By William Chislett
Spain has a new king, following the abdication of King Juan Carlos earlier this month in favour of his son, Felipe VI. The move comes at a time when Spain is emerging from a long period of recession with an unemployment rate of 26%, a tarnished monarchy, a widely discredited political class, and a pro-independence movement in the region of Catalonia. Like his father almost 40 years ago when he succeeded the dictator General Franco as head of state, Felipe VI faces enormous but very different challenges.
Juan Carlos’s grandfather, King Alfonso XIII, went into exile before Spain’s 1936-39 Civil War. General Franco, who won that war, sidestepped Juan Carlos’s liberal and exiled father, Don Juan, and appointed Juan Carlos instead, believing he would maintain his regime as he had been educated in Spain under Franco’s aegis since the age of 10.
Juan Carlos knew that the only way to secure the monarchy was by piloting the transition to democracy. In 1981, when Francoist diehards tried to turn back the clock and staged a military coup, Juan Carlos faced them down and won the day. As a result, he became a hugely popular figure and many people became juancarlistas as opposed to outright monarchists. Under him, Spain joined NATO in 1982, entered the European Community in 1986, and enjoyed the longest period of stability and prosperity in its modern history.
In recent years, however, Juan Carlos and the monarchy as an institution have lost support. The king’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin, is currently embroiled in an ongoing investigation into alleged financial irregularities and tax evasion involving the misuse of public funds, which has made him persona non grata in the royal family. Urdangarin, who denies any wrongdoing, is expected to stand trial. The king also did not endear himself to his subjects at a time of national crisis by going on an elephant-hunting trip to Botswana in 2012 (for which he later publicly apologised), after saying he was losing sleep thinking about Spain’s whopping youth unemployment rate (55%). And, as part of the establishment blamed for not anticipating the country’s deep crisis, the king was perceived as part of the problem. On a scale of 0 (no confidence) to 10 (a lot of confidence), the monarchy scored 3.72 in April, down from 7.48 in 1995, according to the CIS barometer. Meanwhile, support for the restoration of a republic (established in 1931 and ended in 1939) has been growing.
Juan Carlos had always implied that he would die as king. But in addition to the scandals, his health has deteriorated over the last few years and he has been in and out of hospital for various operations. At 76, he was visibly tired and finding it an increasing strain to keep up with his duties and travel abroad promoting Spanish business.
Felipe VI, the new King of Spain.
Juan Carlos’s decision to abdicate will also smooth the path for his son, Felipe. The two main parties, the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP) and the Socialists, hold more than 80% of the seats in parliament between them, and so they were able to ensure parliamentary passage of the legislation required for the handover to Felipe.
The abdication appeared to boost support for the monarchy: almost two-thirds of respondents in a poll said they had a good or very good opinion of Juan Carlos, up from his 41% favourability rating in January, and 77% approved of his son.
The next general election is not scheduled until November 2015, and the results could change the political map substantially. The PP and the Socialists, who have dominated the political scene since 1983, gained less than 50% of the votes between them in last month’s European elections, compared to 73% in the 2011 general election. The Socialists did so poorly that their leader, Alfredo Rubalcaba, resigned. The Socialists, who governed Spain during the key modernisation period of 1983-96 and into the recession in 2009, are in a mess and run the risk of veering into populism in order to win votes.
The Izquierda Plural (Plural Left) coalition and Podemos (We can), a new radical party born out of the 2011 grass roots protest movement of Los Indignados (The Indignant Ones), both did well in the European elections. Podemos came from nowhere to win five seats and 1.2 million votes (8% of the total cast), while L’Esquerra and Los Pueblos, in favour of independence for Catalonia and the Basque Country, won three seats between them. All of these parties want a republic, as do some in the more moderate Socialist party. The king’s abdication was greeted by those who support a republic, with demonstrations calling for a referendum on whether to keep the monarchy.
