basque, and Catalan. It may well be that the next time something similar happens, the new government will have to add Arabic and Swahili to its litany of linguistic diversity.
Many thanks to HeHa for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:
See the relevant article from European Conservative (hat tip Reader from Chicago):
Spain: VOX Frozen Out, as Catalan Support Secures Socialist Majority in Parliament
Spain increasingly looks set for a razor-thin coalition of the Left and regional separatists. Catalan nationalists have lent their support to socialist PM Pedro Sánchez and his PSOE party, as the Spanish Parliament reconvened Thursday, August 17th, three weeks after indecisive elections.
Support from the Catalan separatist parties, Junts, and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), was sufficient to secure the investiture of PSOE MP Francina Armengol as speaker of Parliament, with 178 out of 350 votes, while the Spanish Congress of Deputies assembled for the first time after July’s election also on August 17th.
The election of Armengol bodes well for Sánchez. It is now possible for him to cobble together a coalition deal with separatists and the communist Sumar party and return to power.
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | …of our society, starting with the debate and the agreement. | |
| 00:04 | It is about bringing people together, practicing dialogue, | |
| 00:07 | speaking [said in Castilian, Galician, Basque, Catalan], and doing it to move forward. | |
| 00:14 | Because Spain always goes forward when its plurality and diversity are recognized. | |
| 00:19 | Because the wealth of this country resides in its plurality. | |
| 00:23 | And now we have the opportunity to show | |
| 00:26 | that the plurality of our country is our great wealth. | |
| 00:30 | That the coexistence of cultures, traditions and different languages makes us better. | |
| 00:35 | For this we must abandon fears, avoid divisions, | |
| 00:40 | escape from uniform positions that impoverish us, | |
| 00:43 | and assume that this is real Spain, and that it is better. |
I ‘ll bet Spain is using dominion voting systems.
God could we please resurrect Franco!?? Now there was a guy who knew how to deal with marxist of all stripes.