Time to Write Letters
The United States is an imperfect republic disguised as a democracy. The democratic aspect appears in that, at elections, you vote for a person to represent you according to their platform, broadly based according to the political party the person belongs to. Sometimes it's a choice between good and evil, sometimes it's a choice between the best of two devils. But, once elected, you have the possibility of getting in contact with that representative, whether through emails, regular mail, or telephone. They may ignore you, but you can keep flooding them with attempts at contact. There is that custom of getting in touch with your representative so that they know what their constituents want.
Spain has been proud to declare itself a democracy since the first elections after Franco's death. Spain is not a democracy. It is a parliamentary and constitutional monarchy. You vote for a political party. The ballot has a list of names of people who may become your representatives, depending on how many seats they attain. But, beyond voting in general elections, the public really has no encouragement to communicate their concerns. They don't even know who their representatives are, and, except for the most involved in politics or perhaps the simply curious, don't even know where to look to find out. The representatives simply represent their party within their circumscription, which is an entire province. The official website for the Spanish Congress is badly designed and it pops up on my computer partially in English, partially in Spanish, scrunched in a corner of the screen. Neither the designer was top-notch, now was much effort expected from him.
I finally found my representatives and the email addresses of their offices in the Congreso de los Diputados. I had to search a bit, though. Because of its density of population, the province of A Coruña has eight congress people representing it. Two belong to the Socialist party, two to the Galician version of Unidos Podemos (an amalgamation of Izquierda Unida and Podemos), and four belong to the Popular party. But since they don't really represent their constituents, but rather the political party the constituents voted for, the votes in Congress will go along party lines. Only extremely rarely does one member of a political party vote differently from the party. That is when, because of the volatile and personal issues involved around something, such as abortion, the vote is secret and members are allowed to vote according to their conscience. But that only happens once in a blue moon.
In other cases, to win over more votes on an issue, an entire party has to agree on it, and generally a compromise reached. Which is one reason why in this legislature it is so hard to pass any laws. There is no one majority party or majority bloc, and the party in power of the presidency, the PP in this legislature, has the ability to block or veto just about any initiative it doesn't like. There is really no culture of getting in contact with your representative, because you can't change anyone's individual vote.
But you can get in contact with them to complain. I suppose that if enough people complain about something, that one party or the other will eventually take the public's opinion into account one day, and actually try to legislate according to what the people want. I will begin to do so. I will write to each of the eight congress people that represent my province, and explain what the common people want to hear from the government. I'll probably get a machine-generated automatic reply and most of them probably won't even open my email. But if I write often enough, perhaps they'll open one, and understand that the masses are getting restless. There is only so much football and other circuses that will take people's attention off delicate problems for the government, such as all the corruption scandals and trials. That, despite their attempt to divert us from their failings by throwing at us the Catalan issue repeatedly, that we know what they're trying to do, and we won't accept it. They are accountable to the voters. Their parties are accountable to the voters. The voters have had enough.
Spain has been proud to declare itself a democracy since the first elections after Franco's death. Spain is not a democracy. It is a parliamentary and constitutional monarchy. You vote for a political party. The ballot has a list of names of people who may become your representatives, depending on how many seats they attain. But, beyond voting in general elections, the public really has no encouragement to communicate their concerns. They don't even know who their representatives are, and, except for the most involved in politics or perhaps the simply curious, don't even know where to look to find out. The representatives simply represent their party within their circumscription, which is an entire province. The official website for the Spanish Congress is badly designed and it pops up on my computer partially in English, partially in Spanish, scrunched in a corner of the screen. Neither the designer was top-notch, now was much effort expected from him.
I finally found my representatives and the email addresses of their offices in the Congreso de los Diputados. I had to search a bit, though. Because of its density of population, the province of A Coruña has eight congress people representing it. Two belong to the Socialist party, two to the Galician version of Unidos Podemos (an amalgamation of Izquierda Unida and Podemos), and four belong to the Popular party. But since they don't really represent their constituents, but rather the political party the constituents voted for, the votes in Congress will go along party lines. Only extremely rarely does one member of a political party vote differently from the party. That is when, because of the volatile and personal issues involved around something, such as abortion, the vote is secret and members are allowed to vote according to their conscience. But that only happens once in a blue moon.
In other cases, to win over more votes on an issue, an entire party has to agree on it, and generally a compromise reached. Which is one reason why in this legislature it is so hard to pass any laws. There is no one majority party or majority bloc, and the party in power of the presidency, the PP in this legislature, has the ability to block or veto just about any initiative it doesn't like. There is really no culture of getting in contact with your representative, because you can't change anyone's individual vote.
But you can get in contact with them to complain. I suppose that if enough people complain about something, that one party or the other will eventually take the public's opinion into account one day, and actually try to legislate according to what the people want. I will begin to do so. I will write to each of the eight congress people that represent my province, and explain what the common people want to hear from the government. I'll probably get a machine-generated automatic reply and most of them probably won't even open my email. But if I write often enough, perhaps they'll open one, and understand that the masses are getting restless. There is only so much football and other circuses that will take people's attention off delicate problems for the government, such as all the corruption scandals and trials. That, despite their attempt to divert us from their failings by throwing at us the Catalan issue repeatedly, that we know what they're trying to do, and we won't accept it. They are accountable to the voters. Their parties are accountable to the voters. The voters have had enough.
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