The facts that some forget when whitewashing the socialist Felipe González from the right

For many years now, the Spanish right has had strange habits when talking about the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

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One of those habits is, for example, saying that the PSOE is no longer socialist, as if to imply that true socialism isn't what that party does. It's the opposite: of course it is socialism. Socialism is precisely what the PSOE does: plunder the state and turn it into its private fiefdom. It's a despicable habit that isn't new, although some seem to have forgotten it.

This amnesia on the part of the right towards the PSOE also explains the beatification campaign of the socialist Felipe González that we are seeing lately, as if the fact that this man expresses his discontent with Pedro Sánchez implies the need to present González as a reference point for that unicorn called the "good PSOE", resorting to a whitewashing that, as a person who lived through the term of that socialist leader as president of the government, makes me burst out laughing.

In this blog I have spent years explaining things from the past of the PSOE, including some things that happened during Felipe González's term and that some seem to have forgotten (I only cite a few examples, because an exhaustive list would be enough for a collection of books):

• The legalization of abortion in Spain. It was one of the first things Felipe González's government did upon coming to power. In 1983, it passed a law decriminalizing abortion in a wide range of circumstances. It was a veiled legalization of this monstrosity. Members of Parliament from various parties appealed this law to the Constitutional Court, which partially invalidated it, forcing the passage of a new law in 1985. This law was a legal loophole through which hundreds of thousands of unborn babies were killed..
• The serious attack of 1985 against judicial independence. I explained it here in December 2022. In 1979, the government of Adolfo Suárez (UCD) passed a law that included prior appeals of unconstitutionality as a check on possible abuses of power. In 1985, the government of Felipe González abolished this prior appeal of unconstitutionality because it hindered the implementation of its ideological agenda. Shortly afterward, that government passed an Organic Law of the Judiciary that effectively eliminated the separation of powers, granting the government control of the General Council of the Judiciary and the Constitutional Court. This was the prelude to the current attacks by the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) against judges. The socialist Alfonso Guerra, then vice president of the government, justified it by saying: "Montesquieu has been dead for a long time," referring to Baron de Montesquieu, who formulated the principle of separation of powers in 1748.
• Medals awarded to two brutal communist dictators. I spoke about this here in June 2024. Taking advantage of their majority in the Senate, the Socialists awarded the Gold Medal of the Senate to Soviet dictator Konstantin Chernenko (1984) and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (1987), two communist tyrants whose regimes violated human rights. These distinctions served to whitewash both communist dictatorships in Spain.
• The "Antenicidio": An attempt to eliminate media pluralism. In the final years of Felipe González's presidency, Antena 3 Radio became a highly critical voice regarding corruption cases and abuses by the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). In 1994, the PRISA group, aligned with the socialist government, bought Antena 3 Radio, only to later shut it down and dismantle it. This is what some call the "Antenicidio," which I discussed here ten years ago. Of course, it was a clear political maneuver that undermined free competition and media pluralism. To complete the operation, the government of Felipe González granted the Antena 3 Radio towers to SER by decree, in a colossal monopolistic concentration declared illegal by the Supreme Court on June 9, 2000 and by the Constitutional Court on April 26, 2001.
• The reduction of sentences for rapists and pedophiles and the decriminalization of child corruption. I talked about it here in 2022. In 1995, the government of Felipe González approved a reform of the Penal Code that decriminalized child corruption and reduced the sentences for rapists and pedophiles in 1995. It was scandalous. Even a media outlet that has always been very close to the PSOE, El País, was outraged when that reform prevented the prosecution of a father who abused his daughter for 9 years: "In Europe, laws on child abuse are being toughened, for example, by extending the statute of limitations to include cases where the victim reaches the age of majority. In Spain, there is a loophole that could favor the offender."
• The Socialist corruption scandals and the attacks on the media investigating them. The governments of Felipe González were at the center of the first major chain of political corruption scandals in the democratic era: the Juan Guerra case, the Filesa case, the Ibercorp case, the Roldán case, the illegal wiretapping by the CESID (National Intelligence Center), the GAL (Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups) case... The González government and its affiliated media used the expression "crime syndicate" to demonize the independent media investigating these cases. It is a practice that the Pedro Sánchez government has revived for the same reason.
• The infamous sectarianism of Felipe González's government: the case of the attack against Aznar. I spoke about it here in May 2024. On Wednesday, April 19, 1995, ETA perpetrated a terrorist attack in Madrid against José María Aznar, national president of the People's Party and leader of the opposition. After the attack, Felipe González did not visit Aznar at the clinic. The government claimed that he spent the day working. As more details emerged, the events took on a sinister air: A few weeks before the attack, the government had withdrawn the counter-surveillance device that protected Aznar. The government claimed that the opposition leader was not among ETA's targets, but this was a lie: three days after the attack, it came to light that the Socialist government had concealed from the People's Party (PP) that there had already been foiled attacks against Aznar and that the Police were aware of ETA's plans against PP leaders, but the party was not alerted by the government. This case of sectarianism bordered on criminal and could have cost Aznar his life.
• The cult of the leader. This is one of the worst vices of Pedro Sánchez's government: the cult of personality fostered by the socialist leader, which has ended up stifling internal debate within his own party. That already happened with Felipe González: "he totally subordinated the party to the cult of his personality", as historian Álvaro Soto Carmona pointed out in 2022. In 1993, the then spokesperson for the People's Party (PP) in Congress, Rodrigo Rato, said that the cult of personality that exists in the PSOE with respect to Felipe González "takes back memories 20 years", in An allusion to Francoism. In Spain at that time, the term "Felipismo" was coined to describe this cult of personality surrounding the leader.

All of this shows the kind of ruler Felipe González was. His 14 years at the head of the government were a succession of abuses of power, scandals, and displays of arrogance. It was one of the most toxic governments in the history of democracy, and that's why it astounds me that there are right-wing people whitewashing such a sinister figure. Felipe González is the intellectual father of Pedro Sánchez's authoritarianism. His despotic style of governing is a carbon copy of what those of us who lived through González's term in the 80s and 90s suffered. If González has changed, the least he could do is apologize for the immense damage he did to Spain.

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Photo: PSOE. Pedro Sánchez and Felipe González at an event organized by the PSOE on October 29, 2022 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of González's rise to power in 1982.