So I’m on this relatively nondescript street here in Madrid and I’m about to interview
the mayor of Madrid herself, Manuela Carmena.
She started off many years ago, under Franco’s dictatorship, defending people who were persecuted
by the dictatorship.
She used to be a member of the Communist party and left in the early 80s. She’s a so-called
mayor of change - others were elected like Ada Colau in Barcelona.
She calls herself the granny who hugs. She’s one of the most popular politicians in Spain
and if you want to understand Spain and the politics of what’s going on here, Manuela
Carmena is a very good place to start.
You defended, as a lawyer, dissidents, people who were persecuted under the dictatorship.
How did that shape your political views and experience?
I’ve had two big different stages in my life.
First defending workers mainly construction workers because they had no unions.
and we had to help to build a union.
I was also defending political dissidents.
Above all I was defending workers. We tried to obtain the right to strike, to form unions etc…
But during thirty years I was also a judge
Naturally I developed an important vision of society that’s important for me.
What are the great injustices that afflict modern Spain?
By any measure democracy has not been able to establish authentic causes - to recognise
the rights , the dignity of people.
So even though the discourse is democratic individuals consider themselves as nothing.
There is a great distrust of power, which signifies, for me, a structural injustice
because citizens are equal to government.
They should be at the same height as government.
And citizens have to know that the government is at their service, the government is the
servant of the people.
But citizens know it is not like this. This is the theory but in reality it’s the other way.
Do you sometimes feel that you’re in office but not in power?
That you face far more constraints on what you can do as a mayor than even you anticipated?
And what does that mean for these movements that want to challenge unaccountable power
- like corporate power or whatever else - that even when they get a big democratic mandate,
there are massive limits on what they can actually do?
There is a sector of people who supported us but who are uncomfortable and disgusted
with us because we speak with the banks to get agreements to finish the evictions.
And for some people this doesn’t look good. They want us to punish the banks.
They want us to say the banks are criminals and that no one should talk to them.
This might give you an idea of where problems might come from.
And we say that the most important thing now is that we end the evictions, that there are
not people in the streets.
And the owners of the houses are the banks...we need to speak with them.
Society has suffered a great deal thanks to the attitude of the banks.
But at the moment, where we are, the most important thing is that we get what we need
from the banks.
That they stop the evictions and the housing, which is what the council is doing.
You used to be a member of the Communist party. Those parties of the old left ... all those
political parties, how have they gone wrong?
I’m very critical of political parties.
I don’t think they’re needed in the world as it is now.
They impede the development of individuals, they encroach on creativity and they impose
absurd structures of discipline
How has somebody like yourself, who doesn’t want power, who doesn’t want to be a politician,
ended up mayor of one of the most important cities in Europe?
Political power is small, although from outside it can seems very large.
Economic power is much more important, as is the power of media communication.
They are true powers.
What does political power do? Changes the laws.
And what effect does that have? It's very relative.
We know very little about how many laws are adhered to, and if they are followed what
effect that has.
We have to manage to create a change in attitudes and changes of attitude are obtained more
through campaigns, through attitudes that set an example, than through laws, through sanctions etc...
A change in attitudes of communication, cultural change has an absolutely unstoppable effect.
I have lived here when if you were gay you would be thrown in prison.
Realistically, they haven’t especially changed the laws, until we cleared up the possibility
of marriage, but at the start of the democracy (in Spain) gay people were thrown in prison.
The law barely changed but people’s attitudes did.
It was in films, on television, it was in novels, it was examples -
gay people who came out of the closet, they were kind, we loved them; there was a change.
Spain’s two party system, which was established in the transition after the death of
General Franco, has now collapsed. Why?
At the start of the transition, the politicians were the old fighters. The people who had
been fighters, those who had been creators but afterwards mediocrity started to grow more and more.
Because there were already the brown-nosers, the people who say yes to everything, who
were not able to have their own ideas. They just looked for success within the party.
The personalities shrink and the only people who shine are those who say yes to everything,
those who don’t ask questions.
That is what happened.
There was a very classic phrase attributed to a member of PSOE who was vice president, Alfonso Guerra.
Guerra established a phrase, which said: “he who protests get’s left out of the photo”....
So, if there is someone who does not agree, they’re out. They’re Out.
The parties degenerated and the majority have fallen into mediocrity.
I think now, not only in Spain but in the world generally, a lasting image has been
created of politicians as ridiculous people. They talk nonsense ...
They treat us as if we were children…
Well, they have been made to look ridiculous, the political characters seem ridiculous.
Right now politicians are not well valued, why?
Because they’ve lost … they have lost the hearts of the people. They have stopped being interesting, generally.
Except now the change is coming for the first time.
Massive pleasure meeting Manuela Carmena, the mayor of one of the most important cities
in the whole of Europe.
She's an anti-politician. She doesn't want power.
She lives in this modest house here in the suburbs of Madrid and she's part of this,
a product of this discontent against traditional political elites that's sweeping all over Europe.
So it was fascinating to hear from her, a lot of lessons for politics all over Europe.
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