Nov
5
Xosé-Manuel Beiras.
For more on the Galician Left Alternative, click HERE. For more on Spain, click HERE.
Xosé-Manuel
Beiras interviewed by Daniel
Raventós, translated for Links
International Journal of Socialist Renewal by Dick Nichols
Xosé-Manuel Beiras, 76, has been a prominent figure nationalist
left politics in Galicia since the 1960s. In 1963 he helped found the Galician
Socialist Party (PSG, Partido Socialista Galego), illegal under the Franco
dictatorship, and later became its international secretary and then general
secretary (1971-77).
In 1982 Beiras participated in the founding of the
Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG, Bloco Nacionalista Galego), entering its
leadership. In 1985 he was elected as a BNG candidate to the 75-seat Galician
parliament, and was re-elected in 1989, becoming the BNG’s parliamentary
spokesperson. Upon further re-election in 1993 Beiras was also elected as the
BNG’s national spokesperson at its seventh national assembly.
In the 1997 election Beiras led the BNG to its best
result ever, 18 seats, replacing the Socialist Party of Galicia (PSdG, Partido
Socialista da Galicia) as the second force in parliament. In 1998, he was
re-elected as the BNG’s national spokeperson.
In 2001, Beiras wasagain re-elected to the Galician parliament,
but stood down from all representative positions in the BNG in 2005. He left
the BNG in early 2012.
In the October 21, 2012, Galician elections Beiras was
the lead candidate for the Galician Left Alternative (AGE, Alternativa Galega
de Esquerda) in the electoral district of A Coruña, where he was elected along
with three other AGE candidates, including Yolanda Diaz, coordinator in Galicia
of the United Left (Esquerda Unida).
Beiras was educated at the University of Santiago, the
Sorbonne and the London School of Economics. He has lectured in the University
of Santiago’s economics faculty since 1968 and is the author of many books on
Galician economy and politics.
This interview was published on October 27, 2012, on the
website of the international left magazine Sin
Permiso. He is a member of its advisory council Beiras is a member. The
interviewer is editorial board member Daniel Raventós.
* * *
First, can you
give us an evaluation of the October 21, 2012, Galician elections?
A preliminary clarification: I’ll do it through the prism
of AGE, trying to make my assessment objective—i.e., truthful and
intellectually rigorous—but without pretending to be “neutral”, given I was a
citizen directly and personally involved in this poll as a candidate.
AGE set itself two basic goals in this electoral contest.
First, to activate the vote of the social left that feels robbed of reliable
representatives in the Galician legislative chamber. Second, to help in this
way to overturn the parliamentary majority and occupation of the regional
government by the Popular Party (PP, Partido Popular), “the demolition gang of
ethnic cleansers, ecocides and sociopaths”.
Achieving the first goal depended solely on us in the
AGE, while the second did not. In view of the results, I think we achieved the
first goal to an extent far beyond the most optimistic plausible forecasts at
the start of the campaign. You could say as an exercise in parody humour of that
we have achieved “mission impossible”. By contrast, it is clear that the second
goal has not been reached.
Why this seemingly contradictory outcome? In brief
synthesis: in just a few weeks from our initial appearance on the political
stage we have managed to reactivate and win the support of a very large chunk
of the disillusioned and disappointed electorate that would have added to the
ranks of abstention had the AGE not emerged. We have jumped from zero to nine
MPs (with less than 200 extra votes it would have been 10), winning more than
200,000 votes, equal to 14% of the total. However, this was not enough to
offset the slump in the vote for Socialist Party of Galicia (PSdG-PSOE) and the
BNG. They were the formal parliamentary opposition to the PP during the last
legislature, and had previously formed a two-party government in Galicia.
But hasn’t the
left experienced proportionally significant progress at these elections?
Yes indeed, because in addition to what I was just saying
we should note two important facts. First, in the last parliamentary term there
were only 12 MPs to the left of the PSOE (those of the BNG), now there are 16
(seven BNG and nine AGE). True, the PP goes from having a wafer-thin majority (38,
half the 75-seat chamber plus one) to having three more, but that seems
irrelevant to me. What matters is that it allows the Xunta [government of Galicia] to “rule” against ordinary citizens, and
for that it’s enough to have the support of a bare majority of 38 mindless and
amoral androids who continue to act as they did in the last legislature.
By contrast, our entry into the parliament will change
the script completely: we are going to fight implacably in defence of the
social majority attacked by the plutocracy’s puppet [PP leader Alberto Nuñez
Feijóo], and in no case will we
take part in “rotten compromises”, as [Die Linke
leader] Oskar Lafontaine would say. We will not be waiting for
the actions by the Xunta to rouse ourselves in resistance, as does the
conventional opposition. We will take the initiative in restoring the genuine
role of the house of representatives, forcing the government to come out openly
against initiatives that we will bring into parliament from where they have
been worked out, namely by platforms of the most active and militant citizens.
The second important fact is that the electoral support
achieved by the AGE has not been at the expense of the BNG and/or the PSdG-PSOE:
the vast majority of voters they lost would not have voted for them in any case.
That is an electorate they have lost definitively through not being a truly
strong opposition to the PP in the last legislature. Yes, each of our seats
“cost” about 25,000 votes, compared to 15,000 for each of the PP’s: if ours had
had their “cost” of 15,000 votes, we would have had exactly 14 members and, vice
versa, if every PP seat had cost what ours did, the PP would not have a
majority. That is an eloquent example of the perverse effect the so-called
d’Hondt rule [applied to unequal electorates] has.
AGE was the most
voted-for list in cities like A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela. An
exceptional result…
Yes, and also the most voted in Ferrol (in this city we tied
with the PSdG-PSOE) and 20 more municipalities of western Galicia. Yes, exceptional.
Which political
forces entered the AGE coalition? Given the different sensitivities involved, did
any problems of understanding, or has the campaign has been calm on that front?
Our initial approach involved a broader spectrum than
that finally organised within AGE. The original initiative came from
Anova-Irmandade Nationalista (Anova-Nationalist Brotherhood/Sisterhood), a new
type of mass meeting-based organisation, fostered by left nationalist citizens
and forged through a process that started in March this year. It followed a
bottom-up approach by promoting the creation — without any guiding “pre-cooked
meal” — of open mass meetings across the country.
By late May there had been close to 50 of these and at
that point it was decided to create an interim national coordinating group,
which called a founding assembly for July 14. Anova was born on that day and I
was chosen as its national spokesperson. On July 25, Day of the Galician Homeland,
during our public launch at Santiago de Compostela, I made a proposal that suggested
building a broad front electoral capable of giving a resounding response to the
outrages of the PP in parliament and the Xunta, and in this way throwing them
out of power in Galicia’s institutions.
That invitation was addressed first of all to the network
of movements and trade union, social and civil organisations presently at work
in Galician civil society. These are much more dense and active than is often
understood outside the country and were already promoting a snowballing process
of civil rebellion. It was directed on the other hand towards the nationalist
political groups that were not part of Anova — including the BNG itself — and also
towards left forces linked with statewide Spanish organisations, provided that these
accepted the right of the Galician nation to self-determination. Obviously, the
last tacit target of our proposal was the United Left in Galicia, which immediately
announced its willingness to take part in building this broad electoral front.
The original plan was to carry out this process of
convergence in September, but the Xunta’s opportunistic calling of elections in
the last days of August forced us to speed up the process of dialogue and
convergence, squeezing it into the bare 10 days the rules provide for
formalising an electoral coalition, with another 10 to preselect and register
candidates. We immediately repeated our proposal for a broad front, this time
formally approaching each of the potential partners we had invited to the
discussion.
The United Left accepted immediately and entered into
discussion with us without mentioning the possible exclusion of any other of
the organisations that had been invited. The leadership of the nationalist collective
Commitment for Galicia (CpG, Compromiso por Galiza) — made up of the centre-left
group More Galicia (+ G, Mais Galiza), the centre-right Galician Action (AG,
Acción Galega) and the ecologist and Galician nationalist Ecosocialist Space
(EEG, Espazo Ecosocialista Galego) — accepted coalition with Anova, but were
for excluding United Left. On the eve of the deadline for electoral
registration of the coalition, the rank-and-file of that alliance overturned
this position, but it was by then too late to renegotiate the terms of the
coalition already agreed between Anova and the United Left.
The leadership of the BNG, without even the slightest
consultation of its rank and file, lost no time in making public its rejection
of the proposal and its condemnation of those proposing it.
In this situation, we in Anova and the United Left decided
to register our coalition as a “technical coalition” called Galician Left
Alternative (AGE), but including in the document of our agreement a clause that
left the door open to other groups to come in during the 10 days still
available for the selection and registration of candidates. That clause allowed
the coalition to incorporate Ecosocialist Space and [the all-Spanish green
organisation] Equo as well, with members of these two groups being placed on
AGE candidate lists. Both those collectives then took active part in the
election campaign. And that’s how the AGE coalition took final shape.
Regarding problems of mutual understanding between the
United Left and Anova, I must say that initially there were logical enough difficulties:
different political cultures, ideological outlooks that were not identical — for
both sides a risky test at crossing over the dividing line between
“nationalism”’ and “Spanishness”, which since the late-Franco period has been turned
into an impassable frontier (little more than a taboo) — plus a lack of
previous experience in political collaboration outside of joint action in
certain mobilisations. But these difficulties arose and were satisfactorily
resolved in the stage of negotiating the terms and basis of the coalition and
the design of its campaign: in no way did they exist during the election
campaign itself.
The key was that we shared a common programmatic basis,
identified the main enemy as the primary goal of our struggle and defence of
the ordinary citizen brutally attacked by the powers-that-be as the supreme
reason for our alliance, combining with reciprocal give and take as a necessary
condition for achieving the indispensable mutual confidence. Without that we
knew we would not get to gain credibility and instill confidence in a citizenry
fed up with the usual political representatives.
And, once up and running, relationships both personal (between
individual candidates of this or that group) and collective (between the respective
activist bases) advanced in harmony and increasing camaraderie. In addition,
our specific respective messages — the United Left’s more class and worker oriented,
Anova’s more embracing of national identity and the needs of the social
majority — underwent a process of gradual osmosis as actions and meetings
followed upon one another.
I am very satisfied, as well as truly and pleasantly
surprised.
What impact do
you think the results in Galicia will have on the Kingdom of Spain as a whole?
I don’t know, and don’t have enough reliable evidence to
venture a forecast. However, what I do know — and knowing this beforehand was a
crucial element in the diagnosis on which we based our risky proposal for a
broad front — is that these elections in Galicia could not be analysed and
undertaken, exclusively or even primarily, on the basis of internal Galician
political dynamics alone. Rather they are an episode in the decomposition
process of the current Spanish political regime of the Second Bourbon
Restoration [of King Juan Carlos].
This process is similar, in their different
socio-historical contexts, to that of late Francoism [1939-1975] and to the
death agony of the First Borbon Restoration [1874-1931]. These led, in the
second case, to the Second Republic [1931-1939] and, in the first, to the fraud
of a “transition” [1975-1982] that usurped the democratic breakthrough for
which the anti-Francoist and anti-fascist citizenry were fighting.
That lesson had to be absorbed from both precedents so as
to orient all political battles, including the electoral ones, towards the
horizon of a necessary democratic break with the current rotten regime. It
implies a strategy at an all-Spanish level, and at that of the iniquitous
European Union too, one where emancipatory Galician, Basque and Catalan nationalism
cannot afford to practice isolationism.
I also want to give my opinion about those who believe, from
the simple fact that the PP has managed to entrench itself for the moment in
the regional government of Galicia, that this will give it a boost on the
Galician and national levels: they are wrong through and through. I warned Feijóo
during the campaign that if he believed, on the assumption that he would stay
in charge of his “demolition gang” in the regional government, that this would stop
the siege of citizens revolting against his policy of ethnocide … then he was
completely wrong. With our entry into the parliament we will provide positive
feedback for that citizen revolt: that’s the least we can achieve.
I warned Feijóo that when he articulated the false
dilemma between “either me or chaos”, fed-up citizens would decipher the reality
hidden beneath this fallacy: namely “Chaos, that’s me.” His previous
administration produced chaos in Galician society: a further mandate would only
redouble it. Days later, at the massive internationalist rally celebrated at A
Coruña, comrade Stavros [Karagkounis] of SYRIZA, corroborated this diagnosis — and
used the same terminology — as the key to the current situation in Greece.
How do you rate
the results in the Basque Country elections, held on the same day as the
Galician elections?
These days I’m trying to recover from the hectic pace of
activity — absolutely ridiculous for someone of my age — which I got myself
into during the campaign and where I repeatedly “over-revved” (I refer to my
own internal engine, of course, not to the ongoing sociopolitical process). I’m
trying to recover the corresponding loss of my increasingly scarce and non-renewable
energy! So I have not had the opportunity nor the time to adequately inform myself
and exchange views with my friends of the Basque nationalist left, and of the left
of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).
So I can only note a couple of things. First, the overwhelming
electoral tide of Basque nationalism has returned. Second, unfortunately (?) the
left did not beat the PNV. The question mark in brackets shows that I am not
sure whether the resulting balance of electoral forces between the two wings of
Basque nationalism will be more or less favourable to the left’s strategic
project. That strategic project seems more important to me than whether or not
you get to govern in the present institutions of the Basque Autonomous
Community, covering three of the seven territories of the Basque Country and which
are, mutatis mutandi, as degenerated
as formulas of “self-government” as in Galicia and Catalonia.
Speaking after
the election you said that “we are in a period and historical context in which we
cannot know how long this political regime will last”. Although you have
referred to this issue before, can you explain further what you mean by such
forceful expression?
I think this question is largely covered, as you
effectively say, in one of my previous answers. I will just add my conviction
that, either as citizens behaving as such will we end this rotten regime — where
the constitution which some of us did not vote for but afterwards defended against
its cooks turned into its wreckers is out of date in its most important norms —
or there will be no possibility of Celtic Iberia avoiding the fate of that “foggy
cattle yard” and “absurd deformity of European culture” denounced by Max
Estrella, the protagonist of [Galician-born Spanish dramatist Ramón] Valle-Inclan’s
theatre of the grotesque called Lights of
Bohemia — written precisely during the First Bourbon Restoration’s peak
period of decay [in 1920].
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