Spain’s choice is not between a monarchy or a republic, but between a poor democracy or higher quality one. Moreover, changing the form of the state will not resolve the burning issues of high unemployment, a defective education system, the lopsided economic model (excessively based on the real estate sector), the potential division of the nation (fuelled by Catalonia’s push for an illegal referendum on independence this November), a politicised judiciary which operates at a snail’s pace, and corruption. Spain was ranked 40th out of 177 countries in the latest corruption perceptions ranking by the Berlin-based Transparency International, down seven places from the year before on “a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean)”. More than 1,500 corruption cases are still under investigation, many of them involving politicians.
When I met Juan Carlos in 1977, he joked about himself. “Why was I crowned in a submarine? Because deep down, I am not so stupid.” Once again, he has shown how true this is by his wise decision to pass on the baton to his son, who has been well educated and is well prepared.
The challenge for Felipe VI is to revitalise the monarchy and show that it still has a role to play in modern Spain. In such a partisan country, the restoration of the republic would be a disaster. Juan Carlos took the first step toward regaining the public’s confidence; now, the entrenched political class needs to clean up its act.
William Chislett is the author of Spain: What Everyone Needs to Know®. He is a journalist who has lived in Madrid since 1986. He covered Spain’s transition to democracy (1975-78) for The Times of London and was later the Mexico correspondent for the Financial Times (1978-84). He writes about Spain for the Elcano Royal Institute, which has published three of his books on the country, and he has a weekly column in the online newspaper, El Imparcial.
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Image credit: “Felipe, Prince of Asturias” by Michał Koziczyński, CC BY-SA 3.0 PL via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Felipe VI, Spain’s new king: viva el rey appeared first on OUPblog.
By Carlos A. Ball
Those who defend same-sex marriage bans in the United States continue to insist that households led by married mothers and fathers who are biologically related to their children constitute the optimal family structure for children. This notion of family optimality remains the cornerstone of the defense of the differential treatment of LGBT families and same-sex couples under the law.
There are three main objections to the family optimality claim. The first is a logical objection that emphasizes the lack of a rational relationship between means and ends. Even if we assume that the optimality claim is empirically correct, there is no connection between promoting so-called family optimality and denying lesbians and gay men, for example, the opportunity to marry or to adopt. It is illogical to think that heterosexual couples are more likely to marry, or to accept the responsibilities of parenthood, simply because the law disadvantages LGBT families and same-sex couples.
The second objection is one of policy that questions whether marital and family policies should be based on optimality considerations. The social science evidence shows, for example, a clear correlation between parents who have higher incomes and more education, and children who do better in school and have fewer behavioral problems. And yet it is clear that neither marriage nor adoption should be limited to high-income individuals or to those with college degrees. This is because such restrictions would exclude countless individuals who are clearly capable of providing safe and nurturing homes for children despite the fact that they lack the “optimal” amount of income or education.
It is also important to keep in mind that judges and child welfare officials do not currently rely on optimality considerations when making custody, adoption, and foster care placement decisions. Instead, they apply the “best interests of the child” standard, which is the exact opposite of the optimality standard because it is based not on generalizations, but on individualized assessments of parental capabilities.
Finally, the optimality claim lacks empirical support. Optimality proponents rely primarily on studies showing that the children of married parents do better on some measures than children of single parents (even when controlling for family income) to argue that (1) marriage, (2) biology, and (3) gender matter when it comes to parenting.
The “married parents v. single parents” studies, however, do not establish that it is the marital status of the parents, as opposed to the number of parents, which account for the differences. Those studies also do not show that biology matters because the vast majority of the parents who participated in the studies — both the married parents and the single ones — were biologically related to their children.
As for the notion that parental gender matters for child outcomes, it is the case that most single-parent households in the United States are headed by women. This does not mean, however, that the absence of a male parent in most single-parent households, as opposed to the absence of a second parent, accounts for the better child outcomes found by some studies that compare children raised in married households to children raised in single-parent ones.
In short, the family optimality claim does not withstand logical, policy, or empirical scrutiny. Family optimality arguments, whether in the context of same-sex marriage bans or any other, should be rejected by courts and policymakers alike.
Carlos A. Ball is Distinguished Professor and Judge Frederick Lacey Scholar at the Rutgers University School of Law. His most recent book on LGBT rights is Same-Sex Marriage and Children: A Tale of History, Social Science, and Law.
