I suppose that by this point in the week the electoral analyses are already coming out of your ears. Will the 40 Ciudadanos MPs end up joining forces with the PP’s? Will the 69 of Pablo Iglesias allow for the creation of a leftist coalition with the PSOE and others? Will heads roll because of the results? Does all of this mean the end of the bipartisan system, or is it only a slip-up caused by exceptional circumstances, such as the economic crisis? The questions could be endless, and almost all of the answers point to major changes that go further --much further-- than parliamentary arithmetic. As all of this has been discussed ad nauseam since Sunday, in this article I will refer to those things that will not change no matter what happens, at least not in the short —or medium— term. What I mean, is that whether the PP agrees to a pact with one party or another, or if Pedro Sánchez leaves politics and becomes a monk, or if Pablo Iglesias cuts off his ponytail, these things will remain exactly the same. There are at least three problems that the results of 20D, or any other election, cannot change. They are structural questions about Spain that would require a very special social consensus and a political understanding of the highest order.
The first and most important of Spain's structural problems is its territorial nature, and this cannot be limited to the Catalan push for independence. The issue is much deeper, and, at this stage, almost impossible to correct. In the 18th century, and with the intention of copying the French model, Spain’s Bourbon monarchy chose a radial structure where the strictly geographic center, Madrid, created an artificial economic and cultural hub. It was a chimera, but it still survives today: Madrid was and is far from any natural European travel route. Catalan journalist Agustí Calvet, Gaziel, referred to it with a comparison that was not intended to be cruel or contemptuous --he actually liked Madrid, as did Josep Pla-- but merely reflected this geographic evidence. He compared Madrid with Tibet, a remote plateau, far from everything else. It's an isolated case on the Iberian Peninsula. Lisbon, for example, has always been connected to London via the Atlantic Ocean. This radial absurdity has continued into the 21st century. It reached irrational extremes in the 20th century during the Franco regime. Afterwards, the creation of seventeen semi-autonomous regions in Spain naturally did not correct the problem. Just a few days ago, the new high-speed rail line (AVE) between Zamora and Madrid was inaugurated. There were 30 travelers onboard. This joke cost 750 million euros. I suppose that no additional examples are necessary. This maniacal inertia will not be corrected by any parliamentary agreement or anything like that: it's impossible.
The second of Spain's structural problems is related to laziness and an atavistic fear of change. What I'm referring to now has been postponed year after year, decade after decade, century after century. It's called agrarian reform and affects 35 or 40 percent of the land in Spain: Andalusia, Extremadura, a good deal of Castilla-La Mancha, as well as other regions. Anyone who thinks that it is merely an ephemeral issue is mistaken: the great migratory waves from south to north that were seen in Spain between the end of the 19th century and the 1970s, for example, were the direct result --not collateral-- of this problem. In 1979, the ruling centrist party (UCD) drafted the boldest, most progressive law in the history of Spanish democracy, and I am not exaggerating. It was called the Law of Clearly Improvable Lands and, had it been applied, it would have transformed the south of Spain into something resembling Europe. But it was not to be. The result? I will mention but one example: in Extremadura, 27% of all jobs are with the civil service, especially municipal employees, whose justification is often doubtful.
We keep talking about employment --or the lack thereof--, and what I say here I am borrowing from Miquel Puig, who also writes on these pages. How come Spain, even in times of great economic bonanza, always has worrisome chronic unemployment? To answer this, I will ask another question: how come Spain continues to be a frequent net receiver of immigrants and also a net generator of emigrants (at the same time!)? The answer: because in a country that lives off of tourism there is a need for people who make beds and serve breakfast, but we want our children to be engineers, doctors, or journalists. This is the origin of chronic unemployment: unskilled seasonal employment that is, at the same time, the solution and the problem for the Spanish economy. Whatever Rajoy, Iglesias, or Sánchez end up doing, none of this will change at all, because it doesn't depend on any game of parliamentary arithmetic.
