TIME EUROPE
MARCH 27, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 12
VIEWPOINT
Gain in Spain Gives the Left Some Pain
José María Aznar's victory in Spain offers new hope to Europe's moderate right
By ROD USHER
Europe's moderate right seems to have got it all wrong. Its centrist parties are on the outside looking in across most of the European Union, either burnt by having been too long in power or singed by scandal. Where the right is winning hearts and minds--or at least votes--is at the populist extremes, just the political territory that moderates by definition shun. Now, however, Europe's small-c conservatives think they might have a comeback model: a former tax inspector most of them knew nothing of when he squeaked into minority government in Spain in 1996. Literally squeaked, too, because José María Aznar's voice often broke into a bray when he got finger-wagging worked up during his days in opposition.
Four years later, Aznar has his octaves--and Spain--fully under control. The size of his March 12 election victory amazed even his own Popular Party (PP). The 15-seat advantage it had held over the Socialist psoe--forcing the PP into uneasy coalition with nationalist groups--has ballooned to 58 seats, and a majority 183 in the 350-seat Congress. The more than 10.2 million votes Aznar reaped are the most any party has won in Spain since it began its lurch to democracy on the death of General Franco in 1975.
Aznar's victory was heralded by a spokesman for Germany's embattled Christian Democratic Union as encouragement to "win the population back to our policies." The Berlin daily Tagesspiegel said Aznar might assume from the CDU the role of the European conservatives' Leitwolf. Leader of the wolf pack is about the last imagery Aznar's party would choose, given the distancing it has had to do from the long-toothed forebears of Spain's old derecha. But what was meant as high praise was echoed around Europe. In France, Le Monde agreed that very few observers would have guessed back in 1996 that "this small man, unobtrusive and awkward, although authoritarian" would have such political longevity. While he can't smile as wide as the British Prime Minister, the Times even saw him as Spain's version of Tony Blair, saying, "There is not very much debate as to who was the de facto new Labour candidate in the Spanish election."
That's about as carried away as the same editorial's prediction that Aznar's return will suddenly make the U.K.-Spain deadlock on Gibraltar open to "substantial progress." As Catalan academic Vicenç Navarro wrote on the eve of the election, many of Aznar's positions, particularly on privatization and the health service, "are closer to the policies of Mrs. Thatcher than those of Mr. Blair."
But the real lesson of the election is that whether or not Aznar is a Leitwolf or a sheep is a non-issue for a majority of voters. The 'ology' that counts today is not ideology, but technology--like getting a flat rate charge for Internet access. Instead of managing versions of the past, Spaniards want management of the future--which means keeping the economy growing, job creation, tax cuts--and to know that most of the people governing them are honest most of the time.
Aznar's brand of capitalismo doesn't hinder the rich getting richer, but it also aims to spread varying thicknesses of the butter across a burgeoning middle class and a busy working one. The recipe requires a boiling economy and Spain's has been for most of his tenure: last year, along with 3.7% growth and another big drop in unemployment, 110,000 small- and medium-size businesses were started. On the international stage, Spain's economic reconquista of Latin America leapt ahead, especially via huge investments in telecommunications and banking.
The election result also counsels Europe's ensconced center-left. Spain's Socialists found that talk of progresistas, of a "plural left," of government by heart as well as by head, fell on deaf ears. The PSOE slumped 16 seats and almost 1.6 million votes; its last-minute ally, the communist-led United Left, saw its votes and seats more than halved. PSOE leader Joaquín Almunia resigned graciously on election night, and the PSOE will continue licking its wounds until its congress meets in July. It has to find a new identity in a country where once-rigid division into "movements" has lost all meaning. A spokesman for one of its factions, Antonio García Santesmases, wrote in Madrid-based daily El Mundo last week: "The right has had a generational renewal and has arrived to stay. Day by day it is increasing its economic power, its strategic supports, its influence over the media. It's also increasing its capacity to continue permeating society with new values that were not the main ones at the beginning of the transition [from dictatorship to democracy]."
On the positive side, Santesmases, a lecturer in political philosophy, concludes: "There's one advantage of a heavy defeat: it prevents continuance, repetition and routine."
Like the center-right-in-waiting, Europe's center-left parties will also be looking at their routines after Aznar's triumph. The conclusion seems to be that parties should forget thinking of politics as a crusade for ideas. The "movement" most modern voters care most about has nothing to do with ideology; it is that of the hand to and from the hip pocket.
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