Poverty & Real-Life Problems
The Spain Report spoke to Teresa Rodriguez as she waited in support of two women who were about to be evicted from their homes by the police in the Cerro del Moro district of the southern city of Cádiz, after squatting in public housing and living on the street with their children.
Where do the women go once they’re evicted?
Back on their street, to their families, or going from house to house with their children, there was a case not long ago when one started living in a car again. We told them there was some public housing that had been empty for a long time and we told her we would help her to stay there instead of the car.
How do they generally feel about that?
No one is used to taking what is not theirs, but when one finds oneself in an extreme situation; it’s normally women, young women, who do it, out of responsibility, so as not to have their children living on the street.
And how do the children cope?
With a certain level of worry. When the day of the eviction comes, or when there’s some kind of social confrontation or support protest, they try and take the kids somewhere where they won’t suffer.
How do the local authorities normally react?
It’s becoming quite normal, it’s in the newspapers, these women are telling people about their cases now, in the town hall, on TV programmes, to tell their story, it’s not such a shameful thing any more, there’s a dignity aspect to it. The authorities try to speed up the eviction processes by pressuring the public prosecutor; they also pit the poor against the poor in a fight over public housing.
Is that the type of people Podemos represents?
Let’s say Podemos has to try to apply the ethics of the movements that support it in institutions. Which is to say, institutions that are concerned about people’s problems above all else. The priority is to solve people’s problems when the situation is very, very difficult. So institutions should use that same logic.
Because you have moved from a protest movement to a part of those institutions.
There’s a double logic there. First, via the social movements, some things are achieved, but only temporarily, with a use-by date. So a protest grows, but is then defeated and falls or achieves a partial victory and is then forgotten. So what we have to do in Podemos is move a step forward, and go on the offensive, move from resistance to political change, we have to get rid of those in political institutions who are causing us to be on the streets resisting all the time.
Revolutionary Weirdos
Over the past few days, numerous commentators on the Spanish right have reacted with horror at the election of five “extreme left” Podemos politicians last Sunday.
Are you revolutionaries?
In the sense that we want to change things deeply, yes. We will be revolutionary to the extent we are able to change things. For now we are designing tools the majority of the population can come to feel are theirs, to solve people’s problems. Using a methodology that involves them at all times in political initiatives.
Are you extreme-left friends of terrorists creating a nightmare situation in Spain?
I think that’s what they would like, to push us into a marginal space, in the collective imagination. Of the 1.2 million people who have voted for us, I don’t think the majority of them fit clearly into a ideological identity, or a socio-political identity, or consider themselves extreme left or radicals. We have been able to convince many people who didn’t have a clear ideological identity, around proposals for breaking with the existing order, and that’s what worries them, and we will continue to work on that discourse.
We are not extreme left, we are an extreme necessity.
There is a common sense nowadays that understands that banks can’t be bailed out, people can’t be evicted and sacked, that banks can’t be bailed out generating a public debt by cutting healthcare, eduction and social rights. Now it’s time to convince the majority that it’s possible to change things.
Are you and your 1.2 million voters a bunch of weirdos, as the prime minister’s chief political adviser suggested?
It’s funny that was said by a party whose European election candidate said we needed to save food and eat out-of-date products, and that he normally ate out-of-date yoghurts, or that sits its candidate on a tractor to plant tomatoes, or who after a TV debate says that it takes an effort for him to hide his intellectual superiority in front of a woman so that they don’t call him a male chauvinist. So for them to call us weird is kind of funny.
And what about the secretary general of the PP’s youth organisation, who called you “rancid, authoritarian communists”?
It’s quite foreseeable. They would love us to be seen by the population as something old, out-of-date and dysfunctional. But that’s not the case.
You know Pablo Iglesias. Is he more like Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chávez or Hitler and Marine Le Pen?
Goodness me. I don’t know. Probably more like Nicolás Maduro, for sure. If I had to choose between the two comparisons, it would be the first one.
The Political Establishment And Joining Government
Having harvested a huge negative sentiment against the traditional two-party system in Spain, Podemos now becomes a part of that system, and leader Pablo Iglesias has said the party will fight the 2015 general election in Spain.
Do you hate the political establishment?
Hate is not one of the values we have been using during the campaign. We have tried not to work with hate. We have tried to work with hope. Our campaign slogan has been: “When was the last time you voted with hope?”.
The media has interpreted the victory of Podemos as the victory of rage, of anger, of irrational hate. What we have seen during the campaign is a load of people regain hope after a long time.
But with the hope of bringing the establishment down?
Of cou…with the possibility of change. With the possibility of another way of doing politics, with the possibility of putting the emergency brake on what’s happening. Change, and the possibility of things happening.
In seven years, in four years even, rights have been lost. There was a sensation of nothing to worry about, and people felt like something had to happen. And Podemos’s result has to do with that: with something happening.
That generates hope, not hate.
Do you see yourself as a government minister at the start of 2016?
I don’t know; yes; why not? I hope that by then we have been able to train our grass roots members well enough to bring about change. One of the vaccines we want to give ourselves is against the professionalisation of politics. I think it’s very, very important there are always substitutes. Today it’s my turn to be a Euro MP, but tomorrow I would like another colleague to have exactly the same chance. Occupying institutional posts is important to the extent that governments can, together, change things.
Will there be an agreement with United Left or the PSOE to be able to govern?
With the PSOE, no way. There will be dialogue and negotiations with all of the political forces on the left who want a clear, coherent anti-austerity struggle, and who don’t co-manage cuts anywhere with the PSOE. And it won’t just be with United Left and with the other anti-austerity forces, but also with social movements and people in general. It’s about building a front, not about building a coalition.
A Third Spanish Republic Without Catalonia
Some of Podemos’s constitutional policies clash directly with the positions held by the current Spanish establishment and even the very idea of the nation of Spain.
Are you in favour of a Third Republic?
We are in favor of a Third Republic, of course we are.
And of the independence vote in Catalonia?
Yes.
So you wouldn’t rule out a Third Spanish Republic without Catalonia in five years time?
It would depend a bit on the level of collective awareness. We understand that people should be able do decide, especially on what affects their daily lives.
So if that’s what Catalans and Spaniards voted, you would be in favour of that option?
If the Catalans decide to become independent, of course I would be in favour of what Catalans decide for themselves.
And if Spaniards are in favour of getting rid of the monarchy for a Third Republic?
Yes, of course.
Immigration
On the day Teresa Rodriguez spoke to The Spain Report, the Spanish press reported 2,000 immigrants had attacked the fence in Melilla and that 400 had managed to get in.
What is your opinion on the immigration issue?
I think the stories about attacks on the fence and mass entries are false. Immigrants are not a real problem for the Spanish state and much less so in Andalusia. The main problem we have is emigration. More young people leave to find work abroad than immigrants enter via the fence in Melila as the media wants society to believe. They will keep doing so because it takes attention away from the real problems in the country.
Does Podemos support an open-border policy?
Podemos at least supports complying with international laws on migratory flows.
Should we open the fences in Ceuta and Melilla?
We should get rid of the fences from Ceuta and Melilla, the concertina wire, the riot police and the police. And we should look for a reasonable answer to migratory flows.
But then thousands of immigrants would enter Spain.
Yes, what we’d need to try to do is to have freedom of movement established at the European level. When an immigrant moves somewhere, with his life savings, he wants to find work. If he doesn’t find it, he will go somewhere else. If the borders are opened just there and are closed everywhere else, it’s like a trap.
[There should be] free movement of migratory flows on a global level, so that immigration self-regulates.
Self-regulates?
Yes.
The immigrants themselves would decide it was no fun if there was no work?
For example; and they would go somewhere else to work and settle down.
In Ceuta there is 70% youth unemployment, but immigrants haven’t stopped coming.
