<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8549"><span class="author-p-11951">Hello,</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8550"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8551"><span class="author-p-9991">This is an official statement of Spain's PP directory board concerning the situation of the Pirate parties active in Spain.</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8552"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8553"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8554"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8605"><span class="author-p-11951">W</span><span class="author-p-9991">e
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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8556"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8557"><span class="author-p-9991">PIRATE PARTIES IN SPAIN</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8558"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8559"><span class="author-p-9991">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</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8560"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8561"><span class="author-p-9991">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. </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8562"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8563"><span class="author-p-9991">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%.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8564"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8603"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8566"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8567"><span class="author-p-9991">PIRATES IN ELECTIONS</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8568">
<span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8569"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8570"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8571"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8572"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8573"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8574"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8575"><span class="author-p-9991">NUMBER OF PIRATES</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8576"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8577"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8578"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8579"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8580"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8581"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8582"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8583"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8584"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8585"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8586"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8587"><span class="author-p-9991">PERSONAL ISSUES<br><br></span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8588">
<span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8589"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8590"><span class="author-p-9991">PIRATA AND PPI</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8607"><br></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8613"><span class="author-p-11951">Someone</span><span class="author-p-9991">
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: </span><span class="author-p-9991 url"><a href="https://www.partidopirata.es/resources/estatutos_pirata.pdf">https://www.partidopirata.es/resources/estatutos