Interior Colonialism

It's election season here in Spain, with most of the country's autonomous regions, cities and town up for grabs. The region newspaper I contribute to asked me for my view on the upcoming elections. Rather than examine the promises that are never kept, I looked at the hegemony of the party system here in Spain and the lack of accountability this creates. Click over to read the original version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

I’m from a former colony in what has been called the new world. It’s a sparsely populated land of vast resources and immense natural wealth. Its raw materials were first harvested by Europeans on behalf of the French and then were handed over to the English. In exchange, Canada got a foreign monarchy that it still has not fully emancipated from.

And while the recently crowned Carlos is still nominally the head of state of this G8 country, the British no longer reap all its natural wealth for their sole benefit. Now, our outsized neighbors to the south have picked up where the English left off. Now the Americans happily extract Canada’s resources and then sell them back with value added once they have been transformed. Thus shifting the country’s natural wealth from its place of birth elsewhere.

It's an age-old colonialist tale of pillage and plunder. One that should sound very familiar to someone from Extremadura. For this land too has been drained, literally in the case of the reservoirs, by external powers in a process of interior colonialization for centuries. 

In the forty years since this Autonomous region was created, it has been controlled by external parties and its destiny has never fully been its own. Two political parties have been in control that ostensibly have a base here, but whose real power base emanates from Madrid. Extremadura has never come of age politically or economically due to this continued reliance on decisions made in offices in Ferraz or, briefly, Genova.

As the elections approach, it’s long past time to move out from mom and dad’s house and emancipate. To be beholden to no one other than the inhabitants of the region. To act, not according to what is good for a national party, but for the good of the people who live and raise their families here. To be represented by independent voices, free from backroom deals and tradeoffs made elsewhere.

Colonies adapt and then evolve and there comes a time when outside help is no longer wanted or even necessary. Extremadura needs to trust in itself.