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By Arturo Hernandez
Soul’s latest incarnation comes in the guise of St. Paul and the Broken Bones. St. Paul is not really a saint. He is Paul Janeway of a new band that is hot on the rise. When you listen to him sing it evokes memories of a time past. But the most impressive part is that he does not look the part. People wonder how someone who looks nothing like Otis Redding can sound just like him. So how is it that this Drew Carey look-a-like ended up sounding so soulful? The answer comes from his early childhood.
Janeway grew up hearing gospel music and went to church on Sundays. His parents made a conscious decision to not allow him to hear anything but gospel and soul music. Church also contained quite a bit of gospel. He sung to a number of records and was immersed in this genre of music. He continued in his life and was actually almost ready to graduate from college when the opportunity to sing appeared once again. His band began to receive praise for their singing and the rest is history.
Like Paul Janeway, I also grew up with a childhood music that I would come to rediscover many years later. During my childhood summer trips to Mexico, I would often listen to music. One of the most famous pop singers in Mexico was Roberto Carlos, a native from the northeastern part of Brazil. He had some success in Brazil but nothing like the huge following he had in Latin America, where his accent sounded exotic in Spanish sung songs.
On one of our record hunting excursions in the Mission District in San Francisco my dad found a record that looked just like the one I had at home, except that the cover was white not pink — Portuguese version of the record I already had. My curiosity piqued, I began to listen to these songs and soon enough I was singing them with a very thick Spanish accent. I probably sung to the record for about a year or two before I grew older and took on other musical interests.
That very thick Spanish accent remained for me when I took Portuguese as a college student and it did not go away during my first few months in Brazil. However, over time the thick accent disappeared entirely and I came to speak with the accent of a Paulista, as those from Sao Paulo, Brazil’s economic capital are called.
Many years later I decided to sing a Brazilian lullaby from that Roberto Carlos album to my son Nikolas. And the day I sung it my accent in Portuguese stood in strong contrast to the Paulista that I had grown accustomed to as an adult. I realized that I sounded like a northeastern Brazilian, the same accent that Roberto Carlos had sung with in my childhood. All those years later, the early memory of that song had persisted and it surprised me when it came out. Like Paul Janeway, my exposure to an early set of sounds had created a vocal imprint that reappeared many years later.
People often ask if earlier is better. Well, there is one case where this is almost always true and it has to do with our accent in a language. So if you want to sound like Otis Redding or Roberto Carlos it is better to start working on it earlier in life.
Arturo Hernandez is currently Professor of Psychology and Director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience graduate program at the University of Houston. He is the author of The Bilingual Brain. His major research interest is in the neural underpinnings of bilingual language processing and second language acquisition in children and adults. He has used a variety of neuroimaging methods as well as behavioral techniques to investigate these phenomena which have been published in a number of peer reviewed journal articles. His research is currently funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. You can follow him on Twitter @DrAEHernandez.
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Image credit: Young boy removing headphones giving thumbs up sign. © stu99 via iStockphoto.
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Yesterday, I tried to start a #mathbattle on Twitter, but it proved too geeky to take. (Go figure.) I was having a nostalgic moment, remembering back in middle school when we had to write date equations. Everyday. Because each day, my friends, is different. A new day, full of new possibilities, opportunities, and numbers. Today is 7/30/2010. That means two things:
1) It will be August very, very soon.
2) We have the numbers 7, 3, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0 to work with. (Or, you can leave out a 2 and a 0. That is the cheater’s way.)
LET’S DO IT! —> 7 – ((3+0)(2 + 0)) = (1 + 0)
Yessssss. Math is awesome. Got a better equation? Prove it. Until then, here are some interesting things.
William Carlos Williams is not a very considerate roommate.
The Bookavore has created an “E-books article drinking game.” (Finally.) (Thank you.)
Ben Zimmer refudiates fake words.
And the best goat calendar of 2011 goes to…
I am sooooo over air quotes.
This baby must be a deep sleeper.
Get your vocab fix here.
This is an awesome new Twitter tool.
These should keep you busy for a while.
And to clarify, I am not a whiner. NASA agrees with me. So there.
