by Crónica Popular • April 19, 2021 • 0 Comments
Vicente Serrano * ||
Member of the Progressive Citizen Alternative and the AIRE Promoter Group ||
This past Wednesday, April 14, the political project Alianza de la Izquierda Republicana de España , AIRE , was presented in Barcelona . It seems unusual that an organization that claims to be Spanish was born in Barcelona, the capital of secessionism. But, if we go into the analysis of the political situation, it is perhaps the most logical thing to do, according to the myopia of the “formal” left, if that is how we can define PSOE and UP.
From Spain
Jacobinism seems to enjoy a bad press among a left devoted to the exaltation of diversity and that seems to have forgotten the essence of the left: equality.
But if we understand Jacobinism as democratic radicalism in the fight for the enlightened triad, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity , we will be able to eliminate prejudices subliminally installed for years in the minds of Spaniards from the instances of power, both state and autonomous and even municipal. The initial centralizing radicalism responded to the need to build the nation of citizens, not only in France, but also in Spain, resulting in the Constitution of 1812, La Pepa, which ended the Old Regime and abolished the medieval fueros.
Art. 1. The Spanish Nation is the meeting of all Spaniards from both hemispheres.
Art. 2. The Spanish Nation is free and independent, and it is not, nor can it be the patrimony of any family or person.
Art. 3. Sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation, and therefore exclusively the right to establish its fundamental laws belongs to it.
It is evident that this Jacobinism cannot please those who claim the difference to separate, at the same time that they demand identity uniformity in their totalitarian and pseudo-republican project.
If we know one thing, it is that societies such as Spain are culturally plural, both in Spain as a whole and within the communities or regions that make it up. Speaking from the left of plurinational Spain is an absurdity that only feeds the lack of solidarity and ambition of the political-economic castes of the autonomies. It is entering a spiral of explosive fragmentation that would end the few rights that the workers of this country still enjoy. Multinationals and oligopolies rub their hands at the prospect. A disaster for the working class of Spain!
Republican Left
Far from the banana republicanism of secessionism, AIRE defends a republicanism that goes beyond the simple substitution of the head of state . We consider that there are no blood rights, that the hereditary system is socially unjust since it consolidates inequality of origin , that the poor inherit poverty and the rich wealth, that doing republicanism is demanding a single and progressive inheritance law for all of Spain where the great fortunes and the latifundista nobility pay what corresponds to the State. We must end tax competition between communities.
My republicanism is closer to the October 3, 2017 speech of Felipe VI than to the secessionist claims of October 1 or the anti-monarchism of Pablo Iglesias and his minions .
Our republicanism proposes a constitutional reform that eliminates all the existing bases, including the inviolability of the Head of State, whether King or President of the Republic.
Where social rights (work, health and housing) are not merely declarative, but effective. Transform Spain into a secular state, not only in religion, but also in identity.
We want to reform the territorial organization of the State, shielding in the Constitution those powers that must be proper to the central State Administration as a guarantor of the equality of all citizens, such as Health, Education, Justice, Social Security, the tax system and the security forces and bodies.
The autonomic system has to evolve towards rationality, fleeing from the current centrifugal identity neo-feudalism. It is evident that this implies the disappearance of the Basque and Navarrese quotas and the suppression of the first additional provision on historical rights. We want the allusion to “nationalities” to disappear from our Constitution.
We advocate for the repeal of article 135 of the Constitution , which affects our sovereignty and leaves social rights and public services undermined and behind the interests of large capitals that monopolize the State debt.
We want a public bank and a private bank that acts as a public service.
We have a major pending reform that affects the democratic quality of Spain as a nation of free and equal citizens: the electoral system. We can only guarantee the maximum of “one person, one vote” if that vote is worth the same for everyone, regardless of where you vote and who you vote for.
We propose the Sole Circumscription to elect our chamber of popular representation, the Congress of Deputies, guaranteeing proportionality, the representation of all territories and the unblocking of the lists that allow the voter to reorder them. For the Senate, the constituencies would be autonomous, with representation proportional to the census and the rest of conditions similar to those of Congress.
In order to avoid the blackmail that, since the Transition, nationalisms have exercised in the governance of the country, we propose an innovative system that guarantees strong and stable governments that, based on the legislative result, allow the election of the President of the Government by popular vote in case insufficient parliamentary majorities. This would prevent us from continually repeating elections and would dismantle nationalist blackmails.
As Paco Frutos would say, ours is a republican and socialist horizon, and both are projects that should not be based on a primary anti-monarchism or on a republicanism of empty proclamations, or civil war, or on a dogmatic and misunderstood pseudo-Marxism; not. The advent of the 3rd Republic, as a prerequisite for reaching a more egalitarian and just society, will only be viable on the basis of a broad debate among all Spaniards and their consensus. The rest is left in the bag of the unproductive confrontation.
About flags
Only stubbornness can lead us to a confrontation for flags. The current constitutional flag is identical to that of the First Spanish Republic except for the shield; For this reason, to see in the constitutional flag a reminiscence of the Franco regime is a mistake, since the first is much earlier than the second. This is what usually happens to certain leaders such as Ada Colau or the mayor of Palma when considering Spanish soldiers who lived, and died, before the coup of ’36 as Francoists for the simple fact of being Spanish.
It is evident that the current republicanism, in general, has adopted the flag of the 2nd Republic and as such many of us have it, but it is a vindictive symbol and, when the third arrives – if we can get it to arrive -, the flag will be the one that among all let’s agree. We used it in our presentation, but it is certainly shocking to see it in the hands of people as anti-Spanish as the separatists, when the 2nd Republic declared that Spain is an integral State and, specifically, prohibited the federation between regions.
Any day, we will recover the flag of the First Republic with the shield of the second or that of the national militias that the Constitution of Cádiz recognized as fighting forces, and whose three bands (red, yellow and red) were of similar size … Minor events when the symbolism should be at the service of unity and not of confrontation.
Ending up
AIRE is a left-wing project far from any dogmatism or sectarianism that aims to combine the best of Marxist, social-democratic, republican traditions … with an ambitious, at the same time realistic, program that affects the improvement of the social conditions of the most disadvantaged .
Our scope of action is Spain, a Spain in solidarity and open to the world with a special closeness to our Portuguese brothers, the Mediterranean and Latin America, without neglecting the reform of a Europe (EU) excessively biased towards neoliberalism. Clearly contrary to nationalism and the identity assimilation processes that the so-called linguistic immersion hides.
We understand that there is a political space that current left-wing organizations do not cover, and this is seen in the high levels of absenteeism among left-wing voters that occur cyclically in some electoral processes: for example, in the last autonomous elections in Catalonia February 14th. A theoretical space that we have to build and conquer.
What we are or become will depend on our effort and ability to convince our fellow citizens of the goodness of our proposals. This is what is called democracy.
Nou Barris, Barcelona. Friday, April 16, 2021.
* Author of THE REAL VALUE OF THE VOTE , Editorial El Viejo Topo.
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