Malaise to indignation

Once malaise has turned to indignation, only the hardest step remains: making a political force of it. Some say this is impossible; that indignation only generates frustration. History is full of examples to the contrary. What would have become of the civil rights of American blacks without the demonstrations in the 1960s? What would have happened in the Soviet-type systems without the righteous indignation that drove so many people to take to the street? Looking closer to home, Spanish troops would still be in Iraq if people had not protested. Indignation has often been the stage previous to a political transformation. We have just seen this in the Arab countries: the outcome is still uncertain, but what is undeniable is that indignation has had political consequences.

At last, after three years of crisis, the first signs of indignation have emerged in Spanish society. It was incomprehensible how malaise had been so contained in such a potentially explosive situation with a jobless rate of 20 percent and 43 percent for young workers. A whole generation was being dumped overboard, with the future consequences this may have for the country, and nothing happened. Different arguments have sought to explain this atony: income is still sufficient for the middle classes, and some lower down, to protect their children; circumspection prevails in a society where people are afraid of losing what they have; the prosperity of recent years has engendered a cultural shift toward more conservative positions; the rhetoric about crisis and the need for belt-tightening has done its work.

We might add another: Zapatero's emphasis on the priority of social policies in the two first years of the crisis defused tension; but this fell through when Zapatero, under the pressure of the markets, did a U-turn a year ago, just at a time when the crisis was really beginning to hit people's pockets. His popularity plunged, and the malaise that began to simmer has now boiled up in the form of mass demonstrations.

It is too early to gauge the real dimensions of a movement that has just emerged. Reasons for indignation abound. When we see Mariano Rajoy applaud his colleague Balza in Mallorca for having cleaned up the corruption in the PP there, and the next day in Valencia cheer the corruption suspect Camps, who has filled his electoral lists with other suspects, it is hard not to feel indignation. For once Rajoy's message is clear: I don't care if they are clean or dirty - all that matters is that they belong to the PP. It is this sort of conduct that discredits democracy. The worst of it is that a part of society seems prepared to endorse it, voting for corrupt persons.

Inequalities have grown exponentially, perhaps beyond the theoretical optimum that makes for incentive, and are headed for zones that create tension and conflict. In the fight between economic power and political power the former has always had the advantage, but in this crisis the submission of politics has been so great that it is very hard to see it as a counterweight in favor of the general interest. Financial power impudently demands and obtains the socialization of losses, while obscenely divvying up profits among its ranks. The government can no longer connect with the malaise in society. The opposition rubs its hands and considers that the worse things get, the better. The two-party system, characteristic of countries with great social inequality, dangerously limits voter options. Logically enough citizens feel unrecognized, and the idea spreads that democracy has been hijacked.

The Spanish people who are now expressing their indignation are calling for the same things as the people in Arab countries: more democracy. The Arabs had no democracy at all; we do have a democracy, but one with manifest signs of fatigue. What they want is that it be alive to the concerns of citizens. Something more than voting every four years.