I think the aim of the immigrants who cross Africa is not to stay in Ceuta. They want to reach Europe and a place where they can work and where they can maintain their families.
Is immigration a Spanish problem or a European problem?
I don’t think the problem is immigration, I think the problem is the attack on human rights on the border in Ceuta. Immigrants have the problem, not us with them. Europe has built its borders on the basis of massacring and building spaces where human rights don’t reach the borders, in Ceuta or Lampedusa.
Wages, Work Taxes & The Euro
Some of the most talked-about proposals have been Podemos’s economic suggestions, which range from new wealth taxes to shorter working weeks, lowering the retirement age and auditing the debt before deciding to not pay some of it.
Are you really going to give up your Euro MP salaries and per diems?
We are going to earn a maximum of €1,930, which is three times the minimum wage in Spain. In my case, I am going to earn exactly the same as I do as a secondary school teacher, €1,700 or so each month. We are not going to lose purchasing power compared with the salary we were earning, but none of us has a huge salary. We are certainly not going to earn the €8,000 Euro MPs get.
Your programme contains a universal minimum wage, just because someone is a citizen.
Yes.
Is that realistic economically, taking into account the public debt and deficit?
It would be realistic if we were able to abolish tax fraud, which is about €90 billion according to such reliable sources as the tax inspectors’ trade union. If we were able to audit the debt and not pay the part corresponding to the bank bailout, because we understand that debt is illegitimate, which is about €250 billion between direct aid and difficult-to-recover grants, and if we did a tax reform in which we got back the tax collection capacity of the state on large fortunes.
If we could recover that tax collection capability and take off the yoke of illegitimate debt, and stop tax fraud and tax havens, we would have enough for a universal minimum wage and for a lot more.
But €643 x 46.5 million Spaniards x 12 months is about €354 billion each year
Yes.
And you think that’s realistic?
Yes.
How would the country finance itself if the country stopped paying a large percentage of its debt?
With our own resources, by changing fiscal policy.
So we stop receiving external funding and collect more tax?
Let’s see, we’d have to change the financial policy on a global level too, we couldn’t stop paying the debt alone. In Europe, the idea is to establish alliances with political forces from other countries like Syriza in Greece to audit the debt and work out which part is illegitimate.
At the same time as raising taxes?
Raise taxes, but raise them for large fortunes. They’ve eliminated taxes on large fortunes, which could have meant a lot of tax, to raise VAT, which we all pay equally.
Wouldn’t capital flee from Spain, when we need is more investment to create small businesses and jobs?
The most important thing in that case is an international agreement so that couldn’t happen. One of the proposals made by a group of lawyers from different social movements was the need to create a European court for multinationals, to control things like the Tobin Tax, to provide international financial control.
All of these measures that are, to a certain extent, disobedient, would have to be accompanied by an international strategy and alliance to build a new international legality that doesn’t allow the flight of capital.
You also propose retiring at 60 and a 35-hour week, but the Spanish population is ageing and in theory we’d need to work longer, not less.
Yes, it depends again on the need of distributing taxes and distributing work. What has happened over the last seven years is that the social gap has increased enormously. Nowadays, 20 families in this country have the same as the poorest 20%. This country is the most unequal in the European Union and in which big wealth and large fortunes have increased. Common sense says that by redistributing work and tax, there will be more work and more tax, and more possibilities of contributing to the system.
How will there be more work?
If the working week is shorter and retirement earlier, there will of course be more people in jobs. If retirement is pushed back two years, that job is filled for another two years. There will be an unemployed person who can’t work because his job is taken up by a retiree who has to work more time, or longer hours.
Would you leave the euro?
Talking about leaving the euro as a fetish is a mistake. Talking about better conditions, not being able to exercise economic and monetary sovereignty, and all the rest, is the wrong way of looking at things. The debt question is the central issue, more so than the euro itself. Waving the flag of a euro exit as a way to solve our problems would be a mistake.