The Zapatero Project

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT
CHRONICLE OF AN ATTACK ON SOCIETY
Ignacio Arsuaga Rato and Miguel Vidal Santos

CHRONICLE OF AN ATTACK ON SOCIETY
HazteOir.org
First edition (100,000 copies): November 2010
This book was published by HazteOir.org C/ Jos Rodrguez Pinilla, 23 28043 Madrid Spain Tel. 34 91 554 71 89 www.hazteoir.org Cover design: Outono.net ISBN: 978-84-614-5197-5 Legal deposit: M-48636-2010 Printing and binding: Atig Artes Grficas (CIF B80307317) Impreso en Espaa Printed in Spain The total or partial reproduction of this work on any kind of support and in any media, either present or future, and the distribution of copies by means of public rental or loan, are strictly prohibited without the prior written authorisation of the copyright owners, being subject to the corresponding penalties established by law.
To the members and volunteers of HazteOir.org and Derecho a Vivir, the leading forces behind the creative resistance to the Zapatero Project
The change we are calling for goes way beyond merely taking turns in office. JOS LUIS RODRGUEZ ZAPATERO, Speech at the 37th PSOE Congress, 2008
Contents
THE AUTHORS
INTRODUCTION I. A PROJECT DESIGNED TO SUBVERT OUR SOCIETY Destroying Values and Principles through Political Action II. REINVENTION OF THE HUMAN AND CONTEMPT
FOR NATURE
9 11 15 17
The State: The Maker of Rights The Law: Absolute Truth The End of Dissidence Domesticating the Opposition Restricting Individual Freedom An All-Encompassing Transformation Project III. POST-HUMAN RIGHTS Birth: The Right to Choose Growing Up: The Right to an Absence of Compromise Procreation: The Right to Decide IV. THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD Propaganda Versus Reason V. WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION Sexual Rights Instilling Destruction
21 23 24 25 26 27 27 29 29 33 35 37 43 53 54 60
CONTENTS
VI. TOWARDS A NEW FORM OF TOTALITARIANISM The Awakening of Civil Activism The Zapatero Project Chooses Its Bulls-Eye A Single Truth, A Single Will VII. DESTRUCTION OF THE FAMILY An Exercise in Political Manipulation Instruments of Propaganda A Healthy Institution to Be Dismantled VIII. THE NEW CATACOMBS The Enemy to Be Defeated IX. THE DECONSTRUCTION OF A NATION Changing History X. FROM CHANGE TO DESTRUCTION A Project in a Hurry XI. WHO IS GOING TO BELL THE CAT? XII. THE ZAPATERO PROJECT WITHOUT ZAPATERO WILL YOU JOIN US? ABOUT HAZTEOIR.ORG
77 79 80 86 91 95 97 99 107 112 117 122 125 128 131 135 137 141
The Authors
Ignacio Arsuaga Rato founded HazteOir.org in 2001. He currently serves as its President. As part of his efforts to promote citizen participation and defend human rights (in their entirety, starting with conception and ending with our death by natural causes), he is convinced that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can with the help of God change the world. Arsuaga Rato is a lawyer, having graduated in law from the University Pontificia de Comillas (ICADE). He is married and is the father of three children. He lives in Madrid. The professional career pursued by Miguel Vidal Santos encompasses his work as a columnist in newspaper opinion pages, his activities for television and his work within the field of History. He has written various books, including the following: Diccionario de la Historia (A Dictionary of History); Salvapatrias y cruzados (Saviours of the Nation and Crusades); and Historias de los golpes de Estado en Espaa (The History of Coup dtats in Spain). He has also edited various literature and travel magazines and has headed the programme and contents departments at different television channels. Like any journalist worth his salt (and of a certain age), Vidal Santos has closed down various media bodies, has been fired from many others and has walked out of even more. For some years
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now he has, thanks to God, been able to finally reconcile his professional activities with his own principles. He currently works as part of the editorial team at HazteOir.org.
Introduction
Ten years ago, when HazteOir.org started out, Jos Mara Aznar was the Head of the Spanish Government. At that time, in 2001, we could hardly imagine the day when a group of extremists, led by Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, would assume the reins of government in order to undertake an entire programme of measures based on the self-proclaimed objective of shaping Spanish society in the very image of their own ideology. This group was made up of a band of professional politicians who aimed to implement a project that sought to destroy the family, dismantle the Catholic Church, control the minds of our children and restrict citizens rights and freedoms. Since 2004, the year in which he took office at La Moncloa, Rodrguez Zapatero has driven through a veritable avalanche of laws, regulations and policies with a view to bulldozing the basic institutions that make up our society and imposing his cultural project on the public as a whole. He has also sought to export his project to our sister nations in Latin America and in other parts of the world.
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Context However, Rodrguez Zapatero is not exactly an anomaly in the twenty-first century. Quite the contrary, in fact. He shares a common project with thinkers and politicians who are working in other countries to introduce a model of society similar to that proposed by Zapatero. They consist of secularists, relativists, radical feminists, abortionists, representatives of the homosexual lobby and totalitarianists of all stripes and colours. They have gained considerable ground in recent decades. You find them in the UNO, in the European Union and in almost all institutions concerned with international cooperation. They preside over the governments of numerous countries on all five continents. In many cases, they have received support from the Spanish Government through the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Spanish International Cooperation Agency with a view to implementing programmes aimed exclusively at imposing their ideology of gender and sexual diversity. They have held meetings with Rodrguez Zapatero at Summits for Heads of Government in order to promote the Alliance of Civilisations and its ideological principles. Neither has the Prime Minister of the Spanish Government invented his project ex novo. The Zapatero Project is ideologically rooted in the thought of William of Ockham, the leading exponent of what is known as nominalism. For the first time in the history of philosophy, Ockham introduced a concept of freedom based exclusively on will, one completely distinct from the ideas of good or virtue. Ockham initiated a line of thought that would conclude with the atheistic humanism of the nineteenth century and Friedrich Nietzsches will to power. This is a philosophical current that, in the twentieth century, would lead to two world wars and provide support for Nazism, fascism and Communism. It is a line of thought that, although duly polished up, still informs the Rodrguez Zapatero Project today.
INTRODUCTION
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Lifting the Veil And yet, the actions of the current Prime Minister are perhaps even more dangerous than those of his cousins, the totalitarians of last century. Because the Zapatero Project is concealed under the velvety appeal of the magic words of progress, tolerance and democracy. These words have been emptied of any genuine meaning and are used in the official propaganda to camouflage the reality of a tyrannical project designed to suppress us. The fundamental aim of this book is precisely this: to lift the veil that conceals the true face of Zapateros project. It is not our wish to frighten you with an invented story. That is why we have tried to stick to the words of the General Secretary of PSOE himself when providing testimony to his works. We are writing this book in order to help you understand how the Zapatero Project could affect both you and your family and to show you what you can do to fight against it. This book offers you the tools you need to combat the destructive forces that seek to demolish the institution of family. We aim to help you become aware of what is actually happening and, at the same time, offer you a source of hope. Because there are many reasons to be hopeful ... one for each citizen who has stepped up to the challenge. In reality, there are more of us who believe that the family is a basic institution within society than those who support the values of the Zapatero Project.
A Movement to Promote Dignity This book is published by HazteOir.org, a Spanish association that, since the year 2001, has fought on a daily basis to defend the freedoms and rights of all human beings, including those who are yet to be born. We, the authors, have decided to wage this battle, because there is a great deal at stake: the future of our families, the future of your families, and the future of the families of forthcoming generations.
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Our children will either reap the rewards of our work or suffer the consequences of our indifference. Although we have won many battles in favour of life and the family, we have lost many others. And the consequences of losing the war would be catastrophic. The health and well-being of our children, the economy, the future of our country and that of the entire world depends on our successful defence of the basic institutions that make up our society. The good news is that we can still turn the situation around. We can trace our steps back along the path that the champions of the Zapatero Project have led us along. We can continue to win some of the minor battles and, one day, perhaps win the war. We have seen too many miracles come true to have any doubts. They always occur when a small group of aware and active citizens comes together in order to protect life and the family. When members of society like us become aware of what is happening and recognise the consequences of our passive acceptance, we are able to create a powerful source of resistance, one that, thanks be to God, is already having an effect on the future of our society.
A Project Designed to Subvert Our Society
Off-the-cuff ideas, demagogy, nonsense, opportunism. Critics of Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero often resort to labels of this kind in order to define the Prime Ministers actions in government. The leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) is often presented as an ignorant leader who is constantly putting his foot in it and simply governs according to spontaneous impulse. Or his decisions are said to be those of an immature and even ignorant personality. On other occasions it is assumed that his political initiatives are merely a knee-jerk response to the moment, to the current situation, to specific interests, or merely the result of agreements reached here and there with some political splinter group or social lobby, bearing no discernible relation one to the other. Nothing could be further from the truth. The goals being pursued by Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero and the Spanish Left today are quite clear, having been set out before Zapatero even assumed the reins of government in 2004. The objectives are perfectly defined, as are the means of achieving them. And all of this is in the public domain, because there has never been any attempt to hide it. In fact, on a number of occasions Zapatero has described what his real project is, whilst highlighting the fact that his guidance of the Government of the Nation is merely an instrument to be used to achieve his goals.
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Rodrguez Zapatero has explained his intentions at party congresses, in speeches, in interviews, in public pronouncements and in the Spanish Parliament. And as long as his critics believe he is just an immature demagogue, a fool or an opportunist, the leader of the Spanish Left will have free rein in order to carry out a project that brandishes ideology as a recruiting post, a means of achieving goals that nobody on the Left had even dared to strive for before he arrived on the scene.
We Socialists have known for a long time, for more than a century, that the greatest force for change, the force that directs and sweeps the world along, the most powerful force for transformation, is the force of ideas.1
The Spanish Royal Academy (RAE) defines the verb to subvert as to upset, to overturn, to destroy, especially in relation to morality. This is precisely the plan that Rodrguez Zapatero had the opportunity to devise throughout the fourteen years he served as a Member of Parliament, a silent observer who occupied his place in the Lower Chamber of Spains Parliament, but took no initiative and took part in no activity, except for that of voting in favour of proposals indicated by the Party Whip of his parliamentary group. Between 1986 and the year 2000, Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero brooded over his ambitions, whilst the heavy-weights in his party fell victim, one by one, to the political agenda set out by Felipe Gonzlez. Gonzlez, Guerra and the leaders of the PSOE that emerged from the Transition certainly wanted to transform society, but they had to use their time in office in order to establish the foundations for that transformation: the kidnapping of the education system and the world of culture, the establishment of links with radical and nationalist political formations, the construction of a network of
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, speech at the 37th PSOE Congress, 2008: http://goo.gl/xBi1M
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A PROJECT DESIGNED TO SUBVERT OUR SOCIETY
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clients that would guarantee the partys survival at a local and regional level, and the strict control of public opinion. In the year 2000, Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero felt a calling to finish the work of transformation that Felipe Gonzlez had begun. His predecessors had set out the path to be followed. He no longer had to concern himself with the fine print. He could go straight for the goals that the Spanish Left of the 1970s and 1980s had never even dared to recognise. Imitating the fashionable slogans of European Socialism, he invented his own domestic movement, the New Way, and as soon as he had won the general elections, he began the task of completing the work initiated by his party elders, with the aim of subverting the country and upsetting, overturning and destroying Spanish society and the territory it inhabits.
Destroying Values and Principles through Political Action The self-confessed goal, openly recognised by Rodrguez Zapatero, is quite simple and yet ambitious: to turn the country on its head, to change what has always been, that which has always been believed; to replace these values and beliefs with others. His aim is to introduce new principles tailor-made for a Left that aspires to impose absolute control over every last haven of power ... with a view to also establishing absolute control over every citizen. Throughout the year 2007, the Galician writer, Suso de Toro, held a series of conversations with Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero in order to produce a book on the PSOE leader. From these conversations, De Toro drew a number of conclusions, which later on would appear in various sections of the media. He labelled the Prime Minister a a civil soldier, a calculating and obstinate man, a person completely unaffected by external or internal influences. He wrote that he had never been sorry for anything and that, when faced with criticisms and attacks from his opponents, he continues the game quite unperturbed, and he will continue to do so until he reaches checkmate.
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The conversations between Rodrguez Zapatero and Suso de Toro were recorded in the book entitled Madera de Zapatero. Retrato de un presidente (Zapatero: Portrait of a Prime Minister), a publication in which the General Secretary of PSOE freely expounds upon his project and his strategy:
If there is something that characterises this period of government it is that we have a project. It is precisely because we have a project that we come across such useless but active resistance on the part of the hardest sections of the Right, because they know there is a project. They have realised that there is a project imbued with cultural values and, therefore, ideological values, which are capable of determining the social and historical identity of modern Spain for many years to come.2
All of the ingredients of Zapateroism are formulated in this brief fragment, which perfectly reflects the intentions of the man who expressed these words. Rodrguez Zapatero recognises that he has undertaken a project that involves cultural and ideological values and that is capable of subverting the social and historical identity of Spain for many years to come. It is possible that the excessively ambitious character attributed to Rodrguez Zapatero is true, but not in the most conventional sense. The image of a new type of politician, one far removed from the typical political professional, one who shuns political games, an image that Rodrguez Zapatero managed to sell to the electorate in 2004, is based precisely on the fact that the Prime Minister does not appear to have an excessive longing for power. To many of his followers, Rodrguez Zapatero is a humble man, a person who is open to criticism, a person who is tolerant and prepared to discuss matters. This is all due to the fact that his sense of ambition is not based on a desire for power for powers sake, but a desire for what power will enable him to do:
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero in conversation with Suso de Toro, Madera de Zapatero. Retrato de un presidente. Barcelona, 2007.
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A PROJECT DESIGNED TO SUBVERT OUR SOCIETY
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For others, government itself may be the objective; for us, government is the instrument. For others, government is the goal; for us it is the path.3
Rodrguez Zapatero is both ambitious and messianic, a man convinced that he can change the course of history in Spain. Furthermore, he believes he can change the very nature of our history, the essence of Spanish society: its identity. In this sense, the Prime Minister does not regard power as an end in itself, but as an instrument. The spell that Rodrguez Zapatero casts on his electorate is based on this kind of idealism, which consists of distracting their attention by holding up supposedly achievable utopias and sublime ideals in front of their eyes, instead of addressing questions of management, instead of discussing reality. In order to carry out his prophetic mission, which is at once idealistic and apparently founded on a desire to do good, Rodrguez Zapatero has used all of the instruments of power at his disposal: legislative amendments, rupture of the majority-backed social models of Spanish society, cultural changes. And sometimes through democratic means, and other times through rather less democratic means, he has acquired the largest possible number of instruments of pressure and control: governments, social agents, citizens movements. All this is subordinated to the ultimate goal:
The change we are calling for goes way beyond merely taking turns in office. This change consists of the transformation of society.4
Rodrguez Zapateros ideological contribution to the contemporary Left, the project he has worked to impose on Spanish society, is founded on three essential pillars: 1. A reinvention of the human, which involves a complete sense of contempt for the natural.
3 4
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, speech at the 37th PSOE Congress, 2008. Ibid.
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2. A divorce between political action and the individual. 3. An adulteration of the concept of freedom. Through the ideological approach that derives from these principles, Rodrguez Zapatero has designed a project that entails the cultural and ideological transformation of Spanish society and the territorial and political transformation of the Nation. In this document, we delve into the details of Zapateros project for Spain and its citizens, highlighting its ideological dimensions and its strategies. We also analyse the scope of this project and the consequences it will have for our country, should it be finally carried out.
II
Reinvention of the Human and Contempt for Nature
The project that Rodrguez Zapatero seeks to impose on Spain is neither new nor entirely original. At different times throughout Spains history since the nineteenth century, various ideas to destroy the values on which society is based have been proposed. The newest development on this occasion is that the project is actually being promoted by those in power, based on the most radical interpretation of these ideas and at the greatest possible pace. Furthermore, democratic Spain has never known such comprehensive power as that wielded by Rodrguez Zapatero. Throughout Zapateros second term in office, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party governs over 23 provincial capitals, plus Santiago de Compostela, Mrida, Vigo and Gijn. It controls 9 regional governments and innumerable provincial governments. Through local and regional public administration, it holds the keys to numerous building societies and financial and economic institutions of all kinds. Since 1977, the year in which the first democratic elections took place, some thirty-three years have elapsed. PSOE has governed throughout more than half of this time, specifically for twenty years, whilst the Partido Popular has governed for eight years and Unin de Centro Democrtico for just five years. Rodrguez Zapatero has also reaped the rewards of this long period in office.
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The Left and its tentacles extend throughout almost the entire academic world at all its levels, starting with primary school and continuing right up to university. It is also pervasive throughout the world of culture, both within the creative and the industrial fields. The Left enjoys an overwhelming grip on the media and on most of the instruments that enable it to create and determine public opinion. For Spanish society as a whole, the ideas and opinions of the Left provide the model for politically correct thought. Furthermore, a part of the judicial system lies in its hands, which means that it has managed to erase the boundaries established by Montesquieu. With such powerful resources in his grasp, Rodrguez Zapatero has sought to reinvent the very concept of being human.
As I have evolved and matured, I have come to believe that the most authentic religion is Man. It is the human being that deserves adoration; he is the clear apex of the world as it has revealed itself to be, as we have come to understand it.1
The leader of the Socialist Party proposes to break radically away from the idea of the human being as we have understood it up until today. It is a question of erasing the essence of the individual, our natural condition, that which enables us to be a man or a woman, to handle our limitations and channel our compulsions, to be a father or a mother. This anthropological conception of the human being is considered an archaic form of slavery and must be replaced with mere will. And this will is circumstantial, reversible, concrete; it can change meaning as often as may be required. This kind of radical break with the anthropological approach inevitably leads to the creation of a state of affairs that goes beyond the condition of the human being itself. As a faithful apprentice of Nietzsche, Rodrguez Zapatero decrees the death of the human being in order to announce the birth of the post-human man, of the human being that deserves adora-
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REINVENTION OF THE HUMAN AND CONTEMPT FOR NATURE
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tion, far removed from his natural condition and, therefore, artificial. And once we have burned the bridges that connect us to civilisation, anything goes. Parliament can spend its time contemplating a law that grants human rights to apes. The anthropological conception proposed by PSOEs General Secretary can be boiled down to three aspects that characterise his legislative measures: 1. Moral relativism moral, which is disguised as an extension of rights. 2. An extreme secular approach whose aim is to introduce a kind of State-based religion. 3. Gender ideology, which uses an alleged sense of equality and a never-ending battle against discrimination as a rallying cry. Reinvention of the human being, which is the result of the systematic imposition of these three principles, converts the State into the high priest of the new post-human anthropology proposed by Rodrguez Zapatero, one in which: Rights no longer belong to citizens themselves, but are granted to them. The law can pervert reason and nature if this is what the majority decides. And dissidence disappears.
The State: The Maker of Rights Man is no longer the bearer of rights. It is the State that determines the rights of the new man, the post-human rights that he lacks. In this respect, the State is the arbiter of the human condition itself. The definition of what a right is in itself is also subject to the will of the State.
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Once the link with reality, with the natural condition of the human being us broken, the rights of each citizen become subject to the rules of the political market, to the vagaries of fashion and circumstance and, in this sense, they become extremely precarious and entirely unstable. They are also subject to the whims and desires of those who hold the reins of power. In this manner, the State (also with a view to securing votes) can turn the subjective desires of the minority into law, such as the desire of homosexual lobby groups to see their sexist views enshrined in law. Desire is thus raised to a political level, even though this may entail the destruction of institutions such as the family, which have served and continue to serve as the foundations of society.
The Law: Absolute Truth The law replaces truth and natural reality. Truth is now proscribed, a rebel without a cause, a crime and an anti-democratic assault against that other truth, legal truth, which is imposed by the majority. The common good, the general interest, the virtuous, is solely defined in terms of what is legal.
They must understand that within the realm of public life, the only possible moral is that which is found in the Constitution.2
The moral point of reference is provided by the State. There are no values over and above those passed by a majority vote. And when that majority legislates against nature, the irrational becomes the virtuous, the appropriate and the democratic. In this new rationality, father and mother cease to be objective realities if the law decides it is so. Man can be woman if this is decided by the will of the individual. Just like that. And the idea of mother disappears, buried under the label of Progenitor B.
2 Jos Antonio Alonso, PSOE Spokesman in the Lower Chamber of Spains Parliament: http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20090618/reacciones-dispares-adeclaraciones- obispos-sobre-aborto/281336.shtm
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In this country there have been too many historical occasions on which we have sought and too many people still seek to legislate morality. Legislate the morality of the country. And the only order that we must establish is the order that grants freedom to all, not that which grants freedom to each individual. It is freedom that makes us true, not truth that makes us free.3
The End of Dissidence If the State is the maker of truth, the point of reference for morality and the artifice of rights, and outside the State there only exists an abyss of anti-democratic forces conceived as the resistance to the majority (the paradigm of evil in Rodrguez Zapateros anthropology), then dissidence has no place and loses all its meaning. The State, the supreme maker, envelops everything, is absolute and, according to the old Hegelian canons of Marxism, is endowed with a dialectic presence: it serves at once as reality and as criticism of that reality. It is the all-encompassing State: everything that surrounds its citizens, anything that may concern them, anything they might do, think or desire, either now or in the future, proceeds from the State, which grants and regulates. This proposition recalls the Orwellian State depicted in 1984. In Zapateros project, as in the work by Orwell, the State not only serves as the sole public realm, but it also seeks to control our minds. The main character in the novel, the rebel, Winston Smith, is tortured until he admits that two plus two is three, five or whatever the Party wishes it to be. The same character had written that freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. In this respect, it is impossible to dissent. The Zapatero Project restricts our freedoms. And the freedom of education, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are the first liberties to be curtailed.
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Domesticating the Opposition The omnipotent State proposed by the Zapatero Project corners dissidents in two ways: from a political point of view and from the point of view of individual freedoms. The Zapatero Project extends way beyond the work of government and the terms of office established by the corresponding legislatures and even beyond PSOE itself. Within the political field, it proposes to domesticate the Opposition, in which respect it is essential for the Socialist Government itself to re-found the Partido Popular:
The Right must be re-founded both culturally and ideologically. The best aspect of this era is that it is inevitably going to end up forming part of a democratic European Right, a re-founded Right. Absolutely. Yes, yes.4
Yielding to all political opposition and bending its principles and values, this new cultural and ideological Right will emerge, both democratic and European, which is to say, ready to serve this new State proposed by the Zapatero Project. The businessman, Jess Polanco, stated as much to chilling effect when he spoke to his shareholders in March 2007:
