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Forums - Politics Discussion - Why is there no thread about Spain reverting to fascism?

SuperNova on 03 October 2017
Wright said:
SuperNova said:

-snip-

I eh...gotta question some of the things stated here.

· Abortion in Spain is legal. It's not "practically illegal" in any way or shape, any women over 18 can freely abort in either public or private clinics during the first three months, except the fact that a 2015's re-update makes minors (i.e. anyone under 18) require the consent (and presence) of their parents in order to abort, but they can do so if they have the consent. Any women can abort after 3 months if the pregnancy was a result of rape, if the child she's carrying has any defects, or if it poses any discernible threat to the woman's life.

· I'm not sure what's that all about chairs and tables, but I mainly have to question if it has any symbolism at all. Most classes I've been have fuck all tables and chairs in rows of 1-1, and my old school used to have shared table/chairs in 2-1 rows. I do agree that education needs an urgent revamp, but I can't really get anything of what you established using The Wave as an example. Try public schools. It's jungle territory, not mind-controlling symbolism.

· The two republics, Spanish Civil War, Franco's regime and the Transition are mandatory in History classes. Second year of high-school has a mandatory "Spanish history" section that no one can avoid, and these are also added into Selectivity if you're trying to aim for any universitary degree. While high-school (once you've done Primary and Secondary, which are mandatory for every single spanish citizen) is optional, you're forced to do so if you want to access university. In other words, every single university student, whether he has finished or not, knows about all those things I've mentioned. Heck, without anything to back me up me here, I can safely say people remember more about these things than let's say, Primo de Rivera's dictatorship or Amadeo de Saboya's short-lived status as Spanish king.

· What do you mean "they'd never written an essay"? Essays are mandatory and extensively touched during Spanish classes (heck, there's even things like Sintax analysis which no one likes because it's useless as fuck, but it's also incorporated into these at times). Essays are also an integral part of Selectivity (especially if you choose something like Philosophy), because you are basically required to make an extensive essay after careful analysis of a text as part of the Spanish subject. If your boyfriend had to relearn anything at university, it's because universities prefer their own essay model rather than the one being taught at schools, but that doesn't mean there isn't an essay model at schools.

· I can honestly say "blind patriotism" is not part of any school. I'm not sure if you mean something like signing "Cara al sol" during classes, but I doubt that's being done today even in private, overly-religious schools. Maybe your boyfriend had the worst of luck when choosing his school, but absolutely nothing of this has happened in any school I know where friends have studied. Heck, there's a massive disregard of the authority at public schools.

This information is provided by someone who has been living and studying more than 18 years of his live in an island, which bears admittely some of the worst schools and universities you can find in the entirety of Spain.

With the abortion laws I was referring to the abortion laws that were drafting in 2014. I should really have said 'trying to make abortion illegal' and will amend that in my original post, thanks for pointing that out.

Ok, so my boyfriend is from tenerife, that's where he grew up. My anecdotes about him are second hand info I have from him about public schools there. I've heard diffrent stuff from my cousins that visit private schools in Madrid, hence me saying it's the worst in rural areas and the islands.

He's told me about fights that were cheered on by teachers, several pedophile teachers that had no teaching education or experience, but were failed politicians that went into teaching (because of a point system for government officials that allows them to freely move jobs of similar status within the government, wich I honestly know nothing about and sounds confusing to me), drung sniffing dogs at the gates being a regular occurence and other stuff, so as far as the jungle territory goes you're right, but that is a result of lack of competence not the underlying design or intention.

As far as spanish history goes, according to him they briefly covered Franco by learning all of the imortant dates. Apparently the teacher failed to teach them any context for these dates let alone going into the history and cause and effects behind it, so it was literally just a list of dates to learn. That's not what I consider covering a dictatorship in the past of your country. Contrast that with the, according to him completely uncritical coverage of columbus and colonization.

He says he has never had to write anything arguing his own opinion in school and when he tried (for example for philosophy class) his teachers would tell him that his opinion was 'wrong' because it didn't align with their opinion or interpretation. He's also never had to write anything above 3000 words. (3000 words would be a pretty standart lengh for the meaty part of an exam for us, so I guess it's similar. Home written essays had to be more along the lines of 5000 words for us.)

