Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2011, written on 18 May 2011, three days after the first 15-M demonstrations and just before Spain’s elections of 22 May 2011. Its references to the Ley Sinde, the €426 subsidy for the long-term unemployed, the wealth tax and the AVE reflect Spanish law and policy then.
The #nolesvotes («don’t vote for them»), #Democraciarealya («Real Democracy Now») and #Spanishrevolution movements and platforms now have some concrete proposals to put forward. The aim is to stop political parties from turning the movement to their own advantage. We set them out below in seven points.
1. End the privileges of the political class
- Strict monitoring of elected officials’ absenteeism from their posts. Specific penalties for neglect of duty.
- Abolition of privileges in tax payments, years of social security contributions and pension amounts. Elected representatives’ salaries to be brought into line with the average Spanish salary, plus the allowances strictly necessary to carry out their duties.
- Removal of the immunity attached to office. No statute of limitations for corruption offences.
- Mandatory publication of the assets of all public officials.
- Fewer posts filled by free appointment (at politicians’ discretion).
2. Against unemployment
- Work-sharing, encouraging shorter working hours and work-life balance until structural unemployment is eliminated (that is, until unemployment falls below 5%).
- Retirement at 65, and no increase in the retirement age until youth unemployment has been eliminated.
- Bonuses for companies with less than 10% of their staff on temporary contracts.
- Job security: no collective dismissals or dismissals on objective grounds at large companies while they are making a profit, and inspections of large companies to make sure they are not filling jobs that could be permanent with temporary workers.
- Reinstatement of the €426 subsidy for all long-term unemployed people.
3. The right to housing
- Expropriation by the state of homes that were built and remain unsold, to put them on the market as protected (subsidized) rental housing.
- Rental assistance for young people and anyone on a low income.
- Allowing borrowers to hand over their home to cancel their mortgage (known in Spain as dación en pago).
4. Quality public services
- An end to wasteful spending in public administration and independent oversight of budgets and spending.
- Hiring healthcare staff until waiting lists are eliminated.
- Hiring teachers to guarantee student-teacher ratios, split classes and support groups.
- Lower tuition fees across all university education, with postgraduate fees brought into line with undergraduate ones.
- Public funding for research to guarantee its independence.
- Cheap, high-quality, environmentally sustainable public transport: bringing back, at their original prices, the trains being replaced by the AVE (Spain’s high-speed rail), cheaper travel passes, restrictions on private car traffic in city centres, and new bike lanes.
- Local social resources: effective implementation of the Dependency Act (Spain’s long-term care law), municipal networks of local carers, and local mediation and guardianship services.
5. Control of the banks
- A ban on any bailout or capital injection for banks: banks in difficulty should be allowed to fail or be nationalized to create a public bank under social control.
- Higher taxes on banks, in direct proportion to the social spending caused by the crisis their mismanagement created.
- Banks to return to the public purse all the public capital they have received.
- A ban on Spanish banks investing in tax havens.
- Penalties for speculative movements and banking malpractice.
6. Taxation
- Higher tax rates on large fortunes and banks.
- Abolition of SICAVs (collective investment companies with a very low tax rate, popular with wealthy investors).
- Reinstatement of the wealth tax.
- Real and effective control of tax fraud and of capital flight to tax havens.
- Promoting, at international level, a tax on international transactions (the Tobin tax).
7. Civil liberties and participatory democracy
- No to internet control. Repeal of the Ley Sinde (Spain’s anti-piracy law).
- Protection of freedom of information and investigative journalism.
- Mandatory, binding referendums on major issues that change citizens’ living conditions.
- Mandatory referendums before introducing any measures dictated by the European Union.
- Reform of the Electoral Law to guarantee a truly representative and proportional system that does not discriminate against any political force or social will, in which blank and spoiled votes are also represented in parliament.
- Independence of the judiciary: reform of the public prosecutor’s office to guarantee its independence, and no appointment of members of the Constitutional Court or the General Council of the Judiciary by the executive.
- Effective mechanisms to guarantee internal democracy within political parties.
Featured image: Zarateman, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
