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To: nihil who wrote (101396)	3/23/2000 4:31:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

OT I thought you might find this 3/23/2000 IBD article interesting... A Pro-Capitalist Win In Prosperous Spain Should Be Red Flag For World's Leftists By Stephen Schwartz The overwhelming victory of the 47-year-old Jose Maria Aznar in the Spanish presidential election confirms Spain's great political transformation since the death of Francisco Franco 25 years ago. Aznar's pro-capitalism Popular Party now controls 183 of 350 seats in the Cortes, Spain's national legislature, giving it a sizable majority there. The democratic transition in Spain from a one-party state is an explicit model for former dictatorships in Latin America, but don't expect former communist nations, or for that matter Western Europe, to notice. The growth of the Popular Party reflects widespread disillusion in Spain with socialist leadership. After Aznar and the Populares took control in 1996, alarm bells went off on the left. The Popular Party, leftists were quick to not, descended from remnants of the National Movement, the single party that once ruled during the Franco dictatorship. And the National Movement traced its history to the Falange, a fascist formation established in the early 1930s. Further, the Populares had a reputation for vote-rigging in such traditionally conservative areas as Galicia, a Portuguese-speaking region in the northwest of Spain, and in the Balearic islands. They were typically labeled a party of reactionary rural ward bosses, urban ultrarightists and nostalgics for dictatorship. Aznar recast the image of the Populares almost single-handedly. His blandness served him well, as he avoided fiery rhetoric, extravagant promises and partisan firefights. Aznar's serene style continues even in the face of terrorism in Basque country. The Populares have survived the Basque extremists' challenge. That, combined with Aznar's successful economy, contributed to the Populares' latest victory. The Spanish socialist opposition is clearly exhausted. Though socialists still enjoy support in the poorer south of Spain, where voting habits are as stolid as the Pyrenees, they can't seem to adjust to Spain's sustained economic prosperity. They are still linked to the UGT labor federation, Europe's most militant union, even as the working class disappears from society. The socialists' collapse in Spain should worry not only die-hard European socialists but also soft socialists like Britain's Tony Blair and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder. Joaquin Almunia, the Spanish socialist leader, foolishly entered a political coalition with the United Left, an organization of aging communists, Greens and other radical political exotica. Outside observers should know that the Spanish Communist movement was never an authentic mass party, notwithstanding the propaganda about the communists' "heroic" role in the Spanish civil war. The workers of Spain actually supported the socialist movement, which had 1 million members in the mid-1930s, and the anarchists, who rose to 2 million during the civil war. The truth is that the communists were always mistrusted by the Spanish working class and always viewed as arrivistes. For Joaquin Almunia to tie the socialists' fortune to the United Left, the, represented a stupid political strategy, driving thousands of voters into the arms of the Populares. The sympathetic losers in the Spanish vote are not the socialists or the communists, but the conservative Catalan Nationalists, who partnered with Aznar as long as he did not have a majority in the national legislature. Although they lost only one seat, the Catalan Nationalists can no longer play a leading role at the national level, at least for the time being. But not to fear. As believing Catholics, they are too business-oriented, prosperous and sensible to turn to terrorism. --------------- Stephen Schwartz, who lives in Europe, is the co-author of "Spanish Marxism vs. Soviet Communism."