Michael Moffett's Notebook:

May Day in Spain

Protesters filled streets across the world last week for International Worker's Day, or May Day — and Spain, with the highest unemployment rate in the European  Union, was no exception.

The economic crisis helped fuel tensions on an occasion with a history of violence, and police clashed with demonstrators in Greece, Turkey and Germany, but Spaniards in Madrid marked the occasion without violence.

Workers and union representatives took to the streets, calling for socially conscious measures that will keep Spain’s sinking economy afloat. The country is on the verge of deflation, threatening to drive the 17 percent unemployment rate even higher, to as much as 20 percent, according to some estimates.

“What we want to accomplish today is to call the attention (of) employers and governments and say we are here, we are trade unionists and we are with all the people and we are strong,” said Fatima Aguado, a member of the union CC.OO. “I think we have lived in a sort of make-believe story. If you have to pay for a house and two children while depending on a precarious job, for example, how can you go out on the streets and announce a strike?”

Above, the group gathers to load up the drums and put on T-shirts. The protesters moved to the beat of a youth group comprised of a couple of dozen percussionists in their 20s-30s. The newspaper reads, "Millions of reasons to head to the streets. Mobilize May 1. You shouldn't pay for the crisis."

The official theme of this march was “Confronting Crisis: Jobs, Public Funding and Social Services.” Aguado said: “Our slogan ‘Confronting Crisis: Jobs, Public Funding and Social Services’ is our way of saying to the government and employers that in the midst of this crisis, we must remember the importance of public administration and public services. To protect more people suffering the crisis. We are more than 4 million unemployed now in Spain, it’s very high, and almost 1 million are at risk of social exclusion because they have used up their social benefits. So we say that now is the time for the government to protect more and more the workers.”

CC.OO. (Comisiones Obreras) and UGT (Union General de Trabajadores) are Spain's two biggest unions and they both took center stage with marchers waving red flags with their initials.

The sign reads: "Crisis, Plague, War, all because of so much inequality." One attendee, Pablo Roldan, an administrative worker who recently returned from the U.K., said: “I was working in Britain for a few years. I lost my job there because the crisis came there first. So I came to Spain looking for a job but I also found the crisis here. I am now unemployed and the only thing saving me is my family because otherwise I couldn’t survive really.”

(Click here for photos from May Day celebrations in Istanbul.)

Anniversary of train bombings highlights political divisions

Remembrance of the train bombings that struck Madrid five years ago — proving for the first time that terrorism inspired by Osama Bin Laden was a reality in Europe — was tainted by political divisions in Spain that show no sign of healing.

Following a few moments of silence in the Spanish parliament to remember the 191 people who lost their lives on commuter trains bombed during a Madrid morning, leaders of the governing Socialists and opposition People’s parties faced-off over the headline-grabbing economic worries.

That left local leaders of Madrid’s town hall and regional seat — both governed by the People’s Party — to preside over a floral offering that opposition Socialists in the local government boycotted in protest over Madrid’s recent handling of an internal investigation into political espionage. There were reminders of further divisions when the Madrid Socialist party, as well as two separate victims’ groups, all made their own independent arrangements to mark this fifth anniversary in Madrid and outlying areas where bombs exploded in the trains.

The March 11, 2004 terrorist attack changed Spain’s political course. It struck just three days before an upset election victory by Socialist President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Spanish society has been politically polarized ever since.

The fortunate flipside to disagreements among Spaniards is an agreement among Muslim immigrants, according to a recently released survey, that most feel they lead a well-integrated life in Spain.

Five years after pseudo-Islamic radicals committed their atrocities in Spain, a Spanish population that has done well to distinguish terrorists from hard-working Muslim immigrants could make more effort at reaching civil understandings amongst themselves for the good of all.

Score settling signals new era

I’m not new to gunfire on my doorstep. I studied at USC’s campus between Downtown LA and Watts. That’s why this week’s news that a Romanian doorman had been gunned down in Madrid at a nightclub just around the corner from my office and across from the Royal Opera House was sadly familiar. It was also a dark reminder of how Spain has changed in little more than a decade.

With the notable exception of ETA terrorism, the few murders to make national news in the mid 90s were almost always assaults with a colorful assortment of razor-sharp or hard, blunt objects. Watching the reports on television almost seemed quaint to this jaded American.

Then came the flow of illegal arms out of the former Yugoslavia and the opening of borders with east European countries where soldiers in early retirement found work beyond their borders in illegal gangs organized enough for Spanish police to call them mafias. Throw in a sprinkling of Colombian assassins-for-hire hot on the trail of cocaine deals made and broken in Spain — Europe’s biggest gateway for the drug — and the picture crystallizes. A renowned Colombian coke dealer, temporarily released from his prison cell for medical treatment, was shot dead in his bed at one of Madrid’s largest hospitals less than a week before the nightclub murder.

Police believe the settling of a score between rival mafias is behind both murders. Together, these acts are a telling sign of the ways and weaponry now wielded by the crime circuits in Spain.

Hooked on Spain

Castilian Spanish hit my ears as boldly as the freezing winter temperatures that greeted me on the Barajas Airport runway upon my January 1992 arrival to Madrid. And I didn’t get either of them to begin with.

I had fled the warmth and comfort of my hometown, Los Angeles, Calif., and the comparatively musical, Mexican-accented Spanish learned during four years of school study to find adventure in continental Europe. Best to base myself in a country where I could speak the local lingo, right?

Penetrating the Castilian speech was the first of many challenges on the way to feeling Spain is more than a home away from home. Telling stories from across the Spanish peninsula introduced me to a diverse topography and climate reminiscent of my home state, where Spanish missions flourished. But it is the rich history of Spain and its culture that keeps me in the homeland of the conquistadores.

The ancient history of this Mediterranean crossroads is as ever-present in stories concerning security threats and the integration of its growing immigrant population as in those spotlighting its much-lauded cuisine and treasures of national heritage. Modern history is witnessing this once-homogeneous country ruled by a reclusive dictatorship emerge as a model democracy bursting with panache and vigor as it hurtles forward to claim its rightful place among the world’s leading economies.

That’s a ride I won’t miss.

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