We do not have a right-wing party of which we can say: periods in office have no consequence other than mere changes of management team.5
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero in conversation with Suso de Toro, Madera de Zapatero. Retrato de un presidente. Barcelona, 2007. 5 A transcription of the address delivered by Jess Polanco to the Shareholders Meeting of the Prisa Group can be found on the web site of Cadena SER: http://www.cadenaser.com/articulo/espana/Respuesta/Polanco/durante/ Junta/Accionistas/csrcsrpor/20070323csrcsrnac_10/Tes
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Restricting Individual Freedom However, in addition to ensuring political submissiveness, the Zapatero Project also seeks to end individual dissent. In this case it is a question of restricting our freedom of conscience. During the final throes of the Franco period, the most tolerant sections of the regime proposed that each individual should hold the beliefs he deemed appropriate, provided that he did not do so in public. Rodrguez Zapatero has made this proposal his own, adapting it to his own cause: individual beliefs belong to the private realm. And they can only be expressed in the public realm in the manner set out by the law. The Zapatero Project is not concerned about citizens principles and beliefs, as long as they are kept indoors. What threatens Zapateros plans is the visibility of these beliefs, their free exercise and expression vis--vis public opinion.
An All-Encompassing Transformation Project Endowed with the characteristics described above, the Zapatero Project seeks to bring about a transformation of Spain at every level. In this respect, this pseudo-millenarian vision is to be pursued in the ideological, cultural, legislative, social and political realms. The Projects ambitious goals even include that of erasing the historical, political and territorial identity of Spain in order to create a new national identity tailor-made for the new citizens that Zapatero also proposes to create.
III
Post-Human Rights
Birth, growing up, procreation. The Zapatero Project has not invented anything new. It simply takes from reality anything that might disturb it and changes its meaning. In this respect, once all bothersome aspects have been removed, reality itself ends up disappearing, replaced by a gratuitous and artificial creation that, nevertheless, continues to use the same cultural and linguistic codes. However, this is merely an apparent paradox: the Zapatero Project talks, for example, about family, but its proposal has nothing to do with family.
Birth: The Right to Choose This sense of ambiguity presides over the destruction of individual and collective identity. The promoters of the Zapatero Project deliver their messages like the card-sharps you find on the streetcorners of large cities. With the argument-cum-alibi of promoting freedom and new rights, they corner the traditional family whilst supporting new families; they condemn marriage but promote homosexual marriages; they scorn parental authority but invent new progenitors. The first new right that the Zapatero Project formulates is applied at the very moment of birth. Compared to his enslaved predecessor,
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the new Man who deserves adoration, first of all breaks away from his own body. The type of anthropology proposed by the Zapatero Project, thus, launches its first slogan, the right to choose, when faced with the first reality: the identity of each human being. It is a matter of burning the bridges that tie us to nature, in such a way that you are no longer born man or woman: you choose what you are, regardless of your bodys attributes when you entered the world. Even if you decide to continue your path through life with the same identity and the same body as you born with, you will retain your right to change your mind and choose a different option. Because whatever your identity may be, whatever form your body takes, nothing makes you any different to anyone else: there are no differences between men and women. First, human beings broke away from nature, and now they are breaking away from their sexual identity: gender and the individual are destined to tread different paths. And sex and gender have become one of the guiding threads of the Zapatero Project: Citizenship Education, sexual and reproductive health, sexual rights. This obsession with sex and gender has even reached realms that are somewhat far removed from the issue, such as the Red Cross and a series of apparently innocent activities such as games. In 2009, the Ministry for Health subsidised an interactive game produced by Red Cross Youth. It was called VIHDAS and was aimed at youngsters between 15 and 18 years of age. The game involved a party held by a number of young people: a group of boys and girls get together and the members are invited get to know each other in an intimate place. In order to do so, the players-members of the group are invited to make use of the corresponding condom. After this, the player (either boy or girl) must choose a partner of a different or the same sex and choose from among a range of different options: kisses, masturbation, oral sex, caresses, use of sex toys, vaginal sex or anal sex. A laudable eradication of discrimination thus leads to the elimination of natural differences, replaced by a form of egalitarianism that confuses and erases identities:
POST-HUMAN RIGHTS
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Lets look at some examples of gender discrimination as suffered by men. The definition of maternity as a biological function (and not as it is: a social function that can be learned) is an example of discrimination against men, one which, furthermore, creates a biased perspective of our social identities and capacities as people. We men have the right to be mothers. Or is biology our fate?1 Little by little new ways of managing our bodies are gradually permeating throughout society. People are beginning to determine themselves at a sexual level.2
What an individual might do by himself or what he might achieve automatically becomes a right for all the rest, irrespective of the characteristics, aptitude and limitations of each individual. In this manner our rights are multiplied. They are also trivialised: the list of new human rights includes all and anything. Provided that these are things that serve to destroy the values that make up our cultural identity. Rodrguez Zapatero calls these values ideological myths:
If Spanish society [takes on the idea of homosexual marriage and] interiorises the idea that it is all right, that everything will continue as before, that certain people who were unhappy will now be happier and that nobody is going to be forced to do anything in any way and that everything is going to turn out just fine, then these ideological myths will begin to fall away.3
When theory becomes legislation, these new rights replace the man and woman, the couple who make up the nucleus of the family unit, with any kind of cooperative agreement between two parties. The argument that underpins the new family legislation
A paper presented at the Complutense University of Madrid by Andreu Guasch, a lecturer in sociology at Barcelona University, within the framework of the Mageeq Project. 2 Andreu Guasch, interview in El Norte de Castilla, 14.2.08. 3 Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero in conversation with Suso de Toro, Madera de Zapatero. Retrato de un presidente. Barcelona, 2007.
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does not require the parties to be a man and a woman. It is enough for anybody to express a wish to reach agreements regarding a shared residence and life with someone else. The law, thus, places common-law partners on the same footing as married couples. However, the intention that underlies this legislation could also serve at some point to provide a legal rubber-stamp for the polygamous relationships of a Muslim immigrant or even those of a Spaniard. Children are not the result of a marriage, but the product of an agreement between the contracting parties and, in this respect, they no longer require the prior existence of a mother and a father. Techniques that have emerged from research financed by the State provide these new families with the children they require, without any need to stick to the antiquated and bothersome obligation imposed by the fact that the human species is made up of two different sexes, man and woman. In this sense, gender roles are the next item on the list of things to be eradicated. Father and mother are relative concepts and no longer correspond to the gender of the parties who sign the family agreement. Neither are they necessary in order to create a nuclear family or to procreate, and they are even less essential when it comes to bringing up the children. In fact, in the approach proposed by the Zapatero Project, new families means, above all, families in which nobody is a man or a woman, or a father or a mother, all of which are realities that, like the nation itself, are debatable and controversial. The next stop (but not the end of the road) consists of the rupture between individual and sexuality. The new rights translate into the disappearance of individual rights. You no longer have rights, those old rights that helped you as a mother or as a man. A shining universe of absolute equality unfolds before you in which your former identity has become the identity of everyone, in the name of equality. Doublethink leaps from the pages of Orwells famous novel to transform our ID: if your identity is the identity of everyone, it is not precisely the identity of anyone. In this manner, your identity, together with your freedom, remains for ever in the possession of the State:
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Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in ones mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies ... all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years to arrest the course of history.4
Growing Up: The Right to An Absence of Compromise Rodrguez Zapatero proposes a total and ongoing rejection of everything that detracts from absolute freedom, breaking away from all traditions and moral values. Again, here, Zapatero is not doing anything original. He is simply reflecting the state of opinion that has pervaded wide-ranging sections of Spanish society that have been brought up under educational laws passed by his party.
George Orwell, 1984.
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One product of this educational model, which punishes excellence and stretches tolerance to the point of placing it above reason, consists of the individual who shuns any kind of commitment, something that is considered to be a serious curtailment of freedom. Consecrating freedom as an absolute value and considering rights to be the mere product of circumstance or passing fashions that succeed within the supermarket of our collective customs, are both entirely incompatible with the idea of personal commitment. My right to freedom and pleasure makes it unfeasible to acquire solid bonds that demand a degree of sacrifice, which is the basis of any commitment. In order to subvert the values and identity of our culture within this realm, the Zapatero Project once again turns to gender. The aim is to destroy the foundations of the family by breaking the link between marriage and sexuality. We once again come across an apparent paradox here, especially in view of the neo-language that envelops the entire Zapatero Project, which does not talk of sex, but of love and happiness. The point of departure is the right to permanent happiness and limitless love, the idea of turning a romantic utopia into reality. And if your utopia grates somewhat, if you fail to achieve it on this occasion, dont worry! We have other realities packed with happiness and love, other possible combinations, and we can swap them as often as you like. In order to achieve this perpetual and all-embracing happiness, it is necessary to remove all obstacles, all barriers, all those elements that formerly constituted the foundations of commitment. Let us shelve anything that limits our right to pleasure and happiness as bothersome hindrances. No physical or legal impediments must exist, not to mention restrictions based on gender or family structures that tie us down. In order to achieve this goal, the State shall place an entire corps of civil servants at my disposal who specialise in rubber-stamping family breakdowns as rapidly as possible, and it shall reinforce its role by means of messages that encourage public opinion to consider any form of behaviour based on the unilateral search for love, pleasure and personal self-fulfilment to be entirely natural. With
POST-HUMAN RIGHTS
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this pack, I can feel truly happy or at least believe that I might aspire to being happy, over and above any bonds of commitment, which are always subordinated to the main goal. In the new families proposed by the Zapatero Project, everything can be erased in one stroke of the pen. We might call this instant elimination an express service, due to the speed with which civil servants specialising in this field can dissolve any agreements that have been signed. The right proposed by the Zapatero Project to be what we want to be, the right to achieve the happiness it offers us, requires the separation of two concepts that have always gone hand in hand in our culture and that have helped to preserve our very civilisation itself: love and gender.
Procreation: The Right to Decide The Zapatero Project offers us the right to decide anything, even our own nature, which means that the individual is no longer determined by his or her gender. It also proposes that we search for happiness without assuming the slightest degree of personal commitment, which, among other consequences, eradicates one of the most important family ties, that which links gender and marriage. As a result of all this, the right to decide becomes the most flagrant axiom of the Zapatero Project. The human being that deserves adoration effectively becomes God. And, in this respect, he will seize Gods first attribute: the ability to give and take away life. Here we find ourselves at the very heart of the Zapatero universe: the right to live. However, the centre of the Zapatero universe is also a huge black hole. This universe takes for granted that sex no longer bears any relation to procreation, an activity that can be carried out more efficiently in a laboratory. As the legal impediments continue to fall away, la carte babies become a reality and human cloning projects financed with public resources are carried out, sex ceases to be the path by which human beings multiply, effectively becoming the ob-
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ject of exchange (Law on Gender Identity) or an object for worship (White Paper on Affective-Sexual Diversity in Schools). As far as procreation is concerned, in the Zapatero Project, it is the State that assumes responsibility for this matter. The State decides, through MPs chosen via closed and blocked lists, about matters relating to life and death. It establishes the fact that sex can have undesired consequences, a euphemism that hides the existence of a life independent of the mothers from the very moment of conception. And it regulates the procedures whereby insatiably free citizens with armfuls of rights can free themselves of these consequences. Through the auspices of the State, the new citizens under the Zapatero Project imagine that they have become God.
IV
The Man Who Dreamt of Being God
As viewed through the prism of the Zapatero Project, the rights that citizens enjoyed under the Felipe Gonzlez and Jos Mara Aznar governments were of very poor quality. The Zapatero Government has spent a good amount of its time presenting a portrait of social life in the past as a veritable abyss of segregation and intransigence, when extreme minority groups were forced to accept the tyrannical decisions of the majority. It is true, women had the right to choose, which is to say, they could abort. But they had to go to a special establishment, they had to identify themselves, even if it were simply for the purposes of paying by credit card. Now and then they were suggested that an exploration should be carried out. And there were even one or two cases in which they were actually asked questions. Furthermore, they had to waste a whole morning so that the undesired consequence could be removed. It was all very irritating. Women had the right to decide, yes, but the procedure posed a serious drawback: it was slow (24 hours, sometimes more) and it was inconvenient (travel to the abortion clinic, formalities). During the time that elapsed between the telephone call to ask for an appointment and the beginning of the interruption of the embryos life, there was a danger than some women might become conscious of what they were doing. Before Zapateros arrival on the scene, the
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right to decide and its formalities and legal requirements may have highlighted the fact that this was something abnormal, something above the ordinary. Something even important. And yet, however much the businessmen of the abortion industry might facilitate the procedures and skip the formalities, the business could lose a customer at any time. And the party could lose a vote. When it proposes turning MASS ABORTIONS the wish to emulate God into a right, the Zapatero Project is Jaime Caellas Galindo, A psywell aware that it must facilitate chiatrist, worked at the abortion things even further, because clinic, Centro Mdico Aragn when it comes to applying the (Gerona). His work consisted of diagnosing women who wished to right to decide regarding life, abort, based on a possible danger education, family structure and to the mothers psychological even ones own sexual identity health. After some months workin practice, there are many ing at the clinic, the Guardia Civil elements that betray the swinquestioned him: a complaint had been made which included cerdle being perpetrated by its adtificates signed by him authorising vocates, effectively revealing abortions. However, these certifithe profoundly totalitarian nacates did not include the name of ture of such an approach: the pregnant woman. Dr. Caellas declared that he subjection of individual freehad never signed these blank cerdom to the will of the State. tificates. The clinic, Centro Mdico The Zapatero Project does Aragn, used them behind his back not wish to endanger its opporin order to speed up the procetunity to twist reason and the law dures for its customers. The psychiatrist denounced the practices in order to extend the right to carried out by the clinic to the mechoose to the farthest extremes dia in 2007. in every realm of life. In this respect, it has implemented two parallel measures: the passing of a new law offering an abortion free-for-all and free distribution, without prescription or age limits, of the abortion procedure known as the morning-after pill (MAP). In both cases the intention is the same: to guarantee that, in cases where life exists, only one party should have alleged rights and not both, under the Governments pro-
THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD
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tection. Because under the Zapatero Project, the authority that determines the category of an individual and his corresponding rights is the State. In 2009, the Government approved the free sale of the PHARMACEUTICAL ABORTION morning-after pill. As of The morning-after pill began to be sold this year, this abortion pill without prescription at chemists in Sephas been on sale over the tember 2009. Sales of the pill have multicounter at chemists without plied since then, to the point where it has become a fashionable product at chemists. any kind of restriction, in Figures furnished by Cofares, the largest spite of its serious secondary pharmaceuticals distributor in Spain effects. Thus, any woman, (based on a 23 per cent market share) conand even a minor, can use firm the MAP boom. this discreet abortion proceBetween October and December 2009, following the Zapatero Governdure as many times as she ments Decree that authorised free sale, likes. some 45,315 packs of the morning-after This measure has had a pill were sold. During the same period much wider impact than the the previous year, sales had come to 16,997 abortion law itself, because it packs. In 2008, Cofares distributed some seeks to make the law unnec71,523 MAP packs throughout the whole essary. When the Socialist of Spain. In 2009 the figure came to Government declares that its 104,476. abortion law of 2010 will reAccording to figures provided by the consultants, IMS Health, the use of these duce the number of embryos abortion pills in Spain is increasing. destroyed, its reasoning is Before the authorisation of free sale, based on the following argusome 935 abortion pills were sold in ment: the MAP permits aborSpain each day. Following prescriptiontion without even needing to free sales, the morning-after pill and the five-day-after pill have become the turn to a business that spedaily abortion procedures of hundreds of cialises in termination procethousands of people and the favourite dures. contraceptive of many young women. In this respect, whilst the Sales of these pills are now higher than parliamentary groups were those of contraceptives, coming to 2,100 units a day. debating the provisions of the Act for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Voluntary In-
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terruption of Pregnancy at great length, a piece of legislation that sought to authorise minors of sixteen years of age to abort, the Government was already gradually opening the door regarding this possibility by means of the MAP. In December 2009, the Socialist Parliamentary Group, THE RIGHT TO DECIDE MEANS MORE ABORTIONS with the help of ERC, IU and PNV, radicalised its abortionist Contrary to the claims made by the project still further. And whilst Zapatero Governments propaganda, this was going on in the Lower proliferation of MAP use has not House of Spains Parliament, El helped to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and the number of Congreso de los Diputados, just a abortions. Quite the reverse, in fact. short distance away in the Upper Since 2001, in order to gain access House, El Senado, Rodrguez to the morning-after pill in the ReZapatero was inaugurating the gion of Andalusia, it was enough to be just 16 years of age. In that year, the International Colloquium on the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) disUniversal Abolition of the Death tributed 25,785 morning-after pills Penalty. There he was perfectly throughout the Region. There were prepared to proclaim his all-out eleven thousand abortions. In 2008 the defence of the right to life, someSAS distributed 66,777 MAPs. According to official figures, there were thing he called the Supreme more than twenty thousand abortions. Right, in capital letters:
The free availability of the MAP led to a four-fold increase in sales of the pill as of early October 2009, which was when the Zapatero Government authorised sale without prescription. Even the commercial profits of this government measure have attracted attention. Carlos Gonzlez Bosch, the Chairman of Cofares, the largest pharmaceuticals distributor in Spain, has called this increase in post-coital pill sales scandalous and has called on the public authorities and on society as a whole to reflect upon whether this is the goal they were pursuing when the legislative change was introduced.
The right to life is the Supreme Right, as it has been called by the Human Rights Committee, because without effective guarantees of this right, all other rights lack meaning and raison dtre. This is something that appears to be obvious to everyone. However, if it really were that obvious, today we would not been obliged to call on public authorities around the world to completely respect the inviola-
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ble, unconditional nature of human life and the right to not be subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading penalties.1
Unlike his predecessors in government, Zapatero has managed to consecrate the right to end an embryos life in two different ways, the legal and the commercial. The Zapatero Project presents the law on abortion as the right to decide, but it has also facilitated the pill, thus extending the possibilities of exterminating embryos to the very limit. However, it has also made the practice of abortion legal. It is now a right. In this respect, those under the age of 16 years can carry out abortions because the State has taken away the parents authority: the law permits minors not to inform their parents of their decision to abort. In the case of minors, it is the State that authorises them to go ahead, not the parents. In this sense, the girl who has decided to have an abortion does so behind her familys back. And if she takes the morning-after pill, the decision is exactly the same. In this manner, although the Government argues that the law on abortion seeks, among other objectives, to end all stigmatisation of women who decide to abort and to do away with the clandestine nature of the practice, the Zapatero Project effectively consecrates the clandestine nature of abortion. The removal of all imaginable barriers, including the obstacle of reason, is imposed as an indispensable objective when it comes to putting the Zapatero Project into practice. In this respect, private agreements between two parties, whatever they may be, are placed on the same footing as a marriage between a man and a woman, which constitutes the essence of matrimony as it has been understood in all cultures since the very beginning of civilisation; the family now becomes what the State defines it to be; and life also becomes a relative concept, one that is now subject to the will of the authorities and also subject to its needs.
International Colloquium on the Universal Abolition of the Death Penalty, Madrid, 9.12.09: http://www.hazteoir.org/node/26217
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Science has demonstrated the existence of different DNA sequences in the embryo and in the mother. From the very moment of conception, the DNA of the new being manifests its individuality and independence with regard to the mother. This is a new and distinct life. And this is how it will be until its natural end, in which respect human life will continue to be human life, in spite of illness or decrepitude. Nevertheless, in the face of the scientific facts of life, the Zapatero Project says nothing and the legal facts are diluted: we constantly hear about multiple rights, but the language of power, the neo-language of authority, erases our right to life. The most elementary right of all, the one that constitutes the very roots of the law, is erased by the Zapatero Project. There are lives that do not vote, such as embryonic lives and those in which the characteristic features of life are fading, and their most elementary rights are erased, including the right to ongoing life. The goal being pursued by abortion, camouflaged under the progressive gabble of the right to decide, is the same as the objective that is being sought by the rest of the proposals that the Zapatero Project brings together under the heading of new human rights: the restriction of civil rights, with the State serving as the sole deposit and regulator of these rights. In the same way in which the Organisation of the Islamic Conference passed its Declaration on Human Rights in Islam2 in Cairo in 1990, a catalogue that was notoriously different with regard to the Universal Declaration and founded on something as far removed from human rights as sharia, the Zapatero Project has built the framework for a series of new human rights, which are equally far removed from the Declaration passed in 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations3.
2 You can read a Spanish version of the Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, translated directly from the Arabic version published by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, on the UNHCR web site: http://www.acnur.org/biblioteca/pdf/5549.pdf 3 Reproduced on the United Nations web site: http://www.un.org/es
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The United Nations text consecrated the right to life of all human beings without distinction. The Zapatero Project modifies this stance, incorporating into the rights of all human beings that of being exterminated in accordance with the conditions established and regulated by the State. Under the maxim of freedom, the Zapatero Project institutes a culture of death. In accordance with its neo-language, the extermination of a human life becomes a right that can be freely exercised by anyone who is legitimised by the State for this purpose: owners of abortion clinics, abortion pill manufacturers, chemists who sell these products and abortion professionals. The same occurs with euthanasia in its various and euphemistic forms.
Propaganda Versus Reason In the neo-language of the Zapatero Project, the most extreme and crudest formulation of the extermination of unborn children comes from the former Minister for Equality, Bibiana Ado:
The foetus is a living being, of course; but what we cannot talk about is a human being, because that has no scientific basis.4
Each time the Zapatero Project has been forced to rationalise its proposals, members of the public have been treated to the spectacle of unjust nonsense being turned into propaganda. Public pressure has forced the Rodrguez Zapatero Government to defend abortion as a positive step for society. All of its attempts at justification have resulted in the most crushing failure. In October 2010 the then Minister for Equality, Bibiana Ado, replied to a written question presented by the Member of Parliament for Unin del Pueblo Navarro, Carlos Salvador, asking for her opinion as to whether the in-
Bibiana Ado, declarations made on the radio station, Cadena SER, 19.5.09.
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terruption of a pregnancy did not constitute the elimination of a human life:

The Government cannot share the affirmation that the interruption of pregnancy constitutes the elimination of a human life [...] The State must protect the life of the unborn child and this must be done from the moment of gestation to the moment of birth [...] Abortion does not entail the termination of a human life because there is no unanimous opinion regarding what a human being is, there is no scientific evidence, given that human life refers to a complex concept based on ideas and philosophical, moral and social beliefs; in short, it is a matter that is subject to different opinions and personal preferences.5
The most polished example of neo-language is offered by the name of the law itself that turns the extermination of human beings into a right: Act for Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy. Between the Ministers definition and the official name of the corresponding law extend the notorious forms of manipulation that the Zapatero Project has applied to the fundamental principles of political propaganda, known as the principles of simplification, transposition, vulgarisation, orchestration, verisimilitude, hushing up and transfusion6: The principle of simplification (individualising the adversary as a single enemy):
Jos Antonio Alonso, Minister and PSOE Spokesman in the Lower House of Parliament: The Catholic Church wants to imprison women who have to voluntarily interrupt their pregnancies. El Pas (15.5.09): The Church and the PP Lash Out at the Abortion Bill.
http://goo.gl/Q9T2T The principles listed here were formulated by Hitlers Minister for Peoples Education and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels: http://goo.gl/dy8pO y http://goo.gl/ADinB
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Juan Luis Cebrin, Managing Director of the PRISA Group (9.1.08): The Church is the intellectual battering ram of the PP. Zapatero (6.1.08): Nobody can impose faith, morality or customs, only respect for the law, which is the DNA of democracy.
The principle of transposition (transferring your own errors onto the adversary in order to attack them):
The Spanish Episcopal Conference published six documents against abortion when the PP was in government, whilst it has published only three documents under the Zapatero Government. Maribel Montao, Socialist Secretary for Equality (22.1.08): The hypocrisy of the Catholic ecclesiastic hierarchy, because they only remember abortion and divorce when the Left is in government.
The principle of vulgarisation (minimising the mental efforts of the public vis--vis the messages that are launched):
Mara Teresa Fernndez de la Vega, Deputy Prime Minister of the Government (14.5.09): We want to safeguard the dignity of women. Soledad Cabezn, PSOEs Secretary for Equality Policies (3.10.09): We must guarantee womens right to independence. For the youngest members of society. For their right to decide was the slogan of the campaign dreamt up by the Young Socialists to support the abortion law. Carmen Montn, PSOE Member of Parliament and Spokeswoman for Equality: They want abortion to stay in the Penal Code and for woman to be unable to decide themselves. Dolores Cabrera, PSOEs Secretary for Equality: PSOE defends womens right to decide with regard to sexuality and reproduction. Francisca Medina, Assistant Spokesman of the Equality Commission in the Lower House of Spains Parliament (10.3.09): Women will de-
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cide, without the supervision of third parties. The decision of women is not a question of authorisation, but a question of rights.
The principle of orchestration (constantly repeating the same few ideas). In reaction to the fact that no woman in Spain has ever been imprisoned for carrying out an abortion:
Zapatero (18.11.09): No woman must go to prison for voluntarily interrupting a pregnancy. Carme Chacn, Minister for Defence (1.6.09): We have witnessed abuses of all kinds, people who have been persecuted for aborting. Leire Pajn, PSOEs Organisation Secretary (21.5.09): This law will mean that women in this country no longer have to pay, even with incarceration, for aborting. Jos Bono, the Head of the Regional Government of Castile-La Mancha and Speaker of the Lower House of Spains Parliament (29.3.09): No woman must go to prison for aborting. Jos Antonio Alonso (17.3.09): They want to continue sending women to prison who have to abort.
The principle of verisimilitude (arguments based on alleged facts that are either irrelevant or out of context). Vis--vis the demonstration in Madrid against the abortion law (17.10.09), which featured the participation of more than one million people:
Report from the daily newspaper, Pblico: An abortion of a demonstration [...] Priests, nuns and pious women with their pious husbands, all of whom are at zero risk of becoming pregnant, turned up to protest [...] Thousands of girls and boys were also there, children forced by their parents to attend the demonstration. Above all, there were a large number of sixteen-year-old girls, who, by the looks of it, are sufficiently mature to understand nonsense such as the idea that their god manufactures little souls as soon as the zygote is formed, but are entirely immature when it comes to deciding whether they can abort an unwanted
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foetus [the law proposes that sixteen-year-old girls should be able to decide to abort without their parents consent] [...] Aznars old guard protests against abortion.
The principle of hushing up (suppressing information that may favour the adversary). A demonstration took place on 17th October 2009 against the abortion law. The demonstrators occupied Calle Alcal, stretching from Puerta del Sol to the Puerta de Alcal itself, including all of the adjacent streets. According to the organisers, more than two million demonstrators took part. According to the Madrid Regional Government, the number came to 1.2 million. The demonstration was called by 42 civil associations:
The government news agency, Efe: the number of demonstrators came to 55,316 persons. El Pas: According to estimates made by El Pas, the demonstrators against the law reform came to 265,000 [...] The march featured the participation of top Partido Popular leaders.
The principle of transfusion (resorting to myths and prejudices and stirring up the most primitive layers of the collective imagination facilitates the rapid acceptance of propaganda):
Mariano Fernndez Bermejo, Minister for Justice (30.12.07): Through the auspices of its ecclesiastic hierarchy and the most reactionary elements of the Right, the Nationalist-Catholic movement has sprung into campaign mode. Bernat Soria, Minister for Health (16.12.07): We cannot go back to the times of the Inquisition, turn back the clock 500 or 300 years. The country that invented the Inquisition doesnt seem to want to consign it to the past. We cannot allow some 5 or 6 per cent of people to be the inquisitors of the rest.
Convinced of the fact that politics consists of changing individual forms of behaviour, instead of managing resources and channelling initiatives in order to achieve the common good, a good part of the
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Rodrguez Zapateros measures and a good part of the activity pursued by PSOE since the year 2004 has been devoted to mere propaganda about abortion, one of the key elements of its project. Without any other arguments except for the tiresome slogans mentioned above and by using the media and a series of audiovisual leisure opportunities that present abortion as an aseptic and impersonal procedure that signifies the very culmination of freedom and modern life, a large part of this Socialist Governments work has consisted of convincing the public of the need to increase the number of unborn children. The impact of the Governments measures on public opinion has not been quite as expected. In this respect, the year 2009, the year in which Rodrguez Zapateros abortion law was drafted and the greatest pressure was exerted on public opinion, marked the key turning-point. The black hole that exists within the Zapatero universe has emerged through the auspices of public opinion. Newspapers as close to the abortionist movements as La Vanguardia have recorded the shift in public opinion regarding abortion. According to polls carried out by the Noxa Institute and published by this newspaper, in 2008, before the grand abortionist campaign was launched by the Socialist Government, some 57 per cent of the respondents were in favour of abortion and 30 per cent were against. One year later, those in favour of abortion had fallen to 44 per cent, whilst the number of advocates of the right to live had increased to 46 per cent. As of that time, all of the polls, even those dependent on the Socialist Government itself, have continued to record a constant rise in the number of people who support the right to live, which constitutes a clear setback for those in favour of PSOEs pro-abortion reforms. As of the second half of the year 2009, this trend has even been detected among Socialist voters. During this period, some 25 per cent of these voters rejected the Governments abortionist project. Socialist advocates of the right to live increased by 11 per cent, whilst those in favour of extermination decreased by 13 per cent. This historic sea-change in Spain has been brought about by the determined and tenacious efforts of thousands of citizens, who, throughout the whole country, have come together to form civil platforms to defend the right to live. Throughout the whole of the
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year 2009, the activities pursued by these groups of citizens focused on disseminating scientific information regarding abortion and its consequences, not to mention citizen-based activism, denouncing government complicity with abortion clinic associations and residual groups of hot-headed radicals. This work managed to pierce the wall of silence erected by the Socialist Government.
Extermination of unborn children September 2008 May 2009 September 2009 57% 47% 44% Right to live 30% 46% 46%
PSOE sought to process and pass its abortionist project in the most discreet and rapid manner possible, effectively lifting the public out of the debate that such an initiative required. The civil groups and platforms halted this attempt and managed to explain Rodrguez Zapateros true intentions to the public at large. The PSOE agenda was forced to change and the abortionists then began to bring their propaganda and the sympathetic media into play. But they were now fighting a rearguard action. The initiative lay with those that sought to protect the right to live. On 29th March 2009, the March for Life7 brought some half a million people out onto the streets of Madrid, whilst there were nearly one hundred simultaneous demonstrations in other Spanish cities and outside the Spanish embassies located in various different countries. For the first time in Spanish history, an act of defence regarding the right to live broke all of the forecasts that had been made and filled the streets of our cities with a unified protest in favour of life that had never been so strong and determined. Anti-abortion demonstrations date back to the year 1985, which is when the first abortion law was announced. However, for years the ranks of the protestors had been filled with a series of heroic forerunners who had acted in the most absolute solitude and had almost
http://www.hazteoir.org/node/19005
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never managed to influence public opinion. The March for Life held in the year 2009 broke the taboo imposed by Spanish society based on a politically-correct progressive stance, one in which abortion was considered to be an expression of freedom, rather than a crime. The international press8 echoed Spanish societys reaction to the abortionist plans of the Zapatero Project and the Socialist Government was left somewhat ruffled and with no other recourse except to redouble its propaganda campaign consisting of manipulation and insults against those of us who support the right to live. In Spring 2009, various coaches toured the entire Peninsula over a period of three weeks, spreading the right to live message. The Tour for Life9 carried out by the coaches chartered by the right to life platform, Derecho a Vivir (DAV), served to strengthen the mobilisation of thousands of people, citizens throughout the whole country who voluntarily demonstrated their determination to be heard, with a view to putting a stop to the Socialist Governments abortionist plans. The second mass demonstration in favour of the unborn foetus right to live took place on 17th October 2009, on this occasion only in Madrid10. Faced with its resounding success, the Socialist Government and its political and media supporters wrote the event off as a demonstration of bishops and the Old Guard of the Partido Popular. However, the verbal attacks on the participants have only served to motivate and mobilise even more supporters, as became evident on 7th March 2010 when the Second International March for Life11 once again mobilised citizens in cities throughout all of Spains provinces. In every province and in many towns and cities, members of the public took to the streets in order to express their revulsion for Rodrguez Zapateros abortion law. Madrid was once again brought to a complete standstill as 600,000 supporters of the right to live marched through the citys streets, whilst Spains embassies abroad were surrounded by banners condemning the proposed law.
8 9
http://www.hazteoir.org/node/19250 http://blogs.hazteoir.org/vueltaporlavida 10 http://www.hazteoir.org/node/24660 11 http://www.hazteoir.org/node/28635
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Nevertheless, Zapateros project has battled on regardless, because its objectives do not include any kind of consultation with the public, but the mere imposition of its principles. Backed by nationalist and left-wing splinter groups, PSOE managed to gather a sufficient number of votes together on 24th February in order to pass its abortionist reform in the Upper House of Spains Parliament, El Senado. The policy of promoting and facilitating abortion has yielded its fruits: between 2001 and 2008 the number of abortions doubled in Spain, whilst the use of contraceptives, which according to the legislation produced by the Zapatero Project serve to reduce abortions, increased from 49 per cent in 1997 to 80 per cent in the year 2007.
Development of Abortion in Spain
Source: Institute for Family Policies (IPF).
One abortion takes place every 4.7 minutes in Spain, whilst one out of every five pregnancies ends in abortion, which represents some 20 per cent of all pregnancies. According to the latest figures furnished by the PSOE Government, some 317 abortions take place every day in Spain. And every hour, two adolescents walk into an abortion clinic. Since 2007, Spain has been the country within the EU-15 that has witnessed the largest increase in the number of abortions. The Institute for Family Policies (IPF) has compared the official abortion figures furnished by the Ministry of Health with various population figures. The results are as follows:12
Institute for Family Policies (IPF), Evolucin de la Familia en Espaa, 2010: http://www.ipfe.org/Informe_Evolucion_Familia_Espana_2010.pdf
12
52
The number of abortions that take place in Spain over a period of 15 days (4,750 abortions) would serve to cover the annual national and international demand for adoptions. Every day, 317 children fail to be born in Spain due to abortion. This is equivalent to the closing-down of a mediumsized school every 3 days due to a lack of children. The number of abortions that took place in the year 2008 (more than 115,000) is equivalent to cities such as Orense and Lugo and comes to more than the entire population of the Province of Soria or cities such as Gerona, Cceres, Toledo, Zamora and Huesca. The number of abortions that takes place over a period of 15 days exceeds the number of people who die from traffic accidents throughout an entire year. The number of abortions that takes place in a year (115,812 in the year 2008) is equivalent to Spains birth deficit. Since abortion practices were legalised in 1985, Spain has witnessed some 1,350,000 abortions. This figure is equivalent to the population of regions such as Extremadura, Aragon, Asturias, the Balearic Islands, or Navarre and Cantabria together. On the same day that the Upper House of Spains Parliament passed the law on abortion with the votes of PSOE and its regional franchises, ERC, IU and BNG, together with various members of the Senate from the parties CiU and PSM-EN and two independent Senate members from Navarre and Ibiza, Rodrguez Zapatero declared the following:
Nobody has the right to take life away from another human being, absolutely nobody. Let us work for this cause. I am at your entire disposal.13
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero at the World Congress Against the Death Penalty, Geneva, 24.2.10: http://www.hazteoir.org/node/28385
13
When Education Is Indoctrination
Education is one of the most carefully controlled instruments of the Zapatero Project and all of the Governments initiatives in this field contemplate the corresponding indoctrination procedures. The same also applies in the case of abortion.
For more than a century we have known that the force that sweeps the world along consists of ideas. That is why we must know how to do two things at the same time: change the present through Government and transform the future through ideas.1
The Act for Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (the law that offers an abortion free-for-all) imposed by the Socialist Party, does not limit itself to simply amending the abortionist legislation that has been in force in Spain since 1985. This law, which constitutes a key plank of the Zapatero Project, reflects the Prime Ministers wish to subvert the current social structure, eradicating its present values and replacing them with others of more dubious democratic credentials. In order to achieve this aim, the law proposed by Rodrguez Zapatero introduces the question of abortion into the education system.
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, 37th PSOE Congress, 2008.
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AT 9 YEARS OF AGE YOU ARE THE OWNER OF YOUR BODY, OF YOUR PLEASURE In 2009 the Ministry for Equality published the Eighth Health Guide for adolescent girls between 9 and 17 years of age. This publication recommends girls of this age to abort as soon as possible, without making any mention of the need to consult their parents at any time. In fact, parents disappear from the text completely: There is no specific age or moment for sharing our sexuality. Do not impose it on yourself or let others impose it on you. It is your decision. Live, explore, discover, learn. You are the owner of your feelings, of your body, of your pleasure and of your life. If you do not wish to go ahead with your pregnancy, go to a family planning centre or a health centre as soon as possible. They will help you. The Ministrys Eighth Health Guide includes illustrations that show, for example, minors having sex inside cars, as well as providing advice regarding the use of condoms and the morning-after pill, all aimed at girls of nine years of age and over.
The indoctrinatory dimension of the law receives the name of sexual and reproductive health. In the terminology of the international abortion lobbies, this so-called sexual and reproductive health has served as a cover for promoting Malthusian population control policies and abortion policies in the least-developed countries on Earth, disguising them as a means of achieving new freedoms exclusively for women:
The explicit recognition and reaffirmation of the right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility, is basic to their empowerment.2
Sexual Rights Since 1994, the year in which the concept of sexual and reproductive health was introduced at the International Conference on Population and Development that took place in
2 Fourth edition of the United Nations World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995: http://www.un.org/spanish/conferences/Beijing/mujer2021.htm. Various documents relating to this Conference can be downloaded from the web page belonging to the former Ministry for Equality (today State Department for Equality) http://www.migualdad.es.
WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION
55
Cairo, organised by the United Nations Population Fund, in real terms this expression has signified an extension of abortion and abortion procedures as a form of contraception, the end of conscientious objection on the part of doctors and mass sterilisation:
The human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free from coercion, discrimination and violence.3
In this respect, the expression sexual and reproductive health has come to serve as an equivalent of the term abortion:
Reproductive health is the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in all matters relating to the reproductive system and its functions and processes. Reproductive health therefore implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. Sexual health, the purpose of which is the enhancement of life and personal relations, and not merely counselling and care related to reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases.4
For her part, the US Secretary of State of the United States, Hillary Clinton, expressly recognised the following during a hearing before a US Senate Committee:
I will say that Ive worked in this area for many years. And if were talking about maternal health, you cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.5
3 International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 1994: http://www.un.org/es/development/devagenda/population.shtml 4 Ibid. 5 http://unitedfamiliesinternational.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/hillaryclinton-confirms-reproductive-health-means-abortion
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SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH ABORTION ACT FOR SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE
HEALTH AND THE VOLUNTARY INTERRUPTION OF PREGNANCY6
1994. The Cairo Conference on Population and Development established the concept of sexual and reproductive health, whilst the World Health Organisation has defined fertility regulation as family planning, abortion, raising the minimum age for marriage and breast-feeding. 1995. Beijing. The Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women. Abortion and sexual and reproductive rights were constituted as human rights for women. 2002. The European Parliaments Committee on Womens Rights and Gender Equality recommended that in order to safeguard womens reproductive health and rights, abortion should be made legal, safe and accessible to all. 2004. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Council passed the European Strategy for the Promotion of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. Article 2: The right to sexual and reproductive health implies that people are able to enjoy a mutually satisfying and safe relationship, free from coercion or violence and without fear of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/Aids, or unwanted pregnancies. Individuals and couples should be able to regulate their fertility without adverse or dangerous consequences.
Chapter III Measures within the educational field Article 9. Incorporation of training regarding sexual and reproductive health into the education system. The education system shall contemplate the provision of training regarding sexual and reproductive health. e) The prevention of unplanned pregnancies. Article 10 Training activities. The public authorities shall support the educational community in carrying out training activities relating to sex education, the prevention of sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies, furnishing the appropriate information to the mothers and fathers. Chapter IV National Strategy for Sexual and Reproductive Health Article 11. Elaboration of a National Strategy for Sexual and Reproductive Health. In order to fulfil the objectives set out in this law, the State Government, in collaboration with the Regional Governments, shall implement a Plan, which shall be known as the National Strategy for Sexual and Reproductive Health.
The neo-language that characterises the Zapatero Project defines the concept of sexual and reproductive health in the following manner:
As reproduced in the Official State Gazette (BOE) 4.3.10: http://www.boe.es
57
Sexual health: a state of physical, psychological and socio-cultural well-being linked to sexuality, which requires an environment that is free from coercion, discrimination and violence. Reproductive health: a state of physical, psychological and socio-cultural well-being with regard to aspects linked to the reproductive capacity of an individual, which entails the possibility of a safe sex life, the freedom to have children and the freedom to decide when to have them.
This definition appears in what is known as the National Strategy for Sexual and Reproductive Health7, an initiative promoted in the year 2009 by the Socialist Government through the auspices of the Ministry of Health and Social Policy. This document, which is almost 200 pages long, does not feature a single mention of the terms child or baby, which are replaced with the term offspring. Thus, the text often makes reference to women and their offspring, but never to women and their children. This document clearly establishes the fact that reproductive health means abortion (one of the basic rights of women with regard to reproductive health consists of their right to information and their right to decide freely). It also makes it clear what these new sexual rights mean:
The concept of sexual rights is constantly evolving and being revised. Its conceptualisation is the result of a process that has emerged due to the demands of different social movements, such as international womens movements and international organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and LGBT groups (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals).8
With the precedents having been laid regarding the legitimacy of the sexual rights proposed by the Zapatero Project, the
7 Estrategia Nacional de Salud Sexual y Reproductiva, Ministry of Health and Social Policy, 2010. The entire document can be consulted at http://www.hazteoir.org/node/33479 8 Ibid.
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Strategy introduces a relativist approach from the very beginning, firmly applying its doctrine of destruction regarding reality and nature:
The concept of gender refers to the series of biological, physical, economic, social, psychological, erotic, political and cultural characteristics attributed to individuals according to their sex. Based on gender, a social construct emerges regarding what it means to be a man and a woman, one that varies over time and from one society to another, effectively building the idea of gender and producing the masculine and feminine dichotomy. Each culture defines what is normal and morally virtuous with regard to the sexual activity of individuals, their sexual options/orientations and their sexual practices.9
By applying the script followed by all of the other initiatives promoted by the Zapatero Project with mechanical precision, the Strategy then goes on to destroy the very foundations of society by questioning maternity and, consequently, the family:
The myth of maternal instinct, which is supposedly natural and intrinsic, predestines women to be mothers so that they subsequently grant priority to looking after the offspring they give birth to, although there is no equivalent correlation in the case of men. Maternity, and especially the practice of maternity, condition maternal consciousness. The myth of maternal instinct is a clear example of the use of biological facts (such as the uterus, pregnancy and childbirth) in order to confine women in relation to their reproductive function. Maternity is not a natural fact, given that the process of human procreation is mediated by cultural factors [...] Consequently, the ideology of maternity (Albite-Vlez & Valle-Ferrer, 2003; Golden, 1998) was constructed as an inducement for women to exercise a sense of sacrifice and self-denial in favour of the familys well-being, laying the foundations for womens oppression within the domestic,
Ibid.
59
private and public realms, as well as for the multiple forms of violence against women both inside and outside the home.10
The Strategy also offers a reward for those who apply themselves to the cause. For all those who accept the interference of the State under the sheets and with regard to their conscience, the Zapatero Project promises a secular heaven bursting with happiness and absolute pleasure:
We depart from an integral approach for the promotion of sexual health, one that guarantees the sexual rights of men and women and seeks to encourage change regarding gender bias, fostering, for example, the joint responsibility of individuals within sexual relations, irrespective of their sex and sexual options or orientations. That is to say, both men and women are responsible for promoting a satisfactory, pleasurable and egalitarian experience of sexuality.11
The National Strategy for Sexual and Reproductive Health was approved by the Zapatero Government and the Health Departments of the different Regional Governments, except for those governed by the Partido Popular, in October 2010. The text that emerged from the Inter-Territorial Council of the National Health System, that body that gave the go-ahead to the Strategy, offers a meticulously precise distinction between reproductive health and sexual health. Trinidad Jimnez, at that time Minister for Health, boasted of the alleged achievement:
For the first time in Spain, a distinction has been made between reproductive health and sexual health, in order to recognise the right to sexuality without reproduction. This initiative is born with the vocation to guarantee the sexual and reproductive rights of all citizens.12
10 11 12
Ibid. Ibid. http://www.religionenlibertad.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo=11583
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Instilling Destruction All of these initiatives, the Strategy, the Abortion Law of 2010 and the free distribution of the morning-after pill, have been enthusiastically applied to the education system, based on the idea that by controlling future citizens, you can control society. In this respect, the abortion policies and those relating to the sexual life of citizens promoted by Rodrguez Zapatero propose specific indoctrination measures at education centres catering for all ages, starting with infant schools and continuing up to university:
Within the field of education, sex education for infants and adolescents shall be promoted, in accordance with the level of development at each age, using a holistic perspective of sexuality and diversity as a point of reference. Channels of communication and cooperation with regard to the world of education shall be promoted in order to include the idea of sexual health, based on an integral and gender-aware perspective, in university studies, post-graduate studies and specialised education.13
The National Strategy for Sexual and Reproductive Health also details the assault on the world of university: abortion becomes teaching for medical students and students of other specialised fields linked to health. The Zapatero Project requires the unconditional surrender of our intelligence and will, as well as determining the manner in which professional activities are to be approached: The training of health professionals shall be undertaken from a gender-aware perspective and shall entail the incorporation of sexual and reproductive health into curricular programmes corresponding to careers relating to medicine and the health sciences, including research and training regarding clinical practices relating to the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.
Estrategia Nacional de Salud Sexual y Reproductiva, Ministry of Health and Social Policy, 2010.
13
WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT

THE BOY KNOWS HOW TO USE A CONDOM?
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The interference of the public authorities in the private lives of children and young people and the consequent meddling with their moral conscience has evolved into an apology for sexuality, in its capacity as an educational instrument. Every year since 2007, the Local Council of Elche, which is governed by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, organises the Diverse Festival of Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual, Bisexual and Inter-
This was the title of a workshop that took place this very academic year for a second-year class (Segundo de ESO) at a secondary school in Madrid, aimed at students of between 13 and 14 years of age. They are in the classroom, but there are no books or exercise books. The object of the exercise is for adolescents to learn how to develop their personalities and carry out a practical task. In order to do so, the tables are covered with an endless number of sealed condoms and a spectacular dildo. The boys, but above all the girls, giggling and joking, are required to unroll the condoms onto the dildo. The ultimate and true objective of the training is described in a digital school magazine with the following text: Hey girl! If he doesnt know how, youll have to be the one who knows, wont you? Why do they have to make the decision for you? What makes you think that the boy has kept the condom in good condition or knows how to use it?18
The training of professionals shall be undertaken based on a gender-aware perspective and shall include sexual and reproductive health on ongoing training programmes throughout the course of a professionals career. Maps of professional competences (knowledge, skills and attitudes) shall be created for different professional profiles with a view to incorporating sexual health aspects into health care practice, within the framework of this Strategy. Channels of communication and cooperation with regard to the world of education shall be promoted in order to include the idea of sexual health, based on an integral and gender-aware perspective, in university studies, post-graduate studies and specialised education.14
14
Ibid.
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sexual Culture15. The activities include workshops in primary and secondary schools throughout the town in order to teach children to accept sexual diversity and to come out of the closet. There are also storytelling sessions aimed at primary school children with titles such as Once Upon a Time a Child with Two Mummies, and workshops with headings such as To School without Closets. The coordinator of the Festival defines the event in the following manner:
We propose a new perspective in which the classroom ceases to be a homogeneous whole in order to reflect its entire affective-sexual diversity.
Couldnt it be that what you need is a good homosexual affair? is one of the slogans of the campaign with which the Local Council of Benicasim (PSOE) addresses the children of the town through its Youth Centre in order to mark what is known as the International Day Against Homophobia. Another slogan reads: Dont you think heterosexuality is just a passing phase youre going through?16. The campaign is aimed at young people of between 14 and 17 years of age. The Guide produced by the Ministries of Education and Health, Gaining Health in School: Guide on How to Achieve It17, which was published in 2009, defines the objectives of affective-sexual education: Integrating affective and sexual education into the curriculum at different educational levels. Using the condom in sexual relations.
http://www.hazteoir.org/node/30428 http://www.intereconomia.com/noticias-gaceta/sociedad/animan-ponersepiel-homosexual 17 Technical Secretariat at the Ministry of Education, Madrid, 2009: http://ww.msps.es/profesionales/saludPublica/prevPromocion/promocion/ saludJovenes/docs/ganarSaludEscuela.pdf
16 15
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Promoting a favourable environment for healthy attitudes regarding affective and sexual matters. Providing students with opportunities to explore their feelings and opinions regarding affective-sexual matters within a normalised context.18 With regard to the way in which this subject should tackled, the text declares:
Educational methods employ active learning strategies, as well as interactive teaching techniques, in order to help students learn. These promote the acquisition of knowledge, attitudes and skills, as well as the confidence required for the development of a satisfactory sexual identity and satisfactory affective relations.
The knowledge that must be imparted in Secondary Education refers to sexual identity and orientation. Primary Education involves the acquisition of other knowledge, including the following: Greater knowledge about ones own body. Greater knowledge about the characteristics and morphology of the genitals. Bonds between individuals and the relationships that arise as a result. Sexual behaviour as an intimate expression of affection. In addition to indoctrination tools such as this guide published under the paradoxical name of Gaining Health in School, the introduction of the subject Citizenship Education in September 2007 constituted a fundamental instrument for implanting the Zapatero Project within the education system at an early age. This is a subject that proposes to build a shared ethics, one based on the relativism of coincidental agreement. Once again here we come across the outrageous battle that the Zapatero Project is waging against nature,
18
Published in ABC, 24.5.10
64
which is replaces with unfinished historical conquests in the form of ever-changing and always relative human rights that are subject to extension or withdrawal according to the context. The regulatory premises for the subject offer us a key opportunity to understand the degree to which the Zapatero Project seeks to indoctrinate students within the educational field:
Acquisition of knowledge and reflection on human rights are also common, from the perspective of their historical nature, thus helping students to value the fact that they are not guaranteed by the existence of a Declaration, but that it is possible to extend or withdraw them according to the context.19
Poster of a pro-ETA trade union in the Manual for Citizenship Education, published by Ediciones del Serbal.
The Zapatero Project once again raises the idea here that it is the State that should determine truth and morality. Citizenship Education (EpC) talks about personal identity, about affectiveemotional education and about building a moral conscience.
Royal Decree 1631/2006, dated 29th December, which established the minimum teaching contents corresponding to Compulsory Secondary Education. Official State Gazette (BOE) dated 5.1.2007.
19
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Here we are dealing with the religion of the Zapatero Project, a religion based on the dogmas of relativism (there is no absolute truth), legal positivism (the laws passed by Parliament have no other external point of reference over and above the will of the legislator), secularism (religions are always a source of violence and regression) and gender ideology (the gender of each human being is not determined by nature, but is the product of an individual decision that is taken after experiencing all kinds of sexual relations):
The aim is to check whether political and moral pluralism is understood.20
Remember, my child, the market is everything.
Yes, Sister Free Competition.
Manual for Citizenship Education published by Ediciones del Serbal.
This political and moral pluralism is defined in the pages of the Official State Gazette (BOE), which becomes the holy book of the new religion, whose morality is shaped by political action. The will of the parties, as expressed through the well-known rig-
School subject known as Ethical-Civic Education, which is taught during the fourth year of Compulsory Secondary Education. Evaluation Criteria.
20
66
our of their parliamentary work, ensures that those who have a calling are precisely those who accept the decisions of their party leadership as constituting an expression of supreme will, the very same leadership echelons that close the doors on the public with their closed lists. As for the recalcitrant members of society who insist on resisting the States efforts to regulate peoples private lives, they are expelled from the progressive paradise and socially repudiated and condemned for seeking to guarantee that democratic power is restricted solely to the regulation of collective public affairs. Extremists, ultra-Conservatives, reactionaries and antidemocratic activists are just some of the names that the authorities attribute to those who believe that universal suffrage should end where individual conscience begins and, consequently, where the freedom of each individual comes into play. And the education system is the key means with which to bore through the wall of freedom constructed by individual conscience.
And who do you love the most? Mummy or Daddy?
Daddy and my two Mummies.
Manual for Citizenship Education published by Editorial Praxis.
Below we reproduce various texts taken from the regulatory decrees for the subject known as Citizenship Education:
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In order to achieve [an understanding of political and moral pluralism], a detailed focus shall be placed on principles of personal and social ethics. Focusing on ethical-civic education based on an ethical reflection that departs from the most familiar environments, in order to help create a civic moral conscience through an analysis of moral dilemmas. The analysis of moral dilemmas helps students to construct their own ethical judgements based on democratic values and practices.
Among the student evaluation criteria established for this subject, the Royal Decree for Secondary Education establishes the following:
Differentiation of the basic features that characterise individuals moral dimension (norms, the hierarchy of values, customs, etc.) and the main moral problems. With this criterion the aim is to evaluate whether they identify different aspects regarding the moral dimension of individuals and human behaviour, as well as the moral dilemmas that arise in the world today.
Through its teaching content, this subject inoculates students with gender-based ideology, in which respect the supposition of gender roles is considered to be nothing more than cultural stereotyping and sexist prejudice. The subject promotes the idea that gender is an identity that everyone can choose voluntarily. It advocates the idea, therefore, that all affective-sexual orientations are comparable:
Sometimes, people of one sex or another disagree with the gender identity that society assigns to them: they do not wish to fulfil the roles that socially apply to them as men and women. Neither is it very clear what being a boy or a girl exactly is. Socially it is believed that girls should like boys and boys should like girls; but, as you now, it doesnt always work that way.21
21
Manual for Citizenship Education published by Pearson Alhambra.
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The term gender refers to a cultural construction and, like all cultural aspects, it can be modified. It is clear, then, that the distinction regarding gender relations is not something that is either natural or biological, but something that is learned and, very often, imposed.22
According to Citizenship Education, the family is nothing more than a social construction, a kind of collective state of mind, one that is determined by the customs and practices of each age and one that can be modified at will.
The laudable aim of eradicating any form of discrimination pursued by this subject departs from an initial premise that contaminates its egalitarian ideas: the confusion between discrimination and difference. The gender-based ideology that impregnates the entire subject and its corresponding relativism lead to a rejection of any kind of difference. In the Citizenship Education Manual published by Octaedro, we can read the following:
It is common to hear the statement: Men and women are not the same, they are very different. Well this is an argument that justifies sexism.
22
Manual for Citizenship Education published by Algaida.
69
In order to address sex discrimination, it is necessary to eliminate stereotypes regarding men and women, because these are not true reflections of reality, but cultural beliefs that are invented and, therefore, false.
THEORY:
REGULATORY DECREES FOR CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION (EPC) PRACTICE: PLEASURE IS IN YOUR HANDS
The Ministry of Health regulates the obligation of all education centres to impart sex and reproductive education to their students. The persons responsible for imparting this training shall be from outside the centres and shall be designated by the Government, who shall determine who is qualified to teach this subject. Education centres shall not be able to appeal to their own philosophy in order to oppose this measure, which shall be under the control and supervision of the Government.
La Razn. Trujillo, Cceres. 13.11.09. Teresa Garca is a gender and equal opportunities trainer from the sex shop Los placeres de Lola (Lolas Pleasures). She is also responsible for imparting the workshop Pleasure Is in Your Hands among fourth-year secondary education students (ESO) in the town. The press has christened this activity the Masturbation Workshop: The Manual that was handed to the kids encouraged them to have a go at a homosexual experience and to compare ideas should they have any doubts about whether they are lesbians or not.
A Hippy Mother She believes that young people should gradually acquire responsibilities and learn to make their own mistakes. Suppressing young people is counterproductive, given that it forms the basis of family conflict.
A Traditional Father His children have very strictly defined timetables. Discipline is very important, as is complying with the rules. He tries to instil a sense of responsibility in them and believes that there is nothing good out on the streets at night. What is more, what they can do at night they can do during the day.
Manual for Citizenship Education published by Editorial Santillana.
Natural differences (man-woman) are denounced in the name of tolerance, because they are considered to be forms of discrimi-
70
nation (social and gender-based division of labour). According to the Ministry of Education, students of Citizenship Education (EpC) must learn:
To carry out a critical evaluation of social and gender-based division of labour and racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist and homophobic social prejudices. To identify and reject, through an analysis of real and figurative cases, examples of discrimination against persons of different origin, gender, ideology, religion, affective-sexual orientation and others.23
Manual for Citizenship Education published by Editorial Akal.
Religious beliefs are discarded, being relegated to what the law describes as private morality, in which respect they are consigned to the hidden realm of our private lives. Tolerance regarding different religious alternatives is encouraged, but this sense of tolerance
23 Educacin para la Ciudadana y derechos humanos, Block 2 (InterPersonal Relations and Participation). Official State Gazette (BOE) dated 8.1.07. Secondary Education Decree.
71
is based on the idea that those who profess such beliefs should not make them public.
Yes, but weve certainly learned what In Russia we capitalism is soon never really knew what enough. Communism is.
Indoctrination regarding the morality of the new State religion is accompanied by political indoctrination. The contents of this school subject contain elements of a political and even party-based nature, which are as subjective and prone to manipulation as the following:
A study of the factors of discrimination regarding different groups, an analysis of globalisation, the concept of global citizenship, sustainable human development and all aspects relating to cooperation and the development of a culture of peace. Discovery of the causes that lead to human rights violations, poverty and inequality, as well as the relationship between armed conflicts and under-development, evaluating measures aimed at achieving peace and security and active participation as a means of creating a fairer world. During this stage, various contents shall be included relating to the measures undertaken by international bodies and those
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movements, organisations and forces that work to promote human rights and peace.24
According to the provisions set out by the Ministry of Education, the following criteria should be applied in order to evaluate students:
Identification of the characteristics of globalisation and the role that the media plays in this respect, recognising the relations that exist between the society in which we live and the life of peoples in other parts of the world.
You see? That thing that hurts there is the West.
When the legislative theory of education is translated into practice, the picture reflects the indoctrinatory foundations of the Zapatero Project in all its crude reality. What follows is a selection of texts taken from different Citizenship Education Manuals:
Royal Decree 1631/2006, dated 29th December, which established the minimum teaching contents corresponding to Compulsory Secondary Education. Official State Bulletin (BOE) dated 5.1.2007.
24
73
Write a composition under the following title: if I am selfemployed, why do they have to force me to do what I dont want to? (Editorial McGraw Hill) In 1789 the French Revolution ended the period of absolutist government, returned power to the people and introduced a regime based on equality and individual freedoms known as Liberalism. In 1917, another revolution, in Russia, brought down the tsars, returned power to the people and introduced a regime based on equality and individual freedoms known as Socialism. In both cases, but in different ways, the old idea of democracy invented many centuries earlier by the Greeks, was reborn. (Ediciones del Serbal) During the twentieth century, the rights that had been gained were consolidated and extended until they encompassed aspects of private life, such as the right of abortion. (Editorial Octaedro) Each person can proceed differently (some prefer vaginal intercourse and others lean towards other kinds of relations: this person adorns the act with dreams and fantasies, whilst that person is less imaginative, etcetera). (Editorial McGraw Hill) In your relationships with people from different generations to your own (for example, without your parents or grandparents), they very often tell you how you should do things, or whether you should do certain things or not; in short, they give you orders. (Editorial Bruo) Dad, tell me that lovely story again about how they killed that guerrilla leader in Bolivia [Ernesto Che Guevara] and how everything has seemed more ugly since that day ... (Editorial Praxis) All of which culminated around the mid-nineteenth century with the creation of the notion of social justice. Among the most outstanding thinkers, activists and revolutionaries in those organisations, we might mention the Frenchmen, Fourier and Proudhon, the Englishman, Owen, and the German thinkers, Marx and LaSalle. (Editorial McGraw Hill) Coexistence of civilisations, clash or alliance? It seems that we are merely destined to see history repeating itself. But we
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can also attempt to change the course of history. Since the late twentieth century, a series of proposals channelled through the United Nations has advocated an alliance between the West and the Muslim world in order to combat international terrorism through means other than military methods: especially by means of cultural dialogue and the correction of economic inequalities. (Ediciones del Serbal) Sexually, we are male and female. However, culturally, every historical period has adopted a model for male behaviour and a model for female behaviour. In traditional patriarchal societies, the roles were very strictly defined. This model was discriminatory with regard to women and, therefore, unjust. (Editorial SM) The greatest threat that has ever been posed to the survival of the family is, precisely, capitalism. (Editorial Akal) It is essential for young people to rebel against more mature people. If they did not, they would simply imitate them and society would fail to progress. (Editorial McGraw Hill) Following the format that appears in other modern constitutions, the Spanish Constitution consists of: a Preamble, whose drafting, a prime example of clarity and concise expression, is the work of Enrique Tierno Galvn, Mayor of Madrid. (Editorial Bruo) The United States and Soviet Russia imposed their democratic models and engaged in a tense period of relations known as the Cold War. (Ediciones del Serbal) The Lower House of Spains Parliament has passed the Education Act with the PP voting against it. (Editorial Bruo) There are cases in which affective-sexual identity does not correspond to biological gender. For example, a transsexual woman is a person who feels like a woman trapped in a mans body. This conflict sometimes leads to a difficult process of gender reallocation in order to achieve a sense of harmony between the persons body and psychological identity. (Editorial Pearson) The detractors of globalisation anti-globalisation activists argue that, as we become more globalised, the rich earn
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more and the poor are left worse off. As evidence to support their case, they quote objective data provided by numerous international organisations to the effect that inequality is increasing throughout the planet. (Ediciones del Serbal) There is only one country in the world that features development that is acceptable and universally applicable at the same time: Cuba. (Editorial Akal) The greatest triumph of youth was witnessed in the late 1960s. May 1968 has remained as a symbolic date for the commencement of a profound shift in the way in which we understand life. (Editorial McGraw Hill) Today, global neo-Liberalism seeks to turn the clock back to less State intervention: liberalising and privatising public goods and services, threatening their quality and survival where they already exist (developed countries) and making it impossible for them to emerge where they do not (underdeveloped countries). And it is the underprivileged who once again pay the consequences. (Ediciones del Serbal) With the subjects Citizenship Education and Sciences for the Contemporary World (which is taught during the two-year preuniversity course known as Bachillerato), the Zapatero Project takes away another prerogative that corresponds to society: the family ceases to be the natural context in which training and education takes place and the State becomes the only authority with the right to educate citizens regarding moral matters. And this is the case even if it entails educational failure and the sectarian manipulation of generations of Spaniards. Of course, the Government imposes the subject of Citizenship Education in an entirely totalitarian manner on all Spanish children and adolescents without exception:
There shall be no conscientious objection with regard to Citizenship Education.25
25
Francisco Caamao, Minister for Justice, in Europa Press, 12.8.09.
VI
Towards a New Form of Totalitarianism
The Zapatero Project, which implemented its first effective measures following PSOEs victory in the parliamentary elections of 2004, has been persistently imposed since then by means of different instruments and at different rates of application. During the first legislature, between 2004 and 2008, the Zapatero Project underwent an initial preparatory phase in the Lower House of Spains Parliament with the creation and consolidation of quasi-client-based networks for the provision of parliamentary support. Following this period, the Government began to lay the key pillars of its Project by passing some of its most emblematic laws. When it came to looking for parliamentary support in order to force his project through, Rodrguez Zapatero had no compunction in placing everything he had at his disposal on sale. And, thus, after decimating the States economic resources, he began to lay his hands on its structures, the object of desire of the nationalist parties, whose desire to deconstruct the Nation is as great as their desire for money. In exchange for parliamentary support, the Zapatero Project has distributed the States resources in a discriminate manner by amending the Financing Law for the Regional Governments and the General State Budget. However, it has also begun to divide up the
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State itself in the face of nationalist demands. In this respect, from its Catalonian base it has exchanged support for its goals in the Lower House of Parliament for a drafting of the Statute of Catalonia that has effectively undermined the Constitutional Court. The State Government and the Regional Government of Catalonia have, thus, aroused identity-based tensions and placed the countrys very institutional stability at risk. During his first legislature and with the support of minority groups and radical left-wing and secessionist groups, Rodrguez Zapatero managed to pass Parliamentary Acts such as the Education Act (2006) and the Act for Effective Equality between Men and Women (2007), as well as the reform of various Regional Government Statutes, pieces of legislation that members of the public failed to understand and that did not correspond to their needs. As of the year 2008, during the Governments second legislature, the Zapatero Project has passed a new package of legislative measures required to make its ultimate goals a reality, effectively attempting to undertake a far-reaching transformation of the structures that sustain our society by means of the application of the laws approved during the first term in office. Milestones of this second phase of the Zapatero Project consist of the Act for Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy, which entered into effect on 5th July 2010, and an attempt to pass a new Religious Freedom Act in order to prohibit or restrict public expressions of faith. However, furthermore, during its second term, the Zapatero Project has begun to apply the legislation that was passed during the first legislature relating to education and the family, in which respect the Government has applied various direct enforcement measures (regulations, laws) and indirect measures (advertising, the media). The family has now become the target of the Project, because it is within the heart of the family that the culture, identity and roots that form the foundations of our civilisation are naturally manifested and it is in the family that children, societys future citizens, acquire the skills needed to resist the assaults orchestrated by those in power.
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Nevertheless, whilst Rodrguez Zapateros plans to transform Spanish society and turn the countrys identity on its head have not encountered any great resistance in the Lower House of Parliament, the situation is quite different in families and on the streets. This is where the Zapatero Project has had to take on extra work, a task it had never predicted would be so costly in terms of time and resources: societys reaction.
The Awakening of Civil Activism Since Rodrguez Zapatero assumed the reins the power, various sections of society have sounded the alarm regarding the Prime Ministers plans. The much-increased activity of the few civil forums and associations that existed in 2004 and the appearance of many other civil groups since then, provide a good example of the social reaction that that has resulted from Zapateros attempt to impose his project on Spanish society. Numerous members of society have felt that both their identity and values have been attacked by the initiatives undertaken by Rodrguez Zapatero. What is more, in the face of resistance, the Project has radicalised its approach, seeking to close ranks around the most extreme sections of the Left in order to create an unbreakable bond with the Project embodied by the General Secretary of PSOE. As the Zapatero Project progressed during the Governments first term in office, something quite new occurred in Spain: members of Spanish society, traditionally rather individualistic and reluctant to organise themselves collectively or to join movements and associations, began to swell the ranks of the civil organisations who proposed the most active measures to counter the destructive initiatives undertaken by Rodrguez Zapateros PSOE. The impact made by the association, HazteOir.org (HO), and its Right to Live forum, Derecho a Vivir (DAV), is a shining example in this respect. In March 2009, just four months after it was founded, with a deadline of just two weeks and without using any other communication media except for the Internet, DAV was ca-
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pable of bringing half a million people out onto the streets of Madrid, in addition to several hundred thousand others throughout the rest of the provincial capitals around Spain, in order to protest against Rodrguez Zapateros abortionist project. The growth of the civil movement opposed to the Zapatero Project has also been facilitated by a section of society that feels especially aggrieved with the Socialist Government: the victims of terrorism. During the Socialist Governments negotiations with ETA during the first legislature, the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT), headed at that time by Francisco Jos Alcaraz, became the main point of reference regarding civil protests against the States complicity with regard to terrorism. AVT managed to bring out hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets on a number of occasions behind the flag of civil rebellion. The direct democratic participation and mobilisation methods used by AVT helped to break the somewhat conformist attitudes witnessed among wideranging sections of Spanish society in recent years, behavour typical of individuals accustomed to living on the margins of political life.
The Zapatero Project Chooses Its Bulls Eye Alongside an active and constantly-growing civil protest movement, the most solid resistance to the Zapatero Project has come from a different realm: the Catholic Church. In order to tackle the growing wave of rejection aroused by the Zapatero Project, the Government has employed a strategy that is as predictable as it is simple: it has selected, from among all the objectors to its plans, those who are most liable to keep the most radical sections of the left-wing electorate up at nights. And the chosen target, the institution enthroned as the enemy of freedom, is the Church, followed not far behind by the Partido Popular. The spokesmen of the Zapatero Project are unable to recognise that an increasingly wide section of society rejects its plans. Quite the contrary, in fact; everything comes down to the cavern, a kind
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of ultra-right-wing conspiracy, impregnated with who-knows-what Francoist throwbacks, organised by Catholic bishops and the Partido Popular. Every time citizens populate the streets in order to say No to the Zapatero Project, the declarations of the members of the Socialist Government and PSOEs leaders accuse the Spanish Episcopal Conference and the Partido Popular of hindering the countrys progress, ignoring the fact that this civil protest is coming from Spanish society itself, constituting a phenomenon that is as new in our collective life as it is exemplary. The Catholic Church has not had to do anything in particular to become the bulls eye for the invective that has been thrown by the supporters of the Zapatero Project: all it has done is to remind the faithful of the principles on which their faith is founded. In November 2006, the Spanish Episcopal Conference published a series of pastoral instructions entitled Moral Guidance Regarding the Current Situation in Spain.1 The purpose of this document was to provide believers with a series of key recommendations in order to maintain the integrity of the faith and the coherence of Christian life. On the front of the document, Spains bishops recalled that a moral consideration of the affairs of public life, far from constituting a threat of any kind to democracy, is an indispensable requirement for the exercise of freedom and the establishment of justice. Throughout the document, the Spanish Church reiterates the idea that it is not attempting to impose anything, nor claiming a leading role or any kind of privilege. It is simply offering its point of view to Catholics and to whomever else wishes to listen, as just another contribution to collective life. The most common message repeated throughout the text consists of a desire to search for agreement between the documents authors, representatives of the feelings expressed by wide-ranging sections of Spanish society, and those who disagree with their stance based on secular ideas, individuals who are not discredited at any point:
http://goo.gl/laZKY
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On some points we Catholics and secularists have different points of view. Our desire is to gradually discover a just arrangement in which all of us can live according to our convictions, without anyone seeking to impose their points of view on others by disloyal and unjust means. Within this context, we Catholics simply ask for respect for our identity and the freedom to announce, through the ordinary channels, the message of Christ as the universal Saviour, within a climate of tolerance and harmony, without privileges or discrimination of any kind. We express our will and the will of all Catholics to live in the heart of society by loyally fulfilling our civil obligations, offering the spiritual wealth of the gifts we have received from the Lord, these constituting an important contribution to peoples well-being and the enrichment of lifes spiritual, cultural and moral legacy. We respect those who see things differently. We only ask for freedom and respect when it comes to living in accordance with our convictions and freely proposing our way of seeing things, without anyone feeling threatened or interpreting our presence as an offence or a threat to the freedom of others. We sincerely wish to collaborate in the spiritual enrichment of our society, in consolidating justice and harmony and freedom, these being the essential foundations of true peace. We offer the fruits of our reflections and judgement to members of the Church and to all those who would listen to us, freely sharing all of our fears and hopes with others. We once again declare our desire to live in harmony within this society by loyally respecting its democratic institutions, acknowledging the legitimate authorities, obeying just laws and cooperating specifically in order to further the common good. Nobody need fear any assault or disloyalty from Catholics with regard to democratic life.2
The document, Moral Guidance Regarding the Current Situation in Spain, analyses the approaches adopted by secular forces and emphasises the fact that, in political practice, the aim is not to pro-
Orientaciones morales sobre la situacin actual de Espaa, Spanish Episcopal Conference, 2006.
2
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tect the just autonomy of the present order, but to do away with God in our vision and evaluation of the world. One consequence of this process is a sense of contempt towards believers:
Any reference to God is considered to be a sign of deficiency with regard to intellectual maturity and the full exercise of freedom. Some sections seek to exclude Catholics from public life and speed up secular trends and the acceptance of moral relativism as the only mentality compatible with democracy.
The Church has highlighted the goal of some secularists to be absolute owners of everything, to direct our lives and the life of society according to our taste [...], as if we were the true creators of the world and of ourselves, thus turning freedom into the supreme standard of good and evil. This text, which was harshly criticized by the Socialist Party, was duly misrepresented as an attempt on the part of the bishops to meddle in politics, a field considered by secularists as being sacrosanct and the sole preserve of Parliament and those who are instructed to serve there, namely politicians appointed directly by the party leaderships and only indirectly by members of the public. The Moral Guidance certainly does address political questions, which are tackled in accordance with the criteria mentioned above. These matters basically refer to a rupture of the spirit of tolerance that the Spanish bishops believe to have characterised the Transition period:
Many hoped that the democratic arrangement for a harmonious society, as governed by the Constitution of 1978, and based on the reconciliation and consensus of all Spaniards, would enable us to go beyond the old confrontations that have divided and impoverished our nation, one of which undoubtedly consisted of the clash between Catholicism and secularism, understood as ways of life that are exclusivist and incompatible. And such a development may well have occurred. However, we are sorry to observe today how a sense of rejection and distrust regarding the Church and the Catholic religion has re-emerged in recent years and in a somewhat more radi-
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cal and far-reaching manner than a mere return to the old anticlericalism.
The statement most susceptible to being interpreted as Church interference within the field of politics is one that mentions something that is somewhat obvious, namely the need for believers to vote in general elections in accordance with their principles:
Before supporting one option or another with their vote, Catholics and those citizens who wish to act responsibly must evaluate the different political manifestos, bearing in mind the importance that each party, each programme and each leader grants to the moral dimension of life. They must also consider the moral justification of their ideas and programmes.
Eduardo Sotillos responded to this statement in the following manner in the Socialist organ, Fundacin Sistema:
The Government is proving to be eminently respectful in the face of the stepped-up campaign being waged by an effective propaganda apparatus that is fighting against it ferociously. This is undoubtedly what is must and should do, but it would be suicidal to close ones eyes to this belligerent attitude and fail to formulate an appropriate response.3
From the PSOE group known as Cristianos Socialistas (Christian Socialists), the Federal Coordinator, Carlos Garca de Andoan, declared the following to Europa Press:
As opposed to an evangelical or specifically Christian approach, a conservative current of thought exists. There is a group of bishops that has decided to help the PP regain power.4
3 4
http://www.fundacionsistema.com/News/ItemDetail.aspx?id=403 http://goo.gl/ZxB2V
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Jos Blanco, Organisation Secretary at PSOE at the time, declared on the eve of the general elections in 2008 that nothing will be the same afterwards [after the elections] regarding the relations between the Catholic hierarchy and the Government, and he then went on to threaten the Church with financial strangulation5. Blanco stated that the time had come to turn words into actions and to take definitive steps regarding the financial state of the Church. This active member of the Socialist leadership omitted to mention the fact that the money he was referring to did not belong to PSOE, but to members of society who freely choose to hand it over to the Church.
Religious freedom must have limits [...] It must conform to the logic of this society [...] We must regulate religious freedom, but also freedom of conscience.6
The programme that has resulted from the Zapatero Projects attempts to confront the Church has focused on expelling the latter from the public arena. In this respect, the Zapatero Project seeks to eradicate all moral references from collective life, to the point at which the morality of the State is the only kind that persists. In order to do this, the Zapatero Project has designed a new product, one that is half ideology and half State morality: the National Plan for the Alliance of Civilisations. This Plan employs various different instruments: the Pluralism and Harmonious Coexistence Foundation, the Observatory for Cultural and Religious Pluralism and the Bill for a new Religious Freedom Law. Through all of these channels it seeks to extend the ideologicalmoral ideas of the Alliance of Civilisations among young people, attempting to promote more minority confessions in order to place them on an equal footing with the Catholic faith and, above all, re-
El Mundo, 4.2.08: http://goo.gl/SHlBY Francisco Caamao, Minister for Justice, at the Summer Courses of El Escorial, 2009: http://www.publico.es/espana/238520/caamano/dice/limitar/ libertad/religiosa
6 5
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stricting the freedom of movement of believers of all confessions and, in particular, that of Catholics. All of these measures, whose ultimate goal is to replace religious morality with progressive values, seek to remove religion from public life in accordance with the Zapatero Project, associating it with negative values (intransigence, intolerance, irrationality, violence, fanaticism) and reducing its influence to strictly private realms.
A Single Truth, A Single Will The document produced by the Spanish Episcopal Conference entitled Moral Guidance Regarding the Current Situation in Spain was issued on 23rd November 2006. A few days later, on 4th December, PSOE responded with a text entitled Constitution, Laicityand Citizenship Education7, which the Socialists presented as a commemorative manifesto of the Twenty-Eighth Anniversary of the Constitution. This document consisted of a direct blow-for-blow response to the declarations of the Episcopal Conference and clearly sought to take the Church on. Where the Church invoked the spirit of reconciliation enshrined in the Constitution of 1978, PSOE linked the current period of constitutional legality with the Second Republic, a period of ill-fated recollection within the history of Spain in general and for Catholics in particular. The central argument of the manifesto Constitution, Laicityand Citizenship Education is based on the idea of laicidad or laicity, a word that cannot be found in the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy (RAE) and that the Zapatero Project uses to distance itself from the correct term: laico, meaning lay or secular (independent of any religious organisation or confession). As part of a new exercise in neo-language, the term laicity distorts the mean-
This document can be read on the web site of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE): http://www.psoe.es/download.do?id=53720
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ing of the term from which it originates in order to shift from independent of a religious confession to subjection of a religious confession.
MORAL GUIDANCE REGARDING THE
CURRENT SITUATION IN SPAIN
CONSTITUTION, LAICITY AND

CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
Many hoped that the democratic arrangement for a harmonious society, as governed by the Constitution of 1978, and based on the reconciliation and consensus of all Spaniards, would enable us to go beyond the old confrontations that have divided and impoverished our nation. Spain is being invaded by a way of life in which any reference to God is considered to be a sign of deficiency with regard to intellectual maturity and the full exercise of freedom. We live in a world in which an atheist understanding of existence is gaining ground: if God exists, I am not free; if I am free I cannot acknowledge the existence of God. It is not a question of recognising the just autonomy of the present order, replete with its institutions and procedures, something that is entirely compatible with the Christian faith and even directly favoured and encouraged by it. It is rather a question of exercising the will to do away with God.
The Constitution of 1978, together with the Constitution of 1931, represent the highest expressions in the history of the Spanish nation of the peoples will to live under a democratic regime.
Our basic legislation lays the foundations for the development of another kind of diversity: that which derives from the free and plural exercise of the right to freedom of conscience on the part of all citizens.
It is essential to recall and reaffirm the value of a constitutional principle, that of Laicity, which emerges as the ideal framework and guarantee for freedom of conscience, this being a key requirement for freedom and equality.
Laicity entails the creation of a pseudo-religion of the State that binds all citizens and subordinates and confines religion to the private realm of each individual:
Monotheistic or religious fundamentalism creates barriers between citizens. Laicity is a space for Integration [with a capital in the original]. Without laicity there would be no [sic] new citizen rights, certain freedoms such as the voluntary interruption of pregnancy would be civil crimes, as would marriage between persons of
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the same sex ... and crimes such as female abuse, ablation and sex discrimination would cease to be so. Without laicity it would be difficult to avoid the proliferation of forms of behaviour that are contrary to the formation of free and critical consciences and the cultivation of civil virtues.8
The Zapatero Project, thus, sets up the target and we have our enemy of freedom: religion causes ablation, segregation, barriers, it sends people to prison, subverts rights, curtails freedom and ends virtue. Now lets take another step forward and exalt the new religion of the State, laicity, which consecrates and protects all the values that religion suffocates: The only will and sovereignty is that of citizenship.9 There is no truth other than that which is determined by the State through the established power, which is theoretically controlled by citizens, although they have no voice other than that of the delegations that represent them, and only to accept or reject a list every four years that is neither chosen nor drawn up by them. There are few documents in which the essence of the Zapatero Project is so clearly illustrated: power is truth. And those who have power, embody the truth. And so would you believe it? relativism does encompass an absolute truth after all. And in considerable measure too! In this respect, the Zapatero Project contributes no greater sense of originality than its sheer brazenness, the relaxed way in which, at the dawn of the third millennium, it simply dusts off stale old theories, such as those preached by Hegel when he stated that the State, inasmuch as it is the actuality of the substantial will, is rationality in itself and for itself. Conceptions of this kind opened the door to the deformed ideological manifestations of the nineteenth century, such as racism, nationalism and Marxism, not to mention the totalitarian aberrations of the twentieth century, including
8 9
Ibid. Ibid.
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Communism, National Socialism and fascism. This is the same ideological undercurrent, the same destructive and millenarian conception of civilization as that which is being presented in newlypolished form under the Zapatero Project. In 1919, at the Sverdlov Communist University, Lenin pronounced a phrase in which, if we substitute the original terms that are most obsolete (those that appear in brackets) with the customary terms used in contemporary left-wing discourse (those that appear in italics), we come across some curiously familiar echoes:
We have deprived the Right (the capitalists) of this machine and we have taken it over. We shall use this machine, or bludgeon, to destroy all inequality (exploitation).10
After turning the State into the exclusive point of reference with regard to truth, all realities must necessarily bend to its will. If the State constitutes the only will, the first step that the citizen must take is to join it, unless he prefers to remain outside the system, in the difficult terrain of civil death. The supreme duty of each individual, declared Hegel, is to be a member of the State. And Mussolini agreed: Everything inside the State, nothing outside the State. Fidel Castro would go on to parody him by declaring: Everything inside the Revolution, nothing outside the Revolution. The consequence of this exaltation of the State, in its role as the sole embodiment of will and truth, is that every citizen must acquire that will and that truth. The Zapatero Project does not call this indoctrination, but civil education:
One of the most important challenges facing the public authorities after twenty-eight years of constitutional government, is to contribute to the training of free, active and committed consciences with a minimum shared constitutional ethics.11
10 In Los fundamentos del leninismo: http://goo.gl/iaBnc. Also in the Marxists Internet Archive: http://ww.marxists.org 11 Manifesto Constitucin, Laicidad y Educacin para la Ciudadana: http://www.psoe.es/download.do?id=53720
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The Zapatero Project, with its exaltation of parliamentary majorities as the only legitimate source of truth, constitutes the model in our time of what Jacob Talmon called political messianism in his analysis of totalitarianism in democratic systems12. And in the definition that Friedrich A. Hayek offers us of the corruption that prevails in democratic regimes, we can easily find recognisable echoes in Spanish political life since Rodrguez Zapatero came to power:
For two centuries, from the end of absolute monarchy to the rise of unlimited democracy, the great aim of constitutional government had been to limit all governmental powers. The chief principles gradually established to prevent the arbitrary exercise of power were the separation of powers, the sovereignty of law and government under the law. All these great liberal principles were given second rank and half forgotten when it came to be believed that democratic control of government made unnecessary any other safeguards against the arbitrary use of power.13
When a State establishes itself as the ultimate ethical authority whose provisions must necessarily be fulfilled, it, in fact, takes on the same sacred character as that of the pagan States that existed prior to Christianity. The Christian maxim Give to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is Gods establishes conscience as the limit to the authority of political power. The distinction between the realm of the State or politics and the religious realm made the very idea of freedom possible that triumphed throughout the West for centuries. As Benedict XVI has stated, the growth of freedom that Mankind owes to the martyrs is infinitely greater than the one that revolutionaries could obtain for it.14
Jacob Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London, 1952. Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Chicago, 1973. 14 Papal address to the International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists, 29.10.07: http://es.catholic.net/laicos/622/2706/articulo.php?id=33685
13 12
VII
Destruction of the Family
The great obstacle that the Zapatero Project comes up against when it comes to subverting our values and collective identity consists of the family. The family institution represents the very antithesis of the social and cultural destruction that the Zapatero Government is attempting to impose upon us. The family brings together all of the elements that the Zapatero Project must destroy in order to achieve its objectives. The family constitutes an unbreakable barrier against relativism and the erosion of individual freedom, against the attempt to replace personal values with the will of the State, and against laicity in its capacity as a structure for imposed values. Its foundations, which consist of values that are passed on from generation to generation, its absolute sovereignty within the realm of beliefs, the different roles allocated to each of its members, its capacity to withstand undesired pressures and influences ... everything makes the family a veritable bastion, one that the Zapatero Project needs to subjugate as soon as possible: if it does not manage to do so, the Project itself will succumb. And faced with the fact that it is impossible to bend the family to its will and make it serve its own interests, the Zapatero Project has decided to destroy it. The greatest efforts made by the Zapatero Project are aimed at bringing about the destruction of the natural family, a term that is viewed in a rather poor light today, but one that perfectly defines
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everything that Zapatero seeks to eliminate: something that characterises this institution and that in every culture and in every civilisation throughout the course of history has constituted the key engine for the progress of Mankind. The process chosen to bring about the destruction of the family structure is two-fold. On the one hand, the Zapatero Project proposes what it calls new families, structures that have nothing to do with the family, but which appropriate the name. And on the other, it creates a legal instrument that is easy to handle and is capable of wreaking rapid destruction. When you change the constituent parts that make up a piece of music, it ends up sounding different. It would be difficult to identify Hey Jude by Paul McCartney if it were performed with the instruments used for Bachs Magnificat. The Zapatero Project seeks to directly destroy the very concept of family by changing its ingredients: changing marriage, man and woman, the very foundation of the family, by introducing the homosexual couple. But it preserves the same name: marriage. Because it seeks to alter precisely what the name represents. Homosexual marriage does not seek to bring about any socalled extension of rights, as the Governments official line argues ad infinitum. It is not a question of granting greater civil rights to homosexual couples, because the corresponding political will to do so and the corresponding measures would be sufficient for this. The Zapatero Project aims to go further and, in this respect, it appropriates the word and the institution that defines the essential basis of the family. Legal regulation of what are known as common-law marriages has existed at Spains local councils and in its regions since the 1990s, long before Rodrguez Zapateros arrival on the scene. In fact, twelve Spanish Regions have laws relating to common-law marriages (Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Catalonia, Extremadura, Madrid, Navarre, the Basque Country and the Valencian Region). This legislation grants the partners who make up such marriages rights similar to those provided by marriage, although a legal distinction is
DESTRUCTION OF THE FAMILY
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preserved between the marriage institution and de facto marriages. Although he recognised that this issue did not form part of my political priorities in March 2004, even before he became Prime Minister, Rodrguez Zapatero declared that he wanted to give the same rights to homosexual couples as those granted to married couples. In order to do so, it would have been sufficient to pass a piece of common-law marriage legislation of national scope in order to bring these rights together. However, this was not enough, because the political priority of the Zapatero Project is to destroy the structure of the natural family. In this sense, it is not so much the catalogue of rights that is granted to homosexual couples, nor the legislative time-periods contemplated, nor even the provisions of the law itself, but the terminology employed that is important. For the Zapatero Project, the essential aspect of Law 13/2005, which amends the Civil Code in relation to the right to contract matrimony1, is that the cohabitation agreement between homosexual couples should be called marriage and that their union should be known as a family. It makes little difference whether the ingredients or the structure or the characteristic features of this union have anything to do with matrimony and family. Having modified the ingredients of the only social formula that has guaranteed Mankinds progress and the development of civilisation to date, the Project then moves on to the next stage, the creation of an instrument designed to wreak rapid destruction: it is essential to turn divorce into yet another consumer product. If you type express divorce into any search engine on the Internet, an endless number of advertisements appear, such as the following:
Express Divorce. Find out more without any commitment. Catering for the whole of Spain, online and in situ. Maximum speed, maximum savings. RAPID because you do not have to fill out any forms, simply call us. You can also send us an electronic mail.
Official State Gazette (BOE), dated 2.7.05: http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/ 2005/07/02/pdfs/ A2363223634.pdf

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Express Divorce: 200. All Included. With Children, 225. Rigorous, Effective and Rapid. Request your express divorce from wherever you are and when it suits you best. Express Divorce: 440. All included. Your divorce agreement in just 24 hours. Divorces with children or property, 490.
N Divorces (Spain)
Source: Institute for Family Policies (IPF).
Express Divorce has become a profitable trading name. The Divorce Amendment Law2, which entered into force in 2005, removed the period of reflection, that is to say, the time that elapses before the divorce becomes effective. It also consolidated the unilateral nature of break-ups: the will of one of the parties became enough for the bond to be broken, whether or not the other party was in agreement, which brings this regulation dangerously close to the concept of repudiation. Express divorce also means that it is no longer necessary to cite any allegations in order to end a marriage. With this legal instrument, divorce has become an ordinary procedure for the resolution of matrimonial crisis. In fact, at present, it is easier to di-
Official State Gazette (BOE), dated 9.7.05: http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2005/07/09/pdfs/ A2445824461.pdf

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vorce someone in Spain (ie. break a marriage contract) than to break, for example, a job contract or a property lease agreement. In Spain there are more than 1,700,000 divorcees, which represents some 4.5 per cent of society as a whole. Since express divorce came into effect, the number of break-ups has increased by 140 per cent. Before the law was passed, divorce was an option chosen by 40 per cent of couples who ended their marriage. Today some 93 per cent choose divorce. A divorce takes place every 4 minutes in Spain and 15 marriages break up every hour. Some 359 families are broken apart each day. Between 2005 and 2008, 487,000 divorces took place. Nearly 100,000 children witness the break-up of their families each year.3 Together with de-naturalisation and legal destruction of marriage and the invention of the right to adoption on the part of homosexual couples, the divorce law amendment has served as an effective means of destroying the nature of the family. However, in order to enhance its effectiveness, the Zapatero Project has not hesitated to resort to multiple procedures in order to make the new model socially acceptable or even fashionable, whilst reducing the status of the natural family. Advertising, the manipulation of reality carried out by political parties and the work of the media have all served as channels with which to encourage society to accept the new family model that the Zapatero Project is keen to impose.
An Exercise in Political Manipulation When the Catalonian Regional Government requested to form part of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) on 24th October 2007, the Tri-Partite Government (PSC-PSOE, ERC and IU-LV) was perfectly aware of what it was doing. The Catalonian Regional Government did not consider it to be any kind of obstacle the fact that no region in the world, no city,
Institute for Family Policies (IPF), Evolucin de la Familia en Espaa, 2010: http://www.ipfe.org/Informe_Evolucion_Familia_Espana_2010.pdf
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local council, province, department, district, local area, Federal State, country, confederation, nor any other territorial organisation, has ever formed part of ILGA, an international lobby group that promotes the privileges of lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, transsexuals and intersex (sic) persons in the political realm. It did not serve as any kind of impediment either that the NGO Committee of the United Nations Economic and Social Council should have recommended the Member States not to grant consultative status to ILGA. The reason for this recommendation was based on the fact that this organisation encompasses bodies for the defence of pederasty, which it conceals under the euphemistic heading of inter-generational love. None of these facts served as any kind of impediment when it came to the Catalonian Regional Government joining the International Lesbian and Gay Association. This was because the objective of the Socialists, Republicans and Communists who made up the Tri-Partite Government was not to draw attention to a highly eccentric decision, nor even to woo the support of a small number of eventual voters. The aim was to consolidate the foundations of the Zapatero Project in Catalonia. And in this region, attacks on the family institution have always been one step ahead with regard to those perpetrated throughout the rest of Spain. In 2006, the Catalonian Regional Government presented its Plan to Prevent Discrimination Against Homosexuals and Transsexuals, a programme that began with a budget of 90,000 euros. This sum of money was devoted, among other aspects, to including homosexual and transsexual fact in the educational curriculum of Catalan children by means of activities relating to homosexuality and transsexuality in educational centres. In order to strengthen its campaign for homosexuality in student education itineraries, the Regional Governments programme included activities outside the school timetable, such as the creation, production and distribution of stories, puppets and games featuring homosexual and transsexual contents for children. A kind of gay indoctrination police was also created by granting the Catalonian Audiovisual Board (CAC) the role of monitoring
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those elements that did not contribute towards the homosocialisation process. The Programa per al Collectiu Gai, Lesbi i Transsexual4 produced by the Catalonian Regional Government includes the following in its official documentation:
The media do not often report on many of the public events organised by [homosexual and transsexual] bodies in Catalonia and when these activities are reported, they are very often reduced to anecdotal or folkloric status. It is, therefore, necessary to guarantee the rigour of the news that is reported in order to facilitate social pedagogy. The majority of the cultural products today that refer to homosexuality and transsexuality are aimed at adults, which means that children and adolescents are left on the sidelines. In this respect, it is also necessary to focus on the leisure and cultural contents that are aimed at this segment of the population. We must eliminate heterosexualism from teaching material and teacher training material. The majority of text books (from primary school up to university) fail to address homosexuality or heterosexuality, simply referring to reproduction and sexuality. Many outstanding historical figures in different disciples, both gay and lesbian, fail to appear with any frequency.
The fact that public buildings throughout Catalonia, including the Departments of the Regional Government and the Town Halls governed by the Tri-Partite Alliance, should have the gay flag flying from their roofs, constitutes yet another initiative that forms part of the package of measures designed to offer a more prominent and, sometimes, preponderant, view of something that, at the very most, must be considered to be a true minority option.
Instruments of Propaganda Along with this manipulation of reality, which is encouraged by the political parties and which bulldozes the authority of parents, be-
This document can be consulted on the portal belonging to the Catalonian Regional Government: http://goo.gl/F8hk
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coming a prime example of the most sectarian form of indoctrination (an activity that is actually paid for by the public purse without any kind of consultation in this respect), the Zapatero Project has also turned to the media, the majority of which are prepared to propagate its alleged values by always presenting the object of destruction in the most distorted and pejorative light. One of the most habitual and coarse forms of manipulation employed consists of comparing calls for the right to live or defence of the family institution with support for Francoism:
The Conservative bench of the City Council [of Madrid] yesterday launched two of its representatives on a crusade to defend the most conservative proposals of the Right: Francoist measures and the persecution of abortion.5
The worlds of entertainment and news, key structuring elements of the programme schedules on all the television channels, have also become launch-pads for the most destructive aspects of the Zapatero Project. The news services of the public television channels and a good number of the private channels have turned news items that are entirely anecdotal and trivial, not to mention irrelevant and completely unrepresentative, into the very focus of national attention. As opposed to the great issues of our time, whose importance is minimised as they are pushed into the background, the views and opinions of any kind of minority group are effectively magnified. And the more eccentric and minority-based their demands, the more attention they get from the cameras, provided that they present an idyllic or victimised perspective of their interests and a scornful view of the general interest and the family. Thus, on the day on which one million people take to the streets in order to express their support for the natural family, the media who support the Zapatero Project highlight the terrible predicament of a man who is convinced he is a woman and has to bear the humiliation of carrying his national ID card (DNI) with the name Felipe on it.
El Pas, 28.1.10.
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The same thing occurs in the field of entertainment. In the same country in which an under-twenty-year-old woman gets pregnant every eighteen minutes and in which there are 15,000 abortions a year within this age-range, television programmes and series, which are watched by the majority of young people of this age, propose models in which the idea of maternity is trivialised, premature sexual relations are encouraged, moral relativism is promoted and abortion is presented as a contraceptive method. Once again, eccentric and minority views become the key point of reference. In Spanish television series, mothers and fathers are always portrayed as being virtually stupid. In the majority of cases, adults are depicted as being ignorant yokels who never get it right, who are incapable of communicating and whose ideas, way of life and way of thinking and behaving are considered to be ridiculous and obsolete. The natural family has virtually disappeared from the world of television in Spain and, when it does appear, it is always in the most pathetic light. At the same time, we come across an entire array of alternative personal relationship models that are neither representative nor especially real. They are not presented with slightest degree of objectivity either and the facts are not really true in the majority of cases. The natural family, which is often called traditional in the worst sense of the term, is, thus, subjected to the crossfire of political measures undertaken by different parties and institutions and to media pressure. The vitality and vigour of the family in Spain must be truly great for it to be able to resist this overwhelming assault and for it to continue to be considered, according to all of the opinion polls, the most important institution within society. However, this is precisely why the attacks perpetrated against the family are ongoing and endless.
A Healthy Institution to Be Dismantled Every time someone in Spain dares to publicise the figures that show the failure of common-law couples, or whatever you would
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like to call them, compared to marriages and the family, that person is submitted to a thorough lynching on the part of the media. The Rodrguez Zapatero Government plays down these figures, when it cannot conceal them as it does in relation to the countrys spinechilling suicide rates because these figures attest, in the cold and objective light of day, to the fact that the Zapatero Project is a sham and that the model of society it proposes leads to catastrophic failure. But the figures are there, however much you might try to ignore them. Rodrguez Zapatero has made the battle against the violent abuse of women one of its flagship policies. Nevertheless, its proposals, far from actually addressing this social disgrace, actually promote it. According to figures compiled by the Institute for Family Policies (IPF), some 33 homicides took place in the year 2008 in Spain among 10,265,400 married couples. Some 48 deaths occurred among 1,223,700 de facto couples. That is to say, for every 311,000 marriages there was one homicide, whilst one homicide occurred for every 25,500 de facto marriages. For every homicide that took place within a marriage, there were more than 12 homicides among de facto couples.
Total Marriages De facto marriages 10,265,400 1,223,700 Homicides 33 48 Protection orders 18,129 23,310
The official figures also show that there are fewer protection orders issued in the case of marriages than among de facto couples. Six out of every ten protection orders are issued among de facto couples. In the year 2008, some 18,129 protection orders were issued among 10,265,400 married couples. However, 23,310 orders were issued for 1,223,700 de facto couples. For every protection order issued for a marriage, more than 10 were issued among de facto couples.
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The anti-family policies being pursued by Rodrguez Zapatero exacerbate a dangerous trend within Spanish society: in the year 2008 some 52,051 fewer children were born in Spain than in 1980. In just three decades, the birth-rate has gone down by 9.1 per cent. However, during this time, the population has increased by more than nine million people. Only immigration, which shot up after the year 2000, has prevented the decrease from being even higher. In 2008, children born to foreign mothers already represented 20.71 per cent of total births in Spain. Studies devoted to homosexuality are generously subsidised and analyse all kinds of aspects relating to this matter. In the name of integration and equality, the governments of numerous countries, and especially Spains government, furnish gay organisations with resources so that they can produce analyses, statistics and studies on various aspects of homosexual life. However, on very few occasions has the role of homosexuals and lesbians in bringing up children been analysed. The most important piece of research in this field was carried out by Tasker and Golombok in the 1990s6. This consisted of following the progress of 20 men and 26 women, all biological children of lesbians, from childhood to adulthood (23.5 years of age).
Variable Some type of sexual attraction for the same gender Consideration of possible homosexual relations Sexual relations with the same gender Homosexual or bisexual identity Lesbian Mother 36% 56% 24% 8% Heterosexual Mother 22% 14% 0% 0%
The study entitled Its Not the Same: Report on Child Development and Same Sex Couples,7 published by HazteOir.org, in collabo-
6 Adults Raised As Children in Lesbian Families (American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1995, 65[2], 203-215) and Growing Up in a Lesbian Family: Effects on Child Development (New York, 1997, Guilford Press). 7 En http://www.hazteoir.org/documentos/noesigual3.pdf
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ration with the Spanish Family Forum (Foro Espaol de la Familia) and the Institute for Family Policies (IPF), states the following:
There is no agreement among different researchers that enables us to draw valid or sufficient conclusions regarding the question of adoption by homosexual or lesbian couples, although it could be argued that some reasonable doubt exists regarding the ideal nature of such arrangements, given that both the studies that are against this kind of adoption and many of the studies that are in favour of it, indicate differences among the children brought up by same sex couples.
The battle against the family that the Zapatero Project is waging has led to some clearly abnormal situations that the public is only now beginning to take on board. Some 44 per cent of Spaniards, according to a survey carried out by Sigma Dos, are in favour of transsexuals being able to change sex and have children. Estefana Jimnez Coronado, aged twenty-five and an epileptic, took advantage of the legislation in force in 2009 that allowed her to change sex at will and she began a hormone treatment course in order to become a man. She changed her name to Rubn No. She then decided she wanted to have children, but not as a mother but as a father. And since she had not yet gone under the knife in order to effect the change physically, she continued taking hormones, but now in a reverse sense:
They induced the female hormone cycle with pills and prepared my womb so that it would once again be suitable to carry an embryo. Then they inseminated me.
Estefana/Rubn No thus became the first transsexual in Spain to become pregnant. And what is more, she conceived twins. She explained this series of events to the newspaper, El Mundo8, which included her photograph and that of her wife, a 43-year-old woman who was separated and a mother of two children aged 13 and 16 years, one of them also an epileptic:
El Mundo, 20.3.09.
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The young transsexual explains that, perhaps because she is adopted, the only doubts she had when she decided to be a man came from the fact that she also wanted to be a biological father, which is what she aims to be to the children she gives birth to. Rubn No is convinced of her sexual identity. That is why, once the children are born, she will once again undergo hormone treatment and complete the sex-change process: Its as if you were born with three hands: you take advantage of them whilst you have them, but when the extra hand becomes a problem, you remove it.
The pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, but the doctor informed Estefana/Rubn No that she could try again whenever she wanted. She did not hesitate for one moment. In Spain, the transsexual units run by the Regional Governments are open to initiating sex-change processes, stopping them and restarting them at the behest of the consumer. They are also given to allowing minors to change sex. The Valencian public health system caters for 120 people who wish to mutilate themselves, of whom 10 are children. The Carlos Haya Hospital in Malaga has 800 patients, 77 of them children, featuring an average age of 15 years. The Gender Identity Unit at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona has changed the sex of 25 minors and is monitoring four others. El Pas reported the declarations of various 15-year-old minors who are in the process of mutilating themselves9:
I only know I want to have the operation. I hate what Ive got. I dont want my vagina in order to fuck, but just to be myself. I havent gone all the way yet. Ill wait until I have my vagina. But affairs, yes, of course. You dont have to say anything. All cats are grey in the dark. I looked on the Internet and when I entered transsexual forums, I said to myself: Thats me.
El Pas, 24.1.10.
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On 1st April 2008, the newspaper, La Vanguardia, published an interview with Beatriz Preciado10, a girl from Burgos based in Barcelona and a lecturer in gender theory at the University of Paris VIII:
La Vanguardia: Are you a man or a woman? Beatriz Preciado: That question reflects a disturbing Western obsession. LV: What obsession is that? BP: That of seeking to reduce the truth about sex into a binomial. LV: But the fact is there are only men and women ...! BP: I devote my life to exploding that binomial distinction. I declare the infinite multiplicity of gender! All that about men and women is just a question of cultural constructions. Which means there are no homosexuals and heterosexuals either. LV: In that case, what is there? BP: A pan-sexual trans-gender. Should I be required to define myself, that is how I would do so. LV: But we have vaginas and penises, breasts and testicles, oestrogen and testosterone ... BP: Yes. And? LV: Thats not culture, its biology! BP: Brandishing anatomic (or bio-chemical) characteristics in order to establish sexual identities. That is cultural!
After six years of policies aimed at destroying the family, in October 2010 the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS), a body that depends directly on the Rodrguez Zapatero Government, released a study regarding the opinions that members of the public have of the family institution11. The results reflect the publics resistance to the Zapatero Project:
10 http://hemeroteca.lavanguardia.es/preview/2003/06/06/pagina-68/69412648/ pdf.html 11 The CIS study was carried out between 3rd and 13th September 2010 and published in October of that year. It can be downloaded from: http://www.thefamilywatch.org/doc/doc-0162-es.pdf
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For 44 per cent of Spaniards, family is the most important thing. Some 49.3 per cent are convinced that the most important function of the family is to create and bring up children. Some 27.7 per cent believe that the family is essential in order to provide love and affection. According to 44.8 per cent of the public, the family is the place in which to tackle personal issues. Some 46.9 per cent of people visit their families without having any particular need to do so. Some 50.1 per cent of respondents celebrate the key occasions throughout the year with their families. In the opinion of 47.2 per cent, it would be impossible to overcome difficult situations without the help of their family. Some 67.8 per cent of Spaniards feel comfortable within the family context. The majority of the public are in favour of traditional roles within the family. Some 45.7 per cent believe that if one of the partners should look after the children and tend to the housework, it should be the woman. Only 1.8 per cent believe that such a role should correspond to the man and 20.9 per cent that it should correspond to both the man and the woman. The family is the institution that people turn to first when they find themselves in situations of need.
VIII
The New Catacombs
Since the Zapatero Project began to be put into effect, the Catholic Church has become one of its main targets, because the goal of subverting our values, our culture and our identity necessarily requires the prior dissolution of the Churchs social and public role. In short, the aim is to bury the Church in a series of latter-day catacombs. In this respect, the Church has been obliged to speak out on repeated occasions in order to defend itself from various accusations and misrepresentations of its views. The fact that Spains bishops have expressed the Catholic view of life with considerable clarity has always inflamed the political and media circles that promote the Zapatero Project. Compared to a political Opposition that has always been rather timorous when it comes to standing up to the Left within the realm of ideas and somewhat reluctant to take the Zapatero Project on come what may, the Church, without wishing or trying to, has gradually become the main bastion of resistance in Spain with regard to proposals that seek to subvert our values and identity.
The role of the Catholic religion is one of the great issues. Because, in the end, in the absence of other developments that may have helped define our historical identity as a country, it is the strong impact made by Catholicism that has shaped the countrys
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identity [...] We have stumbled through history. Of course, religion has produced the odd genius in the field of art. However, Catholicism in Spain has conditioned and generated enormous gaps.1
The Zapatero Project has imbued our collective life with a kind of prior censorship based on a cautionary suspension of any fact, event, declaration or piece of news relating to the Church. The Churchs messages are sifted and manipulated and are only disseminated when the distortion process is complete and they can be presented as evidence of assault against democracy and against civil rights. In the pastoral message issued by the Spanish Episcopal Conference entitled Moral Guidance Regarding the Current Situation in Spain, the bishops expressed their opinion with considerable precision regarding the participation of Catholics in public life:
A moral consideration of the affairs of public life, far from constituting a threat of any kind to democracy, is an indispensable requirement for the exercise of freedom and the establishment of justice. It is not a question of imposing our own moral criteria on society as a whole. We express our will and the will of all Catholics to live in the heart of society by loyally fulfilling our civil obligations. We respect those who see things differently. We only ask for freedom and respect when it comes to living in accordance with our convictions and freely proposing our way of seeing things, without anyone feeling threatened or interpreting our presence as an offence or a threat to the freedom of others. We sincerely wish to collaborate in the spiritual enrichment of our society, in consolidating justice and harmony and freedom, these being the essential foundations of true peace.
The political and media circles that support the Zapatero Project have declared that this and other documents published by the Spanish Episcopal Conference are anti-democratic and constitute interference on the part of the Church within the realm of politics:
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The bishops have a right to call for people to vote for the PP, but this time they have gone even further; they have succumbed to the temptation of using the issue of terrorism in an electoral campaign, and this they have no right to do.2
The references to terrorism made by the Spanish Episcopal Conference were as follows:
Terrorism is an intrinsically perverse practice, one that is entirely incompatible with a moral vision of a just and reasonable life. Not only does it seriously violate the right to life and freedom, but it constitutes an example of the most obdurate intolerance and totalitarianism. A society that wishes to be just and free cannot acknowledge a terrorist organisation, either implicitly or explicitly, as a political representative of any sector of the population, and neither can it grant terrorism a political voice.
In February 2006, the magazine, MicroMega, something of an intellectual point of reference for the Italian Left, interviewed Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero. The leader of the Spanish Socialists had been in power for little more than two years and in Italy he still enjoyed a certain degree of popularity among left-wing groups. In this magazine published by the group, L'Espresso, Rodrguez Zapatero expounded upon his idea of the secular State and laid his anachronistic stereotypes out for all to see when he expressed his view regarding the role of the Church in democratic societies, one that bears no relation to the Churchs daily activities in democratic Spain:
Democracy demands a non-confessional State and a public culture based on secular values. The Catholic Church may maintain some stance that evokes the aspiration of ecclesiastical laws to place themselves above the laws of the polis, but I believe such an attitude today is an ideological relic.
2 Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero at the Os Remedios Hall in Orense, 31.1.08. Reported by El Mundo, 1.2.08: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/ 2008/02/01/espana/1201895790.html
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The rhetoric of the ideological relic is habitual in Rodrguez Zapateros declarations, given that he has always sought to persuade the public that any fact, proposition or circumstance that might originate with the Church constitutes a step backwards in terms of civilisation, civil rights and freedom. In this respect, the Zapatero Project distorts the message of the Church and that of its believers and manipulates information and even the language itself in order to achieve its objectives: it destroys any moral point of reference that challenges the State, consigns religious beliefs to the realm of private life and smashes the idea of natural law.
The idea of a natural law over and above the laws that Man creates for himself constitutes an ideological relic, as compared to social reality and its ongoing development. It is a respectable idea, but one that is nevertheless a vestige of the past.3
In order to eradicate this vestige of the past, the Zapatero Project has used all of the resources at the States disposal. Since the year 2004, numerous examples of an anti-Christian drive have emerged through the institutions and policies of the Socialist Government: Condemnation of the Pope. In April 2009, a Committee in the Lower House of Spains Parliament agreed to approve, with PSOE votes, a condemnation of Benedict XVI as a result of a series of declarations concerning AIDS and condoms that the Holy Father never actually made. Removal of religious symbols. In 2009, the newspaper, El Pas, which is not especially given to supporting the Church, reported that 84 per cent of the public are in favour of religious symbols in schools. Faced with these figures, the same year the Socialist Government announced its intention to pass a law in order to remove all religious symbols from public spaces, including schools.
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Adapting religious freedom to circumstances. Rodrguez Zapatero began his second term in office with one of his key reforms, that of the Religious Freedom Law, which dates back to 1980. The Deputy Prime Minister at the time, Mara Teresa Fernndez de la Vega, defined the purpose of the reform in the following manner:
We propose to review the Religious Freedom Act in order to adapt it to new circumstances and to the religious pluralism that characterises Spain today.4
In the preparatory documents for the reform, this intention was reflected in the eradication of any mention of the Catholic Church and its symbols in public life, although the customs and symbols of minority religions were accepted, such as the Islamic headscarf in the case of women. Restricting freedom of conscience. The Minister for Justice, Francisco Caamao, announced in the summer of 2009 that, with its reform of the Religious Freedom Law, the Socialist Government sought to restrict freedoms: Religious freedom must have certain limits. It is necessary to review the regulation regarding religious freedom and the way in which it is practised. Religious freedom must adapt to the logic of this society. We must regulate religious freedom, but also freedom of conscience. Freedom of conscience cannot be a permanent means of disobeying the law.5
4 Daily Record of Sessions in the Lower House of Spains Parliament, El Congreso de los Diputados, 7.5.08: http://goo.gl/Yu7e 5 Course entitled La pluralidad religiosa en la sociedad espaola contempornea. Cuestiones a debate, organised by Fundacin Pluralismo y Convivencia in El Escorial, 12.7.09.
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The Enemy to Be Defeated The Zapatero Project appeals to the most anachronistic secularism and its reactions to the slightest hint of Catholicism, however tiny it might be, often verge on the ridiculous. On 4th November 2008, the Internal Governing Committee of the Lower House of Spains Parliament passed a resolution whose purpose, in the words of the Speaker of the House, Jos Bono, was:
To record the fact that, one of the buildings of Parliament had once been the residence of a family whose members had included two Speakers of the Lower House, a Speaker of the Upper House and his daughter, Maravillas de Jess, who achieved fame as a result of her recent canonisation.6
PSOE and the small radical left-wing and nationalist groups that support it, prohibited the placement of a small plaque in order to commemorate this fact. Gregorio Peces Barba, the former Vice-Chancellor of Universidad Carlos III, is one of the intellectuals that PSOE uses in order to endow its attacks on the Church with a conceptual sheen:
The passing of time means nothing to the bishops. They hold the same doctrine as that which was promoted by the Holy See between the 1830s and the 1880s. They are the enemies of modern freedom, enemies of democracy. But now they perform an acrobatic feat and present themselves as if they, precisely, were its only protectors. This confirms something I have always said: these gentlemen have a kind of historical innocence that means that they have never been responsible for anything that has happened throughout history. Its quite lamentable. They are still the enemies of democracy. If they could, they would act like radical Islamists: obviously not in terms of perpetrating extreme violence, but certainly in terms of ruling over and above the legitimately elected democratic authorities in the way the Ayatollahs do in Iran.7
El Mundo, 20.11.08. Magazine, xodo, March 2008: http://www.exodo.org/GREGORIOPECES-BARBA.html

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One of the most active bodies throughout the time the PSOE Government has been in power is known as the Pluralism and Good Fellowship Foundation (Fundacin Pluralismo y Convivencia), a State public sector foundation created by agreement of the Spanish Cabinet on 15th October 2004 upon the proposal of the Ministry of Justice8. Presided over by the Minister for Justice, Francisco Caamao, its Board includes representatives from the following Ministries: Foreign Affairs, Defence, the Prime Ministers Office, the Home Office, Education and Health. The Head of the Foundations Governing Board is the Head of Relations with the Confessions at the Ministry of Justice. Each year the Pluralism and Good Fellowship Foundation grants subsidies for activities that promote religious freedom. Among its main beneficiaries in the year 2009, the year in which the reform process for the Religious Freedom Law was set in motion, we might mention the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals and the association, Europa Laica (Lay Europe), which promotes the apostasy of Catholics and the expulsion of religious beliefs from the public arena. In order to relativise the presence and role of the Catholic Church still further, the Zapatero Project has found a good pretext in the imported Muslim religion. Islam has an extreme minority presence in Spain, but the Zapatero Project has always attempted to convey to the public the idea that Muslim culture, including the religion, is as important in Spain as the countrys Catholic roots and faith. The distortion of history, based on a form of political propaganda known as historical recollection, has been used to pull off this swindle, whilst neo-language has also been brought into play within the academic and cultural realms, rejecting historical expressions such as Reconquest when referring to the eight-hundredyear war that followed the Moorish invasion of the Peninsula and ended with their expulsion from Spanish territory. Through regulations passed by the State and by local councils and regional governments, as well as through semi-public bodies
http://www.pluralismoyconvivencia.es
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such as foundations and associations linked to PSOE and financed by the Socialist Government, the presence of Islam in Spain has been praised and magnified, with a view to being able to compare (and, perhaps, confront) Catholics and Muslims on equal terms. The PSOE Government has endowed the Pluralism and Good Fellowship Foundation with this aim. According to Article 8 of its Statutes, the Foundation has been set up to benefit the nonCatholic religious confessions. According to its own literature, these are the Foundations aims:
Its purpose is to help implement cultural, educational and social integration programmes and projects for the minority religious confessions.
The priority objective of the Pluralism and Good Fellowship Foundation consists of helping to facilitate the penetration of Islam in Spain through the support of the State, and the Foundation devotes most of its resources and public activities to this cause. The two-faced language characteristic of the Zapatero Project acquires an especially cynical tone when it addresses questions relating to the Catholic Church. On 4th February 2010, during the course of the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, to which Rodrguez Zapatero was invited, the Prime Minister of the Socialist Government preached precisely the opposite to what he practices, recognising for the first time that Spain is Christian, above all Christian.
In the past, Spain served as an example of peaceful coexistence between the three religions of the Book, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and today it promotes religious tolerance throughout the world.9
Rodrguez Zapatero is accustomed to getting away with all kinds of declarations. That is why in the United States he can acknowl-
9 Speech by Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero at the National Prayer Breakfast, 2010: http://www.abc.es/20100204/nacional-/discurso-integro-zapatero-desayuno201002041507.html
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edge the leading role of the Catholic Church in Spain, whilst in Spain he implements a mobbing policy against believers. Since 2004, the policies that have been directed against the Church under the Zapatero Project include the following: 1. Threats. The Socialist Government has questioned the agreements between the Church and the State each time it has found it convenient to fan the flames among its most radical voters or when it has sought to impose laws that bring it into confrontation with Catholics. It has also threatened to suffocate the Church in a financial sense. 2. Division. In the same way as occurred with the victims of terrorism, the Socialist Government has always sought to divide Catholics. It has created a new group within PSOE known as Socialist Christians, a group designed for militants (many of them holding public office) who declare themselves to be Catholics and at the same time abortionists and enemies of the Church hierarchy. It has also used the school subject, Citizenship Education, in order to create differences between the Church and supposedly progressive movements within the Church. 3. Marginalisation. The Zapatero Project has taken particular care to marginalise the subject of Religion at State schools, demoting its importance from an academic point of view, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of families are calling for religion classes for their children. 4. Verbal aggression. The daily forms of mobbing that the Zapatero Project directs against the Church include mocking and contemptuous comments and more or less veiled insults on the part of both politicians and the media. Among the latter, aggressive assaults form part of their daily work. In this respect, we might mention the daily newspaper, Pblico, for example. Few newspapers devote as much attention to the Church as this organ does, which identifies most closely with Zapateros ideas. However, it never simply disseminates news, but uses events to distort reality and undermine and
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attack the Church and its hierarchy. The news headlines of this newspaper when referring to the Church are extremely illustrative in this respect:

De la Vega Takes the Bishops to Task (28.11.09) We Are Fed Up of Being Saved by the Bishops (8.1.08) Bono Calls on the Bishops to Confine Themselves to Filling Their Churches (2.2.10) The Episcopal Church of the USA Appoints a Gay and a Lesbian As Bishops (3.8.09) The Government Demands Respect from the Bishops (1.2.08) Zapatero Stands Up to Rouco (6.1.08) Bishops Attempt to Cash In (5.11.07) Some Bishops Have National-Catholic Fantasies (28.11.08) The Government and PSOE Are Fed Up with the Bishops (1.2.08)
5. Laws to implement a Final Solution for the religious problem. Ongoing threats, division, marginalisation and ridiculing help to cultivate a climate in which Catholics can be sidelined, effectively turning public opinion against the Church. However, these are not enough when it comes to eliminating the Church from the collective imagination. Families continue to bring their children to religion classes and public expressions of religious faith are commonplace. The Zapatero Project has felt obliged to take the matter a step further, a dangerous step further: that of marginalising the Faith and members of the public through the law. In this respect, it tried out an initial measure through the always-willing social experimental laboratory known as the Catalonian Regional Government: the Law on Centres for Worship in Catalonia,10 which opens the door for political interference on the part of political parties at churches and within the realm of worship. After the testing-ground represented by this law, the Socialist Government then embarked on its reform of the Religious Freedom Law, openly seeking to restrict the right to freedom of conscience, as announced by the Minister for Justice, whose department is responsible for the drafting of the new legislation.
10
Llei dels centres de culte: http://goo.gl/6Aabl
IX
The Deconstruction of a Nation
Subverting the values on which Spanish society has been founded and has progressed can be achieved by subverting its very essence, that which binds it together and turns the country into a nation. As one of its main ideas, the Zapatero Project contemplates the transformation of the very idea of Spain, which is to say its unity and the bonds that structure and articulate the country. The aim is to create a kind of container that holds different fully-autonomous nations, all of different characteristics and all strangers to one another. This container is meant to cater for all possible combinations, except for one, the current arrangement, namely the existence of a single nation. Paradoxically, in this new order there will be no place for what is Spanish. The only way of implementing the Zapatero Project is to bind its progress to a series of small radical secessionists groups in all of the regions where PSOE has come across them. And in those regions where it has not found any or where their influence is not especially decisive, it has created the conditions for such groups to prosper. In this respect, whereas before there were nationalist groups that only contested the idea of the nation at certain times and in a rhetorical manner, now secessionist acronyms abound and even the formerly moderate nationalist movements have now permitted themselves the extravagant indulgence of calling for referendums of self-determination.
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National unity presents a grave added threat to the Zapatero Project: Spain cannot be disassociated from its Catholic roots. The countrys history has been profoundly influenced by the Catholic religion, an impact made more evident through events such as the Councils of Toledo, the defence of Europe against Islam, the Salamanca School and the founding of international public law. It is not possible to understand the last one thousand seven hundred years of collective life in Spain without taking into consideration its Christian foundations. In this respect, we cannot understand the culture, art, world of thought and international role of our country without this Christian backbone, an aspect that has given sense to all manifestations of what is considered Spanish, whatever region they have originated from. In this sense, when Rodrguez Zapatero seeks to deconstruct the Spanish nation, going above the interests of society, he is attempting to eliminate the countrys Christian roots:
The role of the Catholic religion is one of the great issues. Because, in the end, in the absence of other developments that may have helped define our historical identity as a country, it is the strong impact made by Catholicism that has shaped the countrys identity And this has also generated significant gaps in our collective being [...] Catholicism in Spain has conditioned and generated enormous gaps.1
There is nothing more contrary, therefore, to the vision of the world proposed by the Zapatero Project than the idea of nation and national unity. To fight it, destroy it and replace it with something else has been Rodrguez Zapateros goal since he came to power, and in order to achieve this aim he has made use of an effective instrument: the renewal of the Statutes of Autonomy of the Spanish Regions.
1
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Our electoral system gives precedence to the interests of small local groups compared to nationwide groups. In Spain it is relatively easy to consolidate a regional party because much less electoral support is required in order to present candidates throughout the entire nation. Izquierda Unida (IU) is a classic example of this. In the legislative elections of 2008, IU obtained 963,040 votes and two Members of Parliament. The nationalist party with the largest number of votes was CiU, which achieved 774,317 votes. However, it achieved eleven seats.
Party CiU PNV ERC IU BNG CC-PNC Seats 11 6 3 2 2 2 Votes 774,317 303,246 296,473 963,040 209,042 164,255 3.05 % 1.20 % 1.17 % 3.80 % 0.82 % 0.65 %
In addition to the unfair advantage created by the lamentable electoral system that is currently in force, the cantonal discourse of the nationalist groups is, like that of the parties of the European far Right, essentially primary, victim-based, exclusivist and xenophobic, and given that it appeals to the primary instincts, it is strongly rooted, although only in an extreme minority sense, thus ensuring the groups survival. When in 2004, in the midst of its protest campaign against the policies of the Government, headed at that time by the Partido Popular, PSOE proposed a programme of maximums regarding territorial policy with a view to undermining the Aznar Government and, at the same time, guaranteeing the support of the regional nationalist groups, Rodrguez Zapatero was convinced that his moment had yet to come. The Socialists knew, because all the polls indicated as much, that the PP would once again win the general elections, so they resorted to stirring up nationalist feeling, increasing the role played by their regional franchises and offering maximalist commitments to different regional nationalist groups.
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The tragic events of 11th March 2004 altered the voting intention of a suddenly-cowered section of Spanish society, who switched their vote and granted victory to Rodrguez Zapatero. In order to ensure his grip on power, the PSOE leader then began to fulfil the promises he had made to the nationalists. The Socialists knew that their commitments entailed turning the articles enshrined in the Constitution regarding territorial organisation on their head, but they found a way of strengthening their pact with the ethnic-based nationalists without having to risk constitutional reform. The renewal of the Statutes of Autonomy of the Spanish Regions was the path chosen by the Zapatero Project to turn the Constitution into pulp without having to consult the countrys citizens. This false direction was a trap that the Opposition fell into, being dragged along by a process that eroded its own interests. The preambles and long-winded articles that make up these new texts are packed with supposedly new rights, rights that are not contemplated in the Constitution and that make the exclusive powers of the State meaningless. By means of statutory reform, the regions become nations; relations between the regions and the State take on a guise that is typical of foreign politics, given that the Region-State relationship is founded on an equal footing; foreign affairs ministries emerge and the number of foreign service departments abound in the form of embassies; legal unity is broken, as is the single market; Spanish disappears, replaced by regional languages, which are only spoken by a minority even in their regions of origin; the education system and the public taxation system are blown up. Through the new Statutes of Autonomy, the Zapatero Project destroys the decentralised system of autonomous regions within a State in order to create a de facto Confederation of States that simply multiplies costs and client networks. When the economic crisis hit the country in 2008, this artificial State, which nobody had asked for and which was created behind the backs of the countrys citizens, threw Spains public accounts into freefall. The arguments employed by the Zapatero Project in order to bring about such a dangerous state of affairs are based on the idea
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of negating the history of Spain itself. According to the Zapatero view, the Nation is the result of an historical process that was imposed at all times, over more than twenty centuries of shared history, one that was not accepted by the countrys inhabitants. By confusing the only-recent declarations of various hardly representative groups with the collective will of the country, as expressed over two thousand years of shared history, the Zapatero Project concludes that it is necessary to overcome the idea of Spain. Rodrguez Zapatero shares the self-interested theory espoused by the spokesmen of radical nationalism that our country is merely a container of nations in which there is nothing essential about what we have understood as Spain up until now, which should not even have existed in the first place. On the contrary, the important thing is the old regions, which have become nations thanks to statutory texts that the voters have backed in all of the autonomous regions.
J. L. Carod-Rovira: Their greatest problem is not stating what we are, but exactly what they are. When we state that we are a nation, and the Basques and the Galicians declare the same, the question then emerges as to what and who they are.2 Journalist. Im not clear exactly what Spain is. But I imagine that you can tell me. Pasqual Maragall. If there is someone who is clear about it, let them raise their hand. [...] Names are handed down to us by history and there is the Catalan Nation.3 J. L. Carod-Rovira: Thirty years of autonomy-based democracy has coincided with a process whereby the notion of Spain has been reduced simply to Madrid, to its municipal boundaries and, at the most, to the autonomous province. Madrid has become Spain and Spain has ended up being only Madrid.4
2 3 4
Deia, 17.10.05. El Peridico, 14.11.04. El Peridico, 22.4.07.
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The reform of the Statutes of the Region of Catalonia, the attempt to subjugate the Constitutional Court, successive editions of the PSC/PSOE-ERC-IU Tri-Partite Pact in the Catalonian Regional Government and the imitation effect encouraged by PSOE in regions that had formerly been free of the nationalist virus, have all marked out the path whereby the Zapatero Project has sought to deconstruct the Nation.
Changing History Subverting the idea of the nation involves altering the history of Spain itself in order to adapt it to the goals of the Zapatero Project. The aim is to replace facts and transform their meaning in order to discover a new form of legitimacy that makes the Projects proposals presentable. In this respect, the Project casts its eye back to the Second Republic, a period of unhappy recollection, which is first presented as the immediate precedent for democracy and then as a source of legitimacy. The left-wing imagination works along these lines, as if Azaa had been succeeded by Zapatero.
As far as the history of the Second Republic is concerned, we can say that it was an extremely advanced project for a Spain that had been subject to the ideological decadence of the entire dominant sector, the entire Right, all of the dominant powers. Crisis after crisis had taken place. And then, suddenly, a new popular, political and ideological force was born, one that was quite spectacular. Then that part of the country that had been traditionally dominant, that had held much of the power, whose identity, being and raison dtre had crumbled entirely, that part of the country refused to agree to the change, failed to accept it. And that led us to war.5
The Zapatero Project proposes to go beyond the Constitution of 1978 and search for its roots and its legitimacy in the Second Re-
5
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public. With this purpose in mind it has passed an Historical Recollection Law6, whose objective is two-fold: to change the meaning of the Republic, turning it into a fountain of freedoms; to embark on a kind of witch-hunt encompassing the past and the present, in search of unrepentant Francoists. However, over and above both of these goals stands the overriding objective of the Zapatero Project: to segregate a part of the public. Here the Zapatero Project turns to the use of symbols. By means of symbolic acts it acquires a revolutionary left-wing rhetoric that is anachronistic but highly effective within the intellectually impoverished Spanish Left, which, thirty-five years later, is suddenly anxious to play a leading role in the assault on the Palace of El Pardo, the official residence of Francisco Franco. The Left failed in its battle against Francoism and Franco died in his own bed, which is why the Zapatero Project has taken hold of the history books, determined to rewrite the story. In this respect, it alters the meaning of the Transition, which it describes as a period of failure, and situates itself in an imaginary time shortly before Francos death. From this point it rewrites the events in order to present a triumphant Left that has pulled down all of the dictators statues. Marx stated that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a comedy. The rhetoric of the Historical Recollection Law reveals the profoundly anachronistic nature of the Zapatero Project: Francos statues are falling, but more than three decades have passed since he died. The logical consequence of this manipulation of history is the revision of the present. According to the Zapatero Project, todays Spain should not be the consequence of the Transition, even if this goes against all logic, in which respect it proposes a second period of historical adjustment, a Second Transition that is liable to lead to a reality that fits in with its intentions.
6 Law 52/2007, dated 26th December, By Which Rights Are Recognised and Extended and Measures Are Established in Favour of Those Who Suffered Persecution or Violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship: http://noticias.juridicas.com/ base_datos/Admin/l52-2007.html
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This new, invented period, which is not a product of the past but a self-interested artifice, a reflection of the interests of those in power, seeks to break the constitutional consensus that led to a peaceful exit from Francoism towards democracy. The Zapatero Project is not interested in the outcome of the Transition, which is democracy as we know it today in Spain, nor the constitutional order that was created. Both are obstacles to be overcome as the Project seeks to subvert our national values. Appeals to the legality of the Republic, indirect attacks on the Constitution through the renewal of the Regional Statutes, manipulation of the past and the constant search for direct confrontation nothing more and nothing less with those who oppose its objectives, can all be explained by the need to overcome the historical period which the Transition led to and replace it with a new political system subordinated to the goals set out by Rodrguez Zapatero. George Orwells assertion, He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past7, takes on a disturbing meaning in this respect. The Historical Recollection Law offers us an oversimplified reading of the extremely complex history of our recent past, issuing a series of single-minded and unanswerable condemnations. Thus, the Project offers us (through the force of the law) a past that has been conveniently packaged and labelled, one ready to be manipulated and used, a past that is approachable and controllable. Pure Orwell.
George Orwell, 1984.
From Change to Destruction
In 1980 Felipe Gonzlez proposed a change to the public. And in many fields this change led to a more modern and more profoundly democratic Spain. Rodrguez Zapatero has taken a step in the opposite direction. It is not enough to change. What he proposes to do is to replace the society we know, that which has enabled us to get where we are today, or rather, to where we were back in 2004. His is not a project of change: it is a project of destruction. The Zapatero Project seeks to destroy our values, the things we hold in common, inter-generational bridges, the bond between the citizens of today and those of yesteryear, our cultural roots, our identity. Between 2004 and 2008, the Zapatero Project focused on undermining the family institution, national unity and the education system, through legislation such as the Education Act, various laws based on gender ideology and the new Regional Government Statutes. As of the year 2008, the aim has been to consolidate this project, to secure its victories, by means of legislation such as the Abortion Law and various forms of assault such as that regarding religious freedom. During this period, the Government has also resumed its creation of supposedly new rights, based on initiatives such as the National Strategy for Sexual and Reproductive Health, whilst it has
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begun to prepare the ground for new limits on citizens freedoms, introducing restrictions regarding freedom of education and freedom of conscience.
Politics means creating law in order to create rights. But what is law? Above all, it is an axiological and regulatory matter. A good part of our laws are imbued with the way we understand life. There is a part that is purely organisational, regulatory. But great laws, great decisions, which are few and far between, those that really make an impact on society, on our way of understanding culture, truly determine the life you live.1
Since the Zapatero Project was set in motion back in 2004, a number of laws of considerable import have been passed in Spain, laws whose sole purpose is to destroy the values of society as we know it. The subversion of these values and the introduction of aspects designed to undermine the roots and identity of Spanish society have been enshrined in legislation that seeks to make an impact on society, on our way of understanding culture and on the life you live. The following are the most significant pieces of legislation in this respect: Law for Integral Protection Against Gender Violence, the first law in which gender ideology was introduced. This law was passed in December 2004, just eight months after Rodrguez Zapatero assumed the reins of power. Reform of the Divorce Law, known as the Express Divorce Law, passed in July 2005. Reform of the Civil Code of July 2005, which permitted homosexual marriage and enabled same-sex couples to adopt. Law on Assisted Human Reproduction Techniques, which permitted the selection of embryos and the creation of saviour babies, passed in May 2006.
1
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Education Act of May 2006, which introduced indoctrination and promoted a form of equality that worked against excellence. Act for the Effective Equality of Men and Women, passed in March 2007. Biomedical Research Law, which opened the door to human cloning, passed in June 2007. Prime Ministers Decree for the Creation of a National Plan for the Alliance of Civilisations, issued in January 2008. Law on Gender Identity, passed in March 2008. Authorisation of the five-day-after pill in August 2008. National Human Rights Plan (2008), which included abortion, the right to choose sexual orientation and the right to homosexual marriage. Authorisation of the free sale of the morning-after pill in September 2009. Act for Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy, passed in March 2010. However, the Zapatero Project has not halted its programme after these reforms that entail far-reaching implications. It is now set to take further step. The Prime Minister of the Government and his Ministers plan to develop new legislative projects, such as the Equal Treatment and Anti-Discrimination Law, which will penalise any criticism of gender ideology dogmas or the ideas of the homosexual lobby, or the merely half-halted project for the reform of the Religious Freedom Law, which will restrict the freedom of believers to express our faith in the public realm. In the background, we might also mention the Euthanasia Law, a piece of legislation that has already been introduced in Andalusia under the title of the Law for Promoting the Rights and Guaranteeing the Dignity of Persons in the Process of Dying.
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A Project in a Hurry During Rodrguez Zapateros second term in office, his project to subvert our values is gaining pace. The process to pass the Abortion Law is illustrative in this respect. In its hurry to pass this legislation, the Socialist Party will clearly stop at nothing. A few hours before the vote was held regarding the Act for Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy in the Upper House of Spains Parliament, various Members of the House received news of strong investment commitments in their areas of influence in exchange for their vote in favour of the Governments proposal or, at the very least, their abstention. This was how, for example, a new landing-strip at an airport on the Canary Islands came about, as if by magic.
We are not going to stop, we are going to press the accelerator for change, we are going to continue promoting our project with enthusiasm, with ideas, with effort and with coherence.2
The accelerated pace of the Zapatero Project as of 2008 can be explained by various factors. First of all, the cultural transformation project must progress as rapidly as possible in order to destroy the perverse effects (in Rodrguez Zapateros view) of almost 2000 years of Church influence on Spanish history as soon as possible. Second, in the face of the increasingly serious economic crisis, this constitutes an excellent means of distracting public opinion. Introducing aspects such as the removal of crucifixes into political life constitutes the best smokescreen regarding the economic problems that the country is currently witnessing. Third, the results of the legislative elections in March 2008 show the profitable nature of the proposals that make up the Zapatero Project in terms of votes: PSOE is winning the support of sectors of society that formerly voted for Izquierda Unida and also the nationalists. The Socialists are not moving towards the Centre or the
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, speech at the 37th PSOE Congress, 2008.
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Right. Quite the contrary, in fact; the more radical their discourse, the more they are able to bring together the often erratic and abstentionist voters of the Left and the far Left. Meanwhile, PSOEs main opponent, the Partido Popular, is still pondering about which way to look. In this respect, the fourth factor that has determined the acceleration of the Zapatero Project consists precisely of the ideological weakness of its political opponent. Rodrguez Zapatero has managed to throw the navigation needle of Mariano Rajoys PP off course. When faced with the Zapatero Projects discourse of extending rights to the public, the PP has been incapable of formulating an alternative proposal based on principles that ensure the development of contemporary democratic societies. Timid and often fainthearted, the Partido Popular has gradually lost its solid principles and its trust and confidence in its own roots when tackling the Zapatero Project. Members of the Partido Popular often direct harsh criticisms at the proposals made by Rodrguez Zapatero, but they do not reply with a clear and firm alternative, simply with threats of appealing to the Constitutional Court or general dismissals, never daring to take to the battlefield of ideas in order to wave the flag of a solid and complex-free alternative. Rodrguez Zapatero knows this is the case and that is why he is in a hurry. He is conscious of the fact that he must make the most of the present moment. The clock is ticking in his favour:
Problems, when they are serious, must be prioritised. And in the world of politics there is one fundamental factor and that is time. Nobody can do politics and be successful without having a sense of time.3
3
XI
Who Is Going to Bell the Cat?
If the alternative to the Zapatero Project does not emerge from where it should, which is to say, from the political Opposition, or if the alternative is insufficient and wracked with complexes, how should we go about confronting the attempt to subvert our society? Where should the alternative come from? The current political scene in Spain does not offer us much hope. It is paradoxical and somewhat worrying that, at this most delicate and dangerous moment since the advent of democracy, our country should have what is probably the most mediocre political class since the 1930s. An urgent regeneration of democratic values; the cleansing and dignifying of our institutions, whose prestige has been deteriorated; the eradication of corruption, which impregnates all spheres of public life and not only the economy; the promotion of excellence in public life; the recovery of our values and defence of fundamental rights and freedoms none of this is likely to be carried out by a group of politicians that has largely turned its back on the public and is becoming increasingly out of touch with it. Nevertheless, an alternative does exist. The deterioration of the Socialist Governments image in the eye of the public, setbacks regarding the voting intention for PSOE and the feeling of extremism and ineffectiveness conveyed by Zapateros Cabinet, mark a turning-point regarding his project. The combined effect of all these
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aspects has led to a public reaction that Rodrguez Zapatero never imagined: first, a sense of alienation; then irritation and rejection. Suddenly, the public has turned its back on a charming Prime Minister who has bet everything on a smile and the soporific effect produced by his do-gooding discourse. His neo-language has stopped working and Rodrguez Zapatero has become a caricature of Mister Bean on the web page of Spains Presidency of the European Union. In just a few weeks, the entire symbolic edifice of Zapateroism, built as it is on propaganda, seemed to waver. Somewhat desperately, on 1st January 2010 Rodrguez Zapatero hung on to Spains Presidency of the EU as a pretext to recover the initiative and boost his image vis--vis the public. However, the leading player in the Zapatero Project can no longer stand up to the prolonged media exposure that such an operation requires. His increasingly extravagant off-the-cuff ideas and the obvious discoordination of his Government were derided in the international press and reached Spain in the form of media time-bombs that go off with every new opinion poll. The public began to steal the initiative in autumn 2009. More than one million people took to the streets in October of that year in order to reject the abortionist plans of the Zapatero Project. And just a few months later the protest was repeated with the March for Life 2010, which again filled the streets with protests against Zapateros attempts to destroy the country. On this occasion, the call to march in the streets brought together the largest number of civil associations and platforms that a demonstration has ever witnessed in the history of our country. And the protest also spread. In almost one hundred towns and cities throughout Spain, members of society took to the streets to express their opposition to the Zapatero Project. Ranging from Europe to even Australia, Spaniards joined the protest outside Spains embassies and consulates. We, the public, are the ones who can bell the cat. And only we can offer a real alternative to the Zapatero Project. Only civil pressure can dismantle this radical and destructive sociological experiment. We can do so through the vote, but also through constant and
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firm pressure on the parties, whether they represent the Government or the Opposition. However, above all, we must work together as conscious citizens in order to have our say and, without any kind of complex, raise our voices, influencing our immediate environment, creating discussions, addressing our representatives, writing letters to the editor, protesting on the streets and, in short, swaying public opinion. Experience has demonstrated that in Spanish democracy the political groups tend to distance themselves from the people they represent. That is why defeating the Zapatero Project and winning a true democracy can only be achieved by us, the countrys citizens. If the passivity of Spanish society prevails today, then tomorrow, at the end of the tunnel, we will only have the freedom left that the Zapatero Project proposes:
The only order we must establish is the order that grants freedom to all, not that which grants freedom to each individual. It is freedom that makes us true, not truth that makes us free.1
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero in conversation with Suso de Toro. Madera de Zapatero. Retrato de un presidente. Barcelona, 2007.
1
XII
The Zapatero Project without Zapatero
On 20th October 2010, overwhelmed by the darkening clouds of public opinion and growing public opposition, Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero reshuffled his Government. He got rid of the minister (and the ministry) that had been in charge of one of the main pillars of the project, Bibiana Ado, and created an apparently different Cabinet compared to those he had presided over previously. Whilst Rodrguez Zapatero reshuffled his Cabinet, Suso de Toro, after having sold five editions of his book and having translated it into the Galician language, Madeira de Zapatero, declared that he detested the figure who had given him influence and made him a fortune over six years, accusing him of having damaged his literary career. In autumn 2010, the celebrities of the cultural Left began to prepare themselves to abandon ship, without even waiting for the orchestra to start playing up on the deck. The idea was to reach the life-boats before their other colleagues on the political and journalistic Left jumped ship. Believing their leader to have used up all his credit, they got ready to ensure the future of the project by dressing it up in new clothes. Without the slightest concealment, El Pas declared the continuity of the Zapatero Project without Rodrguez Zapatero:
Zapatero Places Rubalcaba in Charge in Order to Rescue the Socialist Project1
http://www.elpais.com/static/misc/portada20101021.pdf
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Of course, the Zapatero Project is also present in a faction of the Partido Popular, as well as in the rest of the parties that make up the parliamentary spectrum. And yet, the Spanish political party that has placed itself at the head of this Project, the one that has presented itself as its champion and that has promoted it most effectively in recent decades, is undoubtedly PSOE. The Zapatero Project is PSOEs Project. Throughout history, Spains Socialists have dressed it up in the clothing that best befits the age. And in this manner, by varying its intensity and expression, by adapting to the terrain, by establishing the goals that were possible at any one time, they have preserved its identity over time. The Zapatero Project is the project of Felipe Gonzlez, but also the project of the PSOE that signed the Pact of San Sebastin back in 1930, the project of Jos Bono and that of Alfredo Prez Rubalcaba. Since the Civil War, Rodrguez Zapatero is the Socialist leader who has dared to take the Project the furthest. However, his successors will not be able to fall behind. At the most, they will proceed to applying a new lick of paint to camouflage the partys intentions when the electorate go to the polls. But like the sharks portrayed in films, one they have tasted blood they cannot do without it. Nevertheless, the public has learnt a great deal after Rodrguez Zapateros time as Head of the Nation: all Spaniards know that the electoral programmes and promises of PSOEs candidates are not worth the paper they are written on. They contain precisely what they conceal: that is to say, in the end, the imposition of their project justifies all and any means.
My entire life story is PSOE. I shall die defending and exalting the Spanish Socialist Workers Party. I love PSOE deeply. I perfectly recall the last moments in which I saw my mother alive. The last thing I said to her was: Mum, do you think Im going to be Prime Minister of the Government? Those were the last words I said to her.2
Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero in conversation with Suso de Toro. Madera de Zapatero. Retrato de un presidente. Barcelona, 2007.
2
Will You Join Us?
Derecho a Vivir (Right to Live) is, perhaps, the initiative promoted by HazteOir.org that has made the biggest impact on public opinion in Spain. In 2009 we launched a signature campaign to protest against Zapateros draft abortion free-for-all law. Each signature we gathered produced a conversation between a Right to Life volunteer and the individual being invited to sign our petition. We volunteers who collect signatures (more than one million) were surprised to discover that the majority of the public are prepared to defend the right of the unborn foetus to live. And yet, some members of the public commented that they did not dare to express their opinion regarding abortion within their own circles. Conversely, those who are in favour of abortion seem to have no problem when it comes to making it public. In spite of the attacks that have been perpetrated against life, family and our freedoms, our experience and the figures we have gained access to reveal that the majority of people in Spain, as throughout the rest of the world, want to protect and preserve family, marriage and the right to live. The problem we face is very simple: although we are a majority, too many people keep silent. At the present time we would like to ask you this: will you raise your voice against injustice and the outrages that they are seeking to impose on us?
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Why dont you add your voice to ours and to that of so many other good people throughout the world who are working to protect the family, our freedom and fundamental rights? We hope you will, because we need you.
We Can and Must Win This Battle If each one of us, we who share these values, stands up to be counted in our own circles, in our homes, in our neighbourhoods and at work, we can turn the Zapatero Project around and stop the tsunami that is approaching and threatens to destroy our families. Victory will require the sum of our very best efforts. If you havent got involved yet, please join our fight to protect life and family, because ... we cant do it on our own! Please help us to protect our freedoms and our human rights in one or various of the following ways. 1. Join HazteOir.org. Enter www.hazteoir.org and sign up for our bulletin in order to receive our alerts and action proposals in your email box. On the same web page you will be able to sign and join the campaigns we promote through our forum. Invite others to join our web site and take part in our campaigns. The more numerous we are, the stronger our voice will be. 2. Become a member or make a generous donation to HazteOir.org or any other body that defends the same values. We cannot continue our work without the financial support of people like you. We are grateful for donations of any amount. You can become a member or make your contribution by logging on to www.haztesocio.org. You can also call us at 91 554 71 89 or send a message to hazteoir@hazteoir.org in order to receive further information about how you can support our work. 3. Help us to spread the message. Lend or give a copy of this book to your friends and relatives so that they can join the fight. In order
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to obtain further copies or download a free copy (in electronic format) of this book, visit the web site we have created: www.proyectozapatero.org. Re-send this web address to your friends, relatives and colleagues at work. 4. Become a volunteer at HazteOir.org. Take part in the meetings and activities organised by the local HazteOir.org or Derecho a Vivir network in your town or city. At this very moment, active groups of citizens in 70 towns and cities across Spain are working in order to promote life and the family. And if there is no organised group in your town or city, why dont you lead a local network? Organise monthly meetings at your home or at some other venue and invite other active citizens to help identify the threats to the family in your local area. Work together to face these threats. Design and implement plans to promote and protect life, family and freedom. Please contact us for further information.
We Can Do It We call on all citizens throughout the world to work together to achieve the following aims: The day in which the right to live of all human beings is respected and protected, starting with conception and ending with natural death. The day in which any law that is contemplated is first analysed in order to assess its impact on the natural family, so that only measures are promoted that strengthen or, at least, do no harm to the family. The day in which politicians throughout the world understand the essential role played by marriage, understood as a stable relationship between a man and a woman, within our society and do everything in their power to protect it. The day in which institutions respect the rights of us parents to bring up our children in accordance with our values.
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The day in which all members of society, believers and nonbelievers, can freely express our faith (or our lack of it) within the public realm, without illegitimate interference on the part of the political authorities. The day in which all citizens are regularly taken into account by our representatives in Parliament, and not just during election periods. Please join us and many others like us around the world who are working to make that day a reality. Because, as Margaret Mead once declared, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. We hope that this book will help you to get involved in some way in this exciting task of defending life and family. Please contact us via the following address: http://hazteoir.org/contacto and tell us how this book may have influenced you. We want to hear from you!
About HazteOir.org
HazteOir.org is a civil association that is duly entered on the Register of the Spanish Ministry for Home Affairs under number 167.805 and featuring fiscal identification number (N.I.F.) G83068403. The mission of HazteOir.org is to promote the participation of citizens within the field of politics. We believe that this is the best way of recovering the dignity of the public realm and of ensuring that our democracy becomes something real and participative throughout the four years that elapse between general elections. We believe that society comes before the State, that politics should essentially be based on a vocation to serve, that those who govern have the duty to listen to the governed. Based on a Christian conception of Man and society, we affirm the dignity of the individual and the importance of values such as freedom, justice and solidarity. We want to contribute to the building of a more just society, one that favours the integral fulfilment of individuals. Our project aims to affirm and promote political participation, the dignity of the individual and the value of life. HazteOir.org www.hazteoir.org +34-91 554 71 89 hazteoir@hazteoir.org
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Help us to reach others by sharing the Zapatero Project

If you like this book and wish to share it with others, there are various ways of obtaining further copies. Enter the following web site and place your orders: www.proyectozapatero.org For further information about HazteOir.org, to keep up to date with the news of greatest importance to you and to take part in the change required by our society, please visit: www.hazteoir.org
An excellent analysis of Rodrguez Zapateros policies. Over the last few years, HazteOir.org has known how to defend life, freedom and human rights. Ignacio Arsuaga and Miguel Vidal, for their part, formulate and present a moral argument that helps us to keep in touch with the meaning of dignity. JOS MARA MARCO, writer The social engineering project embodied by the Zapatero Agenda is the result of a deep-running current in European culture that has existed since 1968. It is important to describe its determining factors and its roots, as this book does. It is also essential to begin a patient cultural and moral reconstruction process, one that will require our very best efforts. The power that seeks to attack our society will only come up against a barrier: free individuals and communities prepared to embark on the adventure of a testimony packed with reason and human beauty. JOS LUIS RESTN, Editorial Director of the Radio Channel, COPE We are living at a time that demands two things: society must be aware of its nakedness and must wake up in order recover what is its own, both from the State and from its inbred politicians. We need voices to protest, to awaken our consciences. The platform, Hazte Oir, responds to this need. The book that readers have in their hands, irrespective of any specific ideology, denounces the encroachment of political power into spheres of society that should be private. Both one and the other, the platform and the book, are highly positive initiatives in terms of enabling civil society to reclaim what is rightfully its own. MARIO CONDE, businessman Arsuaga and Vidal Santos offer us a detailed description of the objectives and mechanisms of a policy that seeks to end our freedom; they provide the key insights and the impetus to resist and overcome the effects of the policy, based on the purest civil tradition that recalls the work of the admirable Tea Party in the United States. This book is essential in terms of both understanding Zapateroism and facing the challenge of post-Zapateroism. SCAR ELA MAU, an analyst at Grupo de Estudios Estratgicos Only by means of an accurate diagnosis can the mobilisation and renewal process begin regarding Spanish civil society. This book achieves this with considerable clarity and rigour. JAIME URCELAY, President of Profesionales por la tica
Each generation has its Goliath, which uses its power to destroy all that is good around it. But some David also tends to appear, managing to defeat what appears undefeatable with bravery and wit. Today, in Spain, the most powerful Goliath is the Zapatero Project discussed in this book ... and our David, HazteOir.org. LEX ROSAL, President of Grupo Libres It is essential to know what we are up against, and this book has the virtue of being simple, clear and rigorous. Those who say they are just laws designed to distract our attention from bigger problems understand nothing. The Left has an agenda for our country, one designed to change our society and to mould our children and our consciences. If we fail to understand this, there will be nothing we can do. For this reason, this initiative on the part of Hazte Or is extremely important. ANTONIO ARCONES, President of Criteria Club de Lectores An accurate, far-sighted and rigorous book, a reading of which is essential in order to understand the origins of the cultural transformation that is taking place in Spain. Only with an analysis such as this is it possible to stand up to and defeat this sudden attack on the part of death culture. And it can be defeated with the overabundant virtues of an infinitely more attractive and constructive set of proposals, which are on a par with human dignity, such as the project promoted by HazteOir.org. LOLA VELARDE, President of the IPF European Network and Member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity A reading of this far-reaching analysis of the social and political project undertaken by Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero inevitably leads the free and responsible citizen to one unavoidable conclusion: it is becoming increasingly important for us to fully involve ourselves in building a civil barrier against the steamrolling effects of pseudo-democratic despotism. GDOR JOYA, Spokesman for Derecho a Vivir Zapatero has profoundly changed Spanish culture. The authors of this book dispel any doubts in this respect. CRISTINA LPEZ SCHLICHTING, journalist at the radio station, COPE.

The Zapatero Project - Chronicle of An Attack On Society

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The Zapatero Project - Chronicle of An Attack On Society

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CHRONICLE OF AN ATTACK ON SOCIETY

Ignacio Arsuaga Rato and Miguel Vidal Santos

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

First edition (100,000 copies): November 2010

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

A Project Designed to Subvert Our Society

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

A PROJECT DESIGNED TO SUBVERT OUR SOCIETY

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

A PROJECT DESIGNED TO SUBVERT OUR SOCIETY

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

Reinvention of the Human and Contempt for Nature

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

REINVENTION OF THE HUMAN AND CONTEMPT FOR NATURE

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

REINVENTION OF THE HUMAN AND CONTEMPT FOR NATURE

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

REINVENTION OF THE HUMAN AND CONTEMPT FOR NATURE

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

George Orwell, 1984.

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

The Man Who Dreamt of Being God

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

terruption of a pregnancy did not constitute the elimination of a human life:

THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD

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http://www.hazteoir.org/node/19250 http://blogs.hazteoir.org/vueltaporlavida 10 http://www.hazteoir.org/node/24660 11 http://www.hazteoir.org/node/28635

THE MAN WHO DREAMT OF BEING GOD

Source: Institute for Family Policies (IPF).

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

When Education Is Indoctrination

Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, 37th PSOE Congress, 2008.

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION

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HEALTH AND THE VOLUNTARY INTERRUPTION OF PREGNANCY6

As reproduced in the Official State Gazette (BOE) 4.3.10: http://www.boe.es

WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION

Ibid. Ibid. http://www.religionenlibertad.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo=11583

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION

Published in ABC, 24.5.10

THE ZAPATERO PROJECT

WHEN EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION