Elections 2011

Spain will be holding general elections early this year, on Sunday actually. This means with it being Thursday now, 12:15 AM my time, elections are 3 days away. Imagine for a moment what it feels like in the States when elections are so close, the sheer colossal volume of press and analysis, campaign fervor, stickers, debates, polls, and all the rest of it. None of it is happening here in Spain. If you were to visit Sevilla tomorrow you might, might, notice a poster or two with the main candidates for the two leading parties plastered on them along with their dichos or campaign slogans.

After two months here the general apathy or disinterest on the part of most Spaniards in their collective future government does not actually shock me. As our international relations professor so succinctly put it:

"What we have here is, on Sunday the people of this country are supposed to vote on their future. Spain is headed towards needing a bailout from the European Union just like Ireland and Greece. 46 million people in Spain, the economy is in the tank, elections are a week away and nobody gives a damn."

To put this in some sort of perspective, recall the general pre-election fervor which normally grips the United States every four years. Now imagine the intensity if the economy were five times as bad as it currently is. Imagine the insanity if the national unemployment average were 20 percent. The unemployment level in the autonomous region (read: state, more or less like Ohio or New Mexico) of Andalusia here in southern Spain is 30 percent. Thirty! Three zero percent, and it will by all accounts be miraculous if fifty to sixty percent of the population here in Andalusia votes. The American mind just boggles.



We head for two days in Granada on Friday morning. Granada is situated in the original Sierra Nevada mountains just by the by. It is going to be spectacular.