According to him they basically exclusively did grammar and syntax in spanish and language classes, wich he found to be about as pointless as you do. (For refernce in germany we also analyse syntax in advanced classes, leading up to university, we analyzed Obamas speeches when he was running for president for the first time, for example and applied the syntax analysis to intent of author and audience manipulation, wich I personally found to be quite facinating at the time, but mostly still no one liked it, especially when we had to analyze Shakesperes foreshadowing....)

And yes the chairs and tables thing has a symbolism attached to it. I know it's an extremely subjective example and I tried to explain it best I can and if you don't get anything out of it that's fine, that's why I specifically said it was significant to someone with my cultural background.

Obviously I don't have the full inside perspective as an ousider looking in, but from what I gather, the public schools in spain, wich are the only ones that government directly runs, people do not get encouraged to think for themselves, they do not get provided with the information or the toolset to critically examine their own heritage and history. Attempt at critical thinking sem to be shut down and the focus seems to be very technical/analytical but without drawing any conclusions from it but the ones pre-designed by the teacher. I've met extremely intelligent and reflective people in spain but also a lot of very nice, very bilndly patriotic people with pretty narrow horizons too, so I've seen evidence for both.

What I can say with certainty is that the school experience in germanies public schools seems to be very diffrent from the one in spanish public schools (we had a few transfers from the canaries and other rural regions to my high school that had similar stories to tell about their school life so I saw no reason to doubt my boyfriends accounts) and it seems to be down to a variety of things, like underfunding, bad teaching education and a radically diffrent teaching philosophy.

 

Edit: Only saw your edit after writing this. I realize I've used the word 'facism' in response to OP, nut the mechanisms I'm describing aren't exclusive to facism. The same dynamics have been extensively exploited by so-called communist states like the USSR, China, etc. Heck, eastern germany left large administrative an power strucktures from the Nazis right in place while errcting a communist state, right down to the indoctrinating youth organizations. I'm largely in favour of coalitiond and a diverse party landscape, we've also seen that historically a splintering of the party landscape can make a country more susceptable to extremist viewpoint and a big leftist push can have an even bigger backlash from the right, if they feel underrepresented.



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HomokHarcos on 03 October 2017
Moac said:
Nymeria said:

No. No state can secede from the union.  Bunch tried it once, massive Civil War broke out.  We have sent mixed signals to other countries in regards to this issue though.

Exacly , thats my point. No soverign nation would accept the secesion of any part of its country if they can avoid it - even if war is the price to pay. Using double standards is not very productive and is very unfair, like when the USA or European countries play with the idea of an Independent Tibet despite Tibet being part of China since the Yuan Dynasty (longer than the USA existed).  The saying "Whats good for the goose is good for the gander" comes to mind, why would Spain accept the secession when such an act would cause a Civil War in the USA or in suppression that far exceeds that of the Spanish on the Catalan region. 

The best solution to this problem is not calling the opposition Fascist, totalitarian or human-rights breakers. The solution is diplomatic and there should be discussions on regional autonomy.  If tomorrow Texas held a referendum and the populace declared a win for Independence I highly dought that the USA would accept the referendum. The same double standard is practiced by Russia as well, Russia invades Ukraine and steals land based on regional desires of Russian speakers in Ukraine but they would crack down on any Region in Russia that wanted to secede like the people in Chechnya.

I hope there is a peaceful solution to the issue of Catalonia but I don't see a way for Catalans to gain true Independence unless they engage in a costly war.  Croatia became Independent regardless of the wishes of Serbia or anyone else, we had to liberate our lands and drive the Serbs out.

I'm not sure if you know about the history of Texas, but it was originally a Mexican state. They declared independence and as a result Mexico went to war with them. It later joined the United States, and when they tried to succede from the USA, they had another war.



JEMC on 03 October 2017
Player2 said:
JEMC said:

What you've said about school in Catalonia is one of the lies you are helping spread. And I know it because I had several teachers that taught in spanish, without any problem from neother students, parents or anyone else involved.

And if that happened in a relatively small town from Lleida, with far more people talking in catalan, imagine what happens in big cities like Barcelona where there are more people that don't speak catalan.

Well, I'm sure you studied before Esperanza Aguirre handed control over education to the Generalitat in the late 90's. You aren't so young

To make things clear, by public schools I meant it strictly. I know that "centros concertados" (is there even a word for those in English?) and full private schools teach in spanish, and that the Generalitat paid the costs to spanish kids that had no choice but to study in those if their parents couldn't afford it.

I'm not that old! I did high school in the 90s

And my brother, a few years younger than me, had the same experience as me.

As for all that sh!t with those concerned parents worried that their children couldn't be teached in Spanish, which some media made it look like they were hundreds when in fact it was only a dozen, maybe two, families, you have to realize that teachers teach in the language they're more comfortable with. That's why catalan teachers in Catalonia teach in catalan (d'oh!). And most "centros concertados" (associated schools?) also happen to teach in catalan.

To end this, some of the schools those "concerned" parents put their kids in to avoid their kids to be taught in Catalan instead of Spanish, happen to be foreign schools that teach mostly in English, French or German. Surprising? Not so much, to be honest.



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HomokHarcos on 03 October 2017
palou said:
Ka-pi96 said:

So you're saying a fundamental part of democracy is that it's ok to oppress minorities?

The Catalan people are a minority in Spain. Any candidate that backs their independence is likely to lose support of everyone else and that minority wouldn't be enough to get them elected so their only option is to do it through the local Catalan government, which as far as I know is exactly who started the referendum in the first place.

If a proposition is in opposition to the will of the majority (the people), it does not pass. Yep, that's how democracy works. In the case that there would be only a single issue at discussion, that would create some bad situations, were the importance of each issue isn't evaluated. However, in practice, there are numerous issues all important to the populace that can be discussed. Compromises can be made. If not complete independance, Catalan-elected members of parliament could probably negotiate more self-determination.

 

There is no system of governance that allows everyone to get everything they want. Accepting that, and working with the system to obtain a compromise closer to what you want while respecting the objectives if others, IS democracy.

 

The spanish constituition allowed the federal court to block the referendum, on basis of an undivisible union. And you know what? The proposed catalonian constituition has the same clause. So they clearly do not disagree that such a clause can be a part of a democratic nation. 

Are you trying to say all of Spain should vote in the Catalanreferndum because it will affect everybody? I guess the whole world should vote in American elections because every country will be affected, actually I would support that proposal.



SuperNova on 03 October 2017
Goodnightmoon said:
SuperNova said:



One of the first scenes shows the class rearranging their tables, that had been set up in little groups (a very typical german classroom layout, were students sit in little groups of six scattered about the classroom) into a more traditional front facing row layout. For someone with my cultural backround it's pretty clear symbolism for the totalian hierarchical struckture of facism.
My boyfriend just started laughing. When I aksed him why, he said: 'I've never sat any diffrent in school.'

Dude, I'm Spanish and that's not true, I have sat in groups of 2 or 3 on the school most of my life, you are being really exagerated thinking that's a signal of fascism.

While in Germany, France, Greece and other countries the extreme right and its fascists political parties have been growing, Spain has not a single one of those political parties on its parlament, instead it has Podemos, which is basically the oppossite, so i'm not sure Spain is specially fascist compared to other European countries.

I'm not trying to exxagerate anything. I'm reporting on what I hear from people close to me. If you've had a diffrent experience thats great and a sign of hope.

I'm also not trying to attack spain. But I'm worried for my family and for spain in the context of europe.

I'm certainly not proud of the rise of extreme rightwing parties in germany, wich is why I said we had our own problems, a lot of them, if not all are related to our more or less successfull unification and it's aftermath.



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Wright on 03 October 2017

SuperNova said:

-snip-

I did say that education needs a revamp, but most of this reads as in your boyfriend really had bad luck choosing his school. I'm from the same place that he is (not the school, but the island), and I can attest most of what I previously stated.

