Just over a year ago, Yolanda Díaz gave a newspaper interview that appeared under the pleasingly provocative headline: "No basta con gestionar, a este Gobierno le falta alma" - "Running things isn't enough; this government lacks spirit."
While alma could also be translated as soul, heart or enthusiasm, the thrust of Díaz's comments to El País was perfectly clear. Despite being a key figure in Pedro Sánchez's Socialist-led minority administration - she serves as labour minister and second deputy prime minister -Díaz believes governing is about more than just delivery. For her, politicians are there to improve people's lives, to defend and increase hard-won rights, and to leave their country in a better state than they found it. Still, as she told the paper, the odd "happy policy" never does any harm either.
Twelve months on, as Spain faces a snap general election that could result in a coalition between the conservative People's party (PP) and far-right Vox party, Díaz is putting her policies and her alma to the test.
The new Sumar movement she leads - a platform of leftwing, far-left and green parties including the beleaguered Podemos, once the great new hope of the Spanish left - is hoping that, with the Socialists, it will pick up enough votes to keep the PP and Vox out of power.
Like Sánchez, who has sought to portray the election as a Manichean choice between all that is progressive and all that is reactionary, Díaz is blunt about what is at stake.
Bu hikaye The Guardian Weekly dergisinin July 14, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye The Guardian Weekly dergisinin July 14, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
We're making a music video-but I can't play, or even act
I am in a lifeboat station on the south coast, standing beneath the stern of a rescue vessel, wearing a borrowed fisherman's jumper and holding a banjo. There are lights on me, and I am very much at sea.
BOOKS OF THE MONTH
The best translated fiction
Village people A chilly tone of doom infects these unsettling folk tales, following a settlement from the deep past to near future
The quintessential \"bad place\" is one of the staples of horror fiction. For Stephen King, the bad place - think the Overlook Hotel in The Shining - usually acts as a repository for a long-forgotten evil or injustice to resurface.
A labour of love Haruki Murakami revisits a hypnotic city of dreams and a tale of teen sweethearts, in material he's worked on over four decades
The elegiac quality of Haruki Murakami's new novel, his first in six years, was perhaps inevitable considering its origins. The City and Its Uncertain Walls began as an attempt to rework a 1980 story of the same title, originally published in the Japanese magazine Bungakukai, which Murakami, unsatisfied, never allowed to be republished or translated.
Leading questions The former German chancellor slights her enemies by barely mentioning them-and is frustratingly opaque on her own big calls
Towards the end of her 16-year tenure, former German chancellor Angela Merkel was garlanded with superlative titles: the \"queen of Europe\", the \"most powerful woman in the world\".
Double vision
Is the pay really that good? Do you get bored? We ask 'David Brent', 'Nessa' and 'Ali G' what it's like to make money as the lookalike of a comic creation
Robopop Teen star who does not exist
Miku is a 'Vocaloid' -a holographic avatar that represents a digital bank of vocal samples-performing sellout tours for thousands of very real mega-fans
The show must go wrong
How did a farce about a gaffe-filled amateur dramatic whodunnit become one of Britain's greatest ever exports, the toast of dozens of countries?
Europe's latest radical populist typifies a swing on the continent
Politics in Romania can be a bloody business, especially on the right. The excesses of the Iron Guard, an insurrectionary, violently antisemitic, ultranationalist 1930s political-religious militia, stood out even at a time when fascist parties were wreaking havoc in Germany, Italy and Spain. Given what is happening in Europe today, the events of that period are instructive.
It's high time to tax cannabis and fix French finances
France might not be broke, but the state of its public finances is, well, definitely not good. Total debt stands at €3.2tn ($3.4tn) - 112% of GDP. Interest payments on that debt are the second largest public expenditure after education (which includes everything from crêche, or preschool, to universities) and are higher than the amount spent on defence. And this year's budget deficit is projected to be 6%, three points above the EU's 3% limit.
