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| Charlemagne doesn't know anything about Spain |
Jeremy
Cliffe, publicly known to be the Economist’s pseudonymous Charlemagne who writes
about European affairs, thinks that he understands Spain. Sadly, he does not.
On
31 August 2019 he wrote:
Madrid, sprawling
but stranded in the middle of the dry Spanish meseta, makes sense only as the capital of a mighty
empire that valued central control—in a way that marks Spain’s politics today.
Let
us, as we say in Spain, take this by parts.
Sprawling capital
of empire
This is
how Madrid sprawled in the 19th century, when almost all of its empire
had gone and the rest was doomed.
 |
| The urban sprawl of an imperial capital? Perhaps not. |
Stranded
 |
 |
Spanish
motorways
|
Spanish
mainline railways
|
Spain
has 17,109 km of motorways, the 11th biggest network in the world. It
has 3,240 km of high-speed railways, second only to China, and is a world
leader in building such trains.
The dry meseta
Philip
II was not so stupid as to establish his capital in some remote part of an arid
desert.
Annual
rainfall 2018: Madrid, 436 mm; London (Greenwich), 557 mm.
 |
| Madrid "stranded in the middle of the dry meseta" |
Madrid makes sense
only as the capital of a mighty empire
Philip II didn’t see it that way
when he brought his court there in 1561, just 69 years after Columbus’s set
foot in the Americas and four years before the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines.
He was interested in its geographical position in the centre of the peninsula,
the presence of water and forests, and the absence of an ecclesiastical power
that could challenge him.
An empire that
valued central control
Like
the Portuguese and French empires Spain’s empire was, for obvious reasons,
explicitly modelled on the centralised Roman empire with the inclusive concept
of Civis romanus sum. Britain chose a
different model for its empire but still pretended that it was imitating the
heroes of ancient Rome. We saw how well that idea worked out in terms of
abandoned citizens in Rhodesia in 1965, East Africa a few years later, and Hong
Kong in 1997.
Central control marks
Spain’s politics today
The OECD begs to differ:
The decentralisation process of the Spanish state,
which was initiated in 1979, has transformed an extremely centralised
territorial model into one that gives substantial redistribution of government
which continues to be debated today. The territorial distribution of devolved
government is based on a historical, political and cultural context, but it is
also a way of increasing efficiency in managing policy and public resources. From
the 1980s till the mid 1990s, most powers over education, which had previously
pertained exclusively to the central government, were turned over to the
autonomous regions. Nevertheless, central government maintains control over the
legal framework for education and the student aid system.
How
does such nonsense get to be published in a highly respected newspaper? Partly,
one suspects, it is stupidity; Cliffe is after all the ignoramus who insulted Spain
on 23 May 2019 by telling the world that Vox was part of the Andalusian
government.
There
is, however, another possibility. The idea of centralised, undemocratic Spain
is one of the many lies at the heart of the Catalan secessionist propaganda
that is doing so much harm to Spain. It has been copied lazily and slavishly by
toadies in the British media. But that is no excuse for any particular media organisation
to ignore the truth, especially one that is as jealous of its reputation as is the
Economist. The Spanish government’s 70-page refutation of Catalan nonsense is
now in the Economist’s hands. It is to be hoped that it will be heeded before
the verdict of the secessionists’ trial is announced.
Sources
(English)
Wikipedia
OECD
(Spanish)
Wikipedia
(Madrid’s
status as capital)
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