History and essays are a mandatory part of everyone's education here. They're unavoidable subjects (the later is an extention of Spanish classes), and most people can agree schools here suck balls, but mainly because of lack of discipline and terrible organization, maybe disinterested teachers at times; not lack of things to study. My Spanish History teacher in high school used to add geographical maps in exams to stimulate the knowledge of Geography as well since it's something most students drop off from as soon as possible. My philosophy teacher in high school, whom I have in great regards, basically made an entire class of rebel assholes (namely us) listen to Philosophy classes with passion. All the Spanish teachers I've had have greatly contributed to make us develop critical thinking (they're probably one important reason why the idea of becoming a writer grew on me), and the only time I've felt like someone imposed his ideals was during Ethics, mainly because we somehow got assigned a teacher that didn't care at all for the subject (yes, that does happen). I came from one of the most atrocious high-schools ever made, from design itself (good job whoever thought the doors should lead straight to a standard car road with very little sidewalk that doesn't prevent child stampede when it's break time) to management and teachers.

Critical thinking is required if you expect to get good scores during Selectivity, which enables you to access certain universities. Admittely, some degrees require less (or just the average) score, but it should lie in the student's ambition to try and achieve the best he can. I can't, obviously, extrapolate everything to my advantage either, as I'm probably aware there's plenty of teachers that merely relay the information in the books and don't bother going futher beyond these. Syntax is a waste because no teacher finds a purpose for it to be explained. It's basically handbook methodology, and when the children aren't given a reason why that is, then it becomes meaningless for them. Which in essence makes it boring and useless.

Chairs and tables, again, have no design whatsoever. They're 1-1 row in some places out of convenience for space, but I've been in all kind of chair-distributed rooms from school to university (I remember one that had all the chairs glued, and if you basically sat down in the middle, you would have to force half of the people sitting down wake up in order to allow you to leave). One of our classes was U shaped, and in university we basically had to go loot chairs and tables from other classrooms because we didn't have enough in our assigned one. If there's any remnant of symbology there, it's lost forever to design incompetence, not a hidden message that no one can understand anymore.

Blind and patriotic people are everywhere, and I've met my fair share of people like this as well. I just wanted to point out that regardless of the terrible luck your boyfriend had, History is a mandatory subject that technically has to cover from the Borbon dynasty to the Transition to Democracy, and that essays are mandatory part of most, if not all, language/spanish classes; universities might rather choose a different model because it suits them better. Those are the claims you made that I completely disagree with.

I don't disagree the model with Germany is different and that there's some retarded things here, like having to pay for public university (like what the fuck), I'm just saying you're extrapolating his experience and this anecdotal evidence of blind patriotism from some people to the entirety of Spain's education, which is simply not the case of how the educational system, no matter how terrible and in need of a revamp is, works right now. Some other people in this thread have also quoted you disagreeing with the claims, which I don't intend to use as evidence or anything, but I just wanna highlight them mainly because I think they too think like me; terrible educational system, but that doesn't push fascism claims or symbology onto students in its majority. Mostly just an educational system that sucks.



outlawauron on 03 October 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
palou said:

Suppose a gated community of millionaires declares independance unanimously to stop paying taxes. Would that be legitamate? Or, let's say, Alberta decides that they don't want to respect canadian environmental laws anymore, to make oil production cheaper.

Yes, I think they should be able to declare their independence and have it respected. Of course doing it purely for tax reasons isn't likely to work since the country they left could just impose large import/export taxes on them since they'd still almost certainly be dependent on using them for... pretty much everything.

Isn't that kinda the scenario now for them? It's my understanding that the Spainish welfare state is largely dependant on people from Catalan.



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Volterra_90 on 03 October 2017
Wright said:
Volterra_90 said:

Tbh, though I support the referendum, this must be done in a normal way. Those were far from the ideal conditions to vote, so the numbers mustn't be taken seriously. It's a fact that there're a huge percentage of the catalonian people who is independent, but I doubt the validity of the results. 

I don't support the independence, but I too agree that a referendum should be done in a normal way. I wouldn't oppose the results that way, regardless of what the people choose.

Yeah, I'd love that everyone would agree on that, supporting the independence or not. Those are my thoughts about the issue too. Everyone should vote if they agree or not, because this is a real issue, and the people must decide. I'd accept the decision that came out as a result, I still believe that in democracy the people should have the power to decide, so I couldn't possible opose to a result that isn't my own opinion. 

