Today I had my mailbox stuffed with electorial propaganda. I usually chuck this kind of stuff into the nearest bin - as a foreigner I can't vote in the elections anyway. But today but one flyer caught my eye. On the front was a cross printed against the phrase "Control immigration" with 'immigration'' highlighted. There was also a picture of the candidate who wanted my vote - he looked remarkably like my gym trainer, Marcus, a 'typical Catalan' face. On the back was a list of the things he promised to do if I voted him in. Amazingly, out of the ten issues highlighted by Sr Josep Anglada of the PXC party eight consisted of 'crimes' levelled against non-Spaniards. Unbelievably, as a foreigner I found myself guilty of dire crimes against (Spanish) humanity? And he wants me to vote for him. Assassinate more likely! I mean, look what the man would do to me if he got in.
For starters he'd immediately deport me if I was an illegal immigrant or a teenage delinquent.
He wouldn't allow me to wear my burka -in public - nor allow me to build mosques on any public land. If I was part of a South American gang terrorising residents in the local parks and squares he'd deport me right away. If I had a shop and wanted to keep open to catch the on-the-way-home-from-work crowd, he'd want to take my licence away, cos what I was doing would be unfair competition. As a foreign shopkeeper he thinks I'm probably part of the Mafia anyway. And if I went into selling fake handbags or DVD's on the street to make a living then God help me!
He'd certainly change all this reserving places in schools for my kids rubbish, cos he says there's no room for Catalan kids is there? My children would lower the standards of any school they were in -they'd prevent all those hard-working motivated Catalan kids from progressing quickly enough. Finally there should be no free health cards for me and my type because we clutter up the local clinics and prevent sick Catalans from being attended to.
This man certainly doesn't beat about the bush does he. He goes to town on the naming of names: he pole-axes the Chinese, the Pakistanis, the Moroccans, the Latins and by inference any one who is Muslim. He's sexist in picking on burka wearers.
Hey wait a minure you might say. There's plenty of sense in what the man says. He appeals to voters over 99 who are terrified by gangs and get their handbags snatched off them every day. He has a point too about the health centres - all these bloody Brits down in the south getting their new hips and kidneys on the cheap. Can't even get my Viagra prescription these days the queues are too long. Bloody health tourists!
But underneath this right wing garbage passed off or disguised as an electoral campaign there's something more sinister at work. It's a policy riding on the popular back of xenophobia and pure racism. It's no better than Oswald Mosely's National Front in the UK in the thirties. And what was the political climate then? An economis crisis just like now. Mosely blamed the foreigners for everything and whipped up feelings in the worker class. Look around there are plenty more examples around you. It's what Penn and more recently Sarkozy did in France, what Berlusconi says in Italy. It's the politics of the British National Party . Come to think of it isn't that how Hitler did so well too in Germany?
So Herr Anglada will you get my vote? Like hell you will! Now what can I post in your letterbox? Plans for a mosque in a space near you! Spanish architect though.
Update: day after elections - 29 November.
The PxC party didn't get any seats in the Catalan Parliament, but overall 72,000 people voted for its racist policies. Let's see what happens in the Municipal elections next year on which Anglada intends to concentrate. He was reported to have said said he had been greeted by voters after the election with cries of 'Anglada for President!' Dream on Señor:
