Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2010, while the reform of Spain’s smoking law was being debated; it describes the rules then in force and measures still under discussion. The full ban in bars and restaurants took effect in January 2011.
For some time I’d been wondering whether Spain had really left dictatorship behind or whether that was just a false impression. The dictatorship is over, of course, but with the anti-smoking law I’m convinced we’re heading once again towards total domination by those who govern us. Let me say first of all that this isn’t a criticism of the current government, whether it’s PSOE or PP: this was coming regardless of who was in power.
To begin with, for as long as I can remember there have been private businesses and public bodies. Now, as the name itself says, in a PRIVATE BUSINESS nobody should come along and impose rules that, “in my own house“, I should be the one to decide.
I understand that in offices and shopping centres, which are private businesses but also public spaces visited by all kinds of people, we shouldn’t make non-smokers breathe our smoke. But there are venues known as “leisure establishments”, and at first they were given the option of putting a little sign on the door to show whether or not they were suitable for non-smokers.
That wasn’t enough, and later it was decided that bars, cafés and restaurants had to set up separate areas, which cost between €3,000 and €20,000 on average. Money thrown away by business owners, since the measure is now useless.
There’s another paradox, too. If inspectors walk into a venue and someone is smoking, the venue is obviously fined. So when they ban smoking in parks, if someone is caught smoking there, why doesn’t the fine go to the town council?
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Historically, both governments and the Church took advantage of people’s lack of education to dominate society at will. But governments shouldn’t forget that they are no longer dealing with an uneducated society, even if they have landed us in a society of precarious jobs.
People today know that this isn’t being done for our own good; it’s yet another revenue-raising measure, as has become standard practice. If they wanted to do us a favour, they would ban the entry into the country of a toxic, harmful, damaging and addictive substance that is the third leading cause of preventable death in our country.
But the problem is that this drug brings the state an incalculable flow of money. In the end, everything comes down to revenue. So enough of this nonsense.
If a hospitality business owner decides to let THEIR customers smoke on THEIR premises, then, with all due respect, it’s not for anyone else to tell them no. If a non-smoker is bothered by it and doesn’t feel comfortable, they know where the door is, and I’m sure they’ll find a non-smoking venue.
So enough of coming into my house to tell me what I can and can’t do. All of us Spaniards have told the government often enough what it should and shouldn’t do, and they’ve done whatever they pleased. Enough of treating the middle class and the poor as a source of income to fatten the state’s coffers, with a percentage commission going into MPs’ pockets.
And finally: I pay vehicle tax (the road tax sticker) and an ITV roadworthiness test that sometimes I don’t even need, and then I find there are no parking spaces, and the few there are have blue lines, which bring town councils yet another share of revenue. As if that weren’t enough, now they’re going to tell us whether we can drink water, eat or smoke in OUR own car.
If they want to make money so blatantly and dishonourably, why don’t they rob banks like ordinary criminals? And since the government won’t let me deduct the losses caused by the frequent, contradictory and absurd measures they bring in and scrap whenever they feel like it, I’ll say this: since I pay taxes, insurance and revenue-grabbing fiscal abuses, I’m sorry to tell them that IN MY BUSINESS, I’M THE BOSS!
Featured image: © 2005 by Tomasz Sienicki, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