Goodnightmoon said:
Wright said:

I don't support the independence, but I too agree that a referendum should be done in a normal way. I wouldn't oppose the results that way, regardless of what the people choose.

Agree, I strongly disagree with catalan independentism but I wouldn't be against a legal referendum at all as long as there is campaign for the YES but also for the NO, because this time there was only campaign for one side without showing the real pros and cons of the independence.

Yeah, we can't fool themselves, the catalan government didn't have any clue on what to do after the referendum. They basically appeal to the people's feelings, but it was not a rational way of proposing things. And, while I believe in the self-determination of every culture in the world (if people agree to that, of course), this referendum was a joke. In almost every sense. This referendum was made to cover up all the shit that the catalan government has. Because PdCat is basically the catalan PP. Or worse. I think that, even if I agree with the people's feelings about self-determination, this should be done in a radical different way. 

By the way, the King's speech was an exercise of irresponsibility. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Well, I actually could, he's that good. He basically left out of the speech any responsibilities of the Spanish government, which is fucking insane, and he put all the blame basically on Catalonia. What the hell, man. I want too chose who represents me, this guy is just dumb.

About the education in Spain. Yes, it's shit, I think a large majority of students even agree of that. We don't debate practically anything, it's just a really memoristic approach. Just study what I told you to do and be quiet about it. I mean, generally speaking, I had the pleasure of having some teacher who really tried different. But generally speaking I was bored to tears in school and college. 



Goodnightmoon on 03 October 2017
Volterra_90 said:

By the way, the King's speech was an exercise of irresponsibility. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Well, I actually could, he's that good. He basically left out of the speech any responsibilities of the Spanish government, which is fucking insane, and he put all the blame basically on Catalonia. What the hell, man. I want too chose who represents me, this guy is just dumb.

About the education in Spain. Yes, it's shit, I think a large majority of students even agree of that. We don't debate practically anything, it's just a really memoristic approach. Just study what I told you to do and be quiet about it. I mean, generally speaking, I had the pleasure of having some teacher who really tried different. But generally speaking I was bored to tears in school and college. 

Agree, the King is not helping at all with this situation, he didn't condemned what the gobernment of Spain did this Sunday, he didn't talked about dialogue, he was basically saying yes to the article 155 once catalonia declares independence, he puts all the blame on the catalan governement, he didn't even said some words in catalan or something to get close to the people there, nothing, this man has to go, I have nothing personal against him but he should understand there is no place for a King of Spain in this day and age specially since he is unable to do anything productive, he is like a very expensive vase.

And yes, education would be the first thing I would completely overhaul if I was president, its just really bad, we should do what Finland does, that's a great exemple of good educative system.



SuperNova on 03 October 2017
Wright said:

SuperNova said:

-snip-

I did say that education needs a revamp, but most of this reads as in your boyfriend really had bad luck choosing his school. I'm from the same place that he is (not the school, but the island), and I can attest most of what I previously stated.

History and essays are a mandatory part of everyone's education here. They're unavoidable subjects (the later is an extention of Spanish classes), and most people can agree schools here suck balls, but mainly because of lack of discipline and terrible organization, maybe disinterested teachers at times; not lack of things to study. My Spanish History teacher in high school used to add geographical maps in exams to stimulate the knowledge of Geography as well since it's something most students drop off from as soon as possible. My philosophy teacher in high school, whom I have in great regards, basically made an entire class of rebel assholes (namely us) listen to Philosophy classes with passion. All the Spanish teachers I've had have greatly contributed to make us develop critical thinking (they're probably one important reason why the idea of becoming a writer grew on me), and the only time I've felt like someone imposed his ideals was during Ethics, mainly because we somehow got assigned a teacher that didn't care at all for the subject (yes, that does happen). I came from one of the most atrocious high-schools ever made, from design itself (good job whoever thought the doors should lead straight to a standard car road with very little sidewalk that doesn't prevent child stampede when it's break time) to management and teachers.

Critical thinking is required if you expect to get good scores during Selectivity, which enables you to access certain universities. Admittely, some degrees require less (or just the average) score, but it should lie in the student's ambition to try and achieve the best he can. I can't, obviously, extrapolate everything to my advantage either, as I'm probably aware there's plenty of teachers that merely relay the information in the books and don't bother going futher beyond these. Syntax is a waste because no teacher finds a purpose for it to be explained. It's basically handbook methodology, and when the children aren't given a reason why that is, then it becomes meaningless for them. Which in essence makes it boring and useless.

Chairs and tables, again, have no design whatsoever. They're 1-1 row in some places out of convenience for space, but I've been in all kind of chair-distributed rooms from school to university (I remember one that had all the chairs glued, and if you basically sat down in the middle, you would have to force half of the people sitting down wake up in order to allow you to leave). One of our classes was U shaped, and in university we basically had to go loot chairs and tables from other classrooms because we didn't have enough in our assigned one. If there's any remnant of symbology there, it's lost forever to design incompetence, not a hidden message that no one can understand anymore.

Blind and patriotic people are everywhere, and I've met my fair share of people like this as well. I just wanted to point out that regardless of the terrible luck your boyfriend had, History is a mandatory subject that technically has to cover from the Borbon dynasty to the Transition to Democracy, and that essays are mandatory part of most, if not all, language/spanish classes; universities might rather choose a different model because it suits them better. Those are the claims you made that I completely disagree with.

I don't disagree the model with Germany is different and that there's some retarded things here, like having to pay for public university (like what the fuck), I'm just saying you're extrapolating his experience and this anecdotal evidence of blind patriotism from some people to the entirety of Spain's education, which is simply not the case of how the educational system, no matter how terrible and in need of a revamp is, works right now. Some other people in this thread have also quoted you disagreeing with the claims, which I don't intend to use as evidence or anything, but I just wanna highlight them mainly because I think they too think like me; terrible educational system, but that doesn't push fascism claims or symbology onto students in its majority. Mostly just an educational system that sucks.

Um....Ok I meant there was symbolism in the film about the tables and chairs. I didn't mean there was a hidden agenda conspirency in your school system. other than being maybe stuck in old pedagogic ideas. (And yes, the 'group' layout is an actual pedagogic concept, but by no means did I mean to imply some state conspiracy) I actually failed to grasp your objection the first time because I never even thought of that! XD

Look, I'm not attacking spain. You've had a diffrent experience and that's wonderful. I can only go of the sources I have and those are mainly my family and friends. They've had experiences like that and I'm glad it seems to be better elsewhere. I also wasn't trying to imply that your educational system actively tries to implement facism, but rather that if an education system fails on critical points it can make it easier to breed apathy, as well as extremism and that the government has taken some very worrying steps in the last few years. It needs educated people to make themselves heard in order for a democracy to keep itself in check.

I'm sorry if I failed to communicate that.

I don't know how your 'selectivity' works, because my friends changed to german schools to graduate and while my boyfriend did graduate in spain, he went to university in the UK and had to meet diffrent standarts from what I understand. Same with the cousins of mine who already went to Uni, they also went to the UK to study. (Speaking of rediculous tuition fees for public universities, that system is a whole other can of worms...)

I've never extrapolated to the entirety of spain, in fact I've specifically said 'islands and rural areas' and later clarified that my cousins in private schools have diffrent experiences. But it can't be as isolated as 'literally just that one school was shit' either, because I know other people who have made similar experiences and I've said that before too.  So my conclusion was that the spanish school system overall proabably has problems and that they are worse some places than others. If that's wrong than I apologize.

I also never stated that spain was 'slipping into deep facism' I said 'slipped into facist tendencies' wich is not the same at all. I don't know why you took my initial post as harshly as you did, but I never said these things.

I've replied to other people with similar things. Apparently I worded my initial post wrong, because I was talking more about cause and effect, than trying to imply anything super sinister going on.

Edit: What Volterra said about not having debates for example sounds very similar to what Im hearing from my boyfriend. I get that there's stuff that is mandatorily covered and I'm glad to hear that the Franco era is among those, but its also about the way it is done, wich at least in his case wasn't great. I agree that my boyfriends case is probably and extreme example, but these issues seem to exist, if less severly nevertheless.