Àngel Ferrero is a journalist and translator, and a regular contributor to Público, El Salto, and Catarsi magazine.
A conference this month aims to unite European far-right leaders like Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán in a continentwide alliance. What would once have been a fringe grouping can now rely on the support of several EU governments.
A decade since the 15-M protests rocked Spain, the country has its first left-wing coalition government since the 1930s. But as Íñigo Errejón tells Jacobin, today it’s the nationalist right, not the heirs to 15-M, who are dominating the political agenda.
Far-right parties like Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National claim to protect working people. But for all their populist rhetoric, their economic proposals would slash public services and demolish workers’ rights.
A century ago, the Barcelona general strike made Spain one of the first countries in the world to introduce the eight-hour working day. Now, under pressure from the Left, the Spanish government is trialing a four-day week, with no loss of pay for workers.
Basic income schemes are no silver bullet to make up for the loss of well-paid union jobs. But they can allow workers say no to the most thankless, low-wage work — and provide a platform from which to rebuild our bargaining power.
Catalonia heads to the polls today in its first election since Spanish courts jailed pro-independence leaders for sedition and banned the Catalan president from public office. Dolors Sabater, lead candidate for the anti-capitalist CUP, told Jacobin why the Catalan national question won’t go away — and why a referendum is the only way to resolve it.