The Mayor of Zurgena, Candido, et al, seems to be blaming the PSOE for his recent problems with law, blaming them for a “witch hunt” due to the fact that “he belongs to another political party which has the temerity to win local elections”.
The local Guardia Civil agents arrested for passing confidential information about police patrols to drug smugglers are saying that they are being persecuted for “shopping a corrupt police Sargent, back in 2000”.
To take two headlines for local papers from just this week.
Now I’m sorry, but every crook who is arrested will blame somebody else. So, why does the local press print all these complaints?
As I pass through Zurgena, I do hear a lot of complaints about the fact that Candido is being persecuted because he is not PSOE (Candido belongs to the Partido Andalucista Party, the same party that controls Vera). This is being said by both Spanish and English. But, in my personal experience, it is being said by the older Spanish. The same Spaniards who are used to political corruption from the “never to be mentioned” dictator days. The same Spaniards who all know people who have been dragged from their beds during the night by the Guardia, and shot, just for daring to mention the corruption endemic in local elections during the 50s, 60s, 70s.
Any Spaniard over the age of 35ish will shrug when the whole topic of illegal builds and political corruption is raised. “So what?” is the comment I most hear. Of course they care, they have just grown up in a situation where the people in power have the right to make money by means fair or foul.
Among Spaniards of my generation, raise the topic of illegal builds or political corruption, and they will either shrug or blush. They know it’s wrong, they are ashamed, they just don’t know how to fix the problem. What, you think local elections circa 1920 in the UK were any better?????
Spain (and possibly Portugal) are unique among the EU at the moment of having the emerging controlling generation inculcated in our liberal western judicial system, versus a retiring generation used to a military dictatorship.
Candido and his buddies may, or may not, be guilty of pocketing backhanders. If they were, I expect that they were guilty of nothing more than asking for what they thought was their fair share of the profits*.
But let me just say, that if you truly believe that the whole Spanish judicial system, both judges and police, are taking direct orders from the current ruling political party, then what the hell are you still doing living in Spain. The real scandal is not that Candido was arrested, but that it is taking them so long to arrest the rest of the bastards who ripped off so many naïve foreigners.
*In response to expected emails, that comment was ironic.