[pp.int.general] Pirate Party Situation in Spain

[Eduardo Perdices]

Hello,

This is an official statement of Spain's PP directory board concerning the
situation of the Pirate parties active in Spain.

We  are addressing this issue not because we think this is something of
general interest for most members of the PPI, neither because we think
this is the right time or place to present a status questions on this
subject. We are writing this statement because we have been asked to do  so
by some members of the PPI's directory board due, we think, an  unrelenting
string of defamatory and derogatory  (and mostly false)  accusations of
inefficiency, corruption or lack of nerve upon our party  and the party's
directory boards, coming from one single individual from  another Spanish
Pirate Party, namely Pirates de Catalunya. No other  member of this party
has supported this singular individual in his  accusations. Not at least in
public, to the best of our knowledge. Were  not for this request, we
wouldn't have risked to waste the PPIs members  time, even less being so
close to the General Assembly in Prague.

We are going to talk about things we  know for fact, or what we know as a
result of serious consults, of  information from the other part. We do not
talk by hearsay, and when we  are not sure about some something, we'll
state this clear.

PIRATE PARTIES IN SPAIN

First  of all let us clarify what's the situation in Spain, regarding the
functioning of recognized political parties describing themselves as
"pirates". The Spanish Partido Pirata (hence PIRATA) got official status
in December 2006 and almost 4 years later (Nov. 2010) a pirate party
limited in scope to the Autonomous Community of Cataluña, Pirates de
Catalunya (hence Pirates) was recognized as well. Most of the people  from
Pirates were members of PIRATA. Some of them retained a double  affiliation
up to this day. Just a few months ago, a number of 7-8  members of PIRATA
from the Autonomous Community of Galicia got political  recognition to a
new party called Piratas de Galiza

PIRATA  never really got the public eye or gained enough momentum to
participate in any election before the IX General Assembly (18/09/2010).
It lacked affiliates, money founds and political support, it was  riddled
with personal strife and got itself an ill designed set of  regulations
that prevented growth and discouraged active participation.  Worst of all,
the "Estatutos" contained a "blocking article" demanding a  seemingly
impossible to reach quorum of 90% of affiliates to allow  significant
internal reforms.

While  it would be disingenuous to suggest that the political performance
of  the Directive Bureau of PIRATA that emerged from the IX General
Assembly  was exactly efficient, at least during his term it was possible
to  participate for the first time in local elections, and after strenuous
efforts to make the affiliates aware of the "blocking article" issue, it
was possible to change the "blocking article" to alleviate the quorum  and
thus allow statutory changes with a quorum of 66%, instead of the  previous
90%.

On  10/12/2011 the X General Assembly of PIRATA took place, and the newly
elected Directive Bureau pledged its first priority would be the change  of
statutes and the building of a new, confederate organization for  PIRATA.
Since then, we have been discussing the text of the statutes.  The
statutory process is going apace and in a few months time we will be  able
to vote a new statutes far more democratic, far more efficient and  open,
not so reluctant to change and improvement, and decidedly less  centralized
and more adopted to Spain's decentralized political  structure. We have
also made important changes and provisions in the  mailing lists and means
of communications with affiliates and now we  have again a "Comité de
derechos y Garantías" (a Court of Arbitration,  that was deserted by its
former incumbents during the bitter internal  riffles of the first part of
2011). The new Statutes will make possible  for any pirate party (PP-CAT
and PP-GA in the first place) to federate  with PIRATA, or to any pirates
around to start swiftly a working pirate  infrastructure. We like to think
that in fact, we have very good  relationship with most members of the
other pirate parties in Spain and  elsewhere and we are open to full
cooperation with them. In return, we  would appreciate at least some
personal respect in public fora.

PIRATES IN ELECTIONS

Due  to the partially decentralized election calendar in Spain, Pirates
was  the first pirate party to present itself to elections, in 2010,
obtaining a 0'4% of the votes in the municipal elections in Catalonia.  In
Feb. 2011 took place local elections in most of Spain at the  municipal
(Catalonia excluded) and Autonomous level. PIRATA participated  in this
elections and obtained a 0'3% of the votes in Madrid and 0'31%  in Málaga.

Starting  2011, political parties without previous acquired representation
in the  Cortes, are asked to collect the signature of 0,1% of the census
on  each province of Spain to be able to opt for a chair in the Parliament
or the Senate. The former Directive Bureau arrived at an agreement with
Pirates. Under such agreement, Pirates will try to collect the  signatures
in Catalonia (4 provinces) and PIRATA would do the same in  the rest of
Spain, but would not try to collect signatures in Catalunya.  Pirates got
enough signatures to present their candidacies in the 4  Catalan provinces,
while PIRATA collected enough signatures to do the  same in 4 provinces
(failing to collect the 100% of the required  signatures in Madrid was a
specially painful blow). In general, we  reached similar results in the
provinces where a pirate party could be  voted (around 0,66% the best
Province of Pirates and 0,54% the best one  of PIRATA, Navarra). Both
parties collaborated during all the political  campaign.

We  think our agreement with PP-CAT in the last general elections of 2011
was a venturous move from both parts and we hope we will be able to
promote more fruitful collaboration as long as personal respect is
maintained from both sides.

NUMBER OF PIRATES

We  will address this issue since the person delivering his attacks on
PIRATA is doing so partly because personal issues (which is to loathe)  but
partly because he is claiming full voting rights for Pirates, which  is not
an irrational request, but is ill presented. While we don't  necessarily
oppose to that, we must protest that (a) in pursuing this  agenda he even
promotes to take away Spain Pirate Party vote and (b) he  is misleading the
PPI members when quoting pirate numbers as a reason to  present Pirates as
a far bigger party that PIRATA.

When  the former Directive Bureau decided to vote the change of the
"blocking  article" of the statutes, it faced the impressive difficulty of
the  required quorum: a 90% of the affiliates. The number of affiliates
had  kept slowly growing over the years, but many of them where just names
of  people who arrived to our webpages, liked us and our aims, signed as
affiliates and then kissed bye-bye forever. With no quotes to pay or any
other kind of requirement for permanency, it was impossible to know how
many of them where actual members of PIRATA. The directive bureau tried  to
know how many of them were real affiliates, ready at least to reply  to an
email requiring from them to confirm their willingness to belong  to
PIRATA. During a period of several months, no less than two emails  (in
some Autonomous communities three or four) were sent to anybody who,  at
some point of his or her existence had shown some prior desire to  belong
to PIRATA. If no answer whatsoever was obtained, the name was  considered
no longer an affiliated, but still a sympathizer. In this  way, a new, more
realistic census of affiliates was created. Thus it was  possible to vote
the reform of "blocking article", slightly passing the  90% of quorum (and
with massive support for the reform) but the number  of affiliates dropped
to slightly less than a half of the theoretical  numbers of affiliated that
had been counted before. Now the number of  affiliates is about 250, while
the theoretical number of affiliates one  and half year ago was around 500.

Today  we are in the process of introducing a moderate quota for our
affiliates (a regular quota of 2€ a month and a reduced quota of 1€ for
whoever doesn't want to pay the full quota.) This will slightly  alleviate
our chronic lack of founds and, most important will make our  affiliates
more aware of the importance of being a full pirate. Being  PIRATA as
participative as it is, we would more happily welcome as an  affiliate one
person willing to discuss, vote, join us in person and  spare 12€ a year
with the party than having registered in a spread sheet  the name of ten
people about whom we don't know anything else but their  family names and
identity number.

Pirates  claim they have about 700 affiliates (who are paying no quota),
and we  do not protest this number, but considering the votes in elections,
the  real participation in web votes etc. we don't feel like there is a
lot  of difference in real membership. The problem is that just counting
"affiliates" can give you a very different picture, depending on what is
needed to count as an affiliate.

According  to their own last reports to us (that can actualized a soon as
they are  willing to do so) we estimate the actual number of members of
Pirates  de Galiza is about a dozen, most of them also belonging to PIRATA.

PERSONAL ISSUES

We  have had personal issues both within PIRATA and with Pirates in the
past. This is probably natural and even inevitable due the prolonged
contact and charged issues. This is not to condone the heath and hatred  of
some written interchanges that have been seen in the lists of PPI. We  will
do our best to keep the personal issues away from this list  forever, and
in return we would love not to hear again the same  inflammatory messages
we have been reading in the past and, for the most  part, passed in silence.

PIRATA AND PPI

Someone has made the claim on this list  that our current statutes forbid
us to be members of PPI. That is simply  not true, as you can check reading
our current statutes (in Spanish:
https://www.partidopirata.es/resources/estatutos_pirata.pdf ).

PIRATA  considers essential to its role as a pirate party to be a part of
the  PPI. We are proud of it, we will try to help the PPI in everything
within our reach and we hope that soon we will be able to host the  General
Assembly of the PPI.

We  are ready to answer any honest question the PPI members and its board
is willing to do to us as the Directive Bureau, or to any of its members
about any related issue. We also hope that this will be the last time  we
have to entertain the PPI members with such internal issues.  In the
future, we will not respond in public to the kind of vicious attacks we
have been addressed by one person of Pirates in the past, but we reserve
our right to call such importune public invectives against PIRATA or  its
members to the attention of the PPI court of arbitration.

Best regards, liebe Grüße, nos sincères salutations, saludos

Spain's PP directory board
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