Standoff in Sol

Spain's national Electoral Board, the body tasked with overseeing Sunday's regional and municipal elections, on Thursday evening ruled that the mass sit-in being staged in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square contravenes legislation requiring that the day before an election be free of campaigning to allow voters to consider their intentions, and has banned it. The decision earlier this week by the Madrid authorities to send in the police to clear the square proved counterproductive, while the Madrid regional electoral board's attempt to ban the protests was outside its remit, given the organizers' right to stage a demonstration at that point.

But the national Electoral Board's ruling puts the government in a difficult position. It is now legally obliged to clear the Puerta del Sol. But to do so could have serious electoral consequences. If things turn violent, a possibility that the Electoral Board has preferred not to address, this would have a far greater impact on Sunday's voting than any demonstration or mass sit-in.

The electorate had largely ignored the campaign, until, that was, the appearance on May 15 of the mass movement calling itself Real Democracy Now, which has staged protests throughout the country. The ability of the protestors in the Puerta del Sol and other cities to capture the electorate's imagination can only be explained by the country's worsening economy and the failure of the main political parties to address the electorate's concerns, instead preferring to wage a war of words with each other.

The majority of those protesting may be young, but this is not about one generation's problems or grievances. The crisis affects much of Spanish society: it is not just those entering the labor market for the first time who are coming to realize that they have no future; older people are losing their jobs, and now face the possibility of never working again.

The response of the main political parties has been either to try to capitalize on the protests, or to attribute them to shadowy conspiracies, illustrating all too graphically their cloak-and-dagger approach to politics. It is not just the demonstrators who have turned their backs on parties that have shown themselves incapable of any leadership and of channeling the different interests and perspectives of society into policies; the wider electorate is also increasingly disenchanted with a political process that doesn't reflect its concerns.

Both the two main parties are equally to blame. But the right should also bear in mind that while it will likely benefit from the anger of voters on Sunday, it will largely be through abstention rather than any direct support.

The Popular Party has studiously avoided making detailed proposals about how to handle the economic crisis: it prefers to win by default, at the expense of the political system, rather than risk losing a vote to its adversaries.

The protestors in the Puerta del Sol have so far proved unable to outline a clear political position, but that does not mean they are not an important symptom of the malaise affecting the country's body politic. The main parties would do well to try to interpret their actions, while remembering that they have a right to express their opinions, even if for the moment that simply consists of telling us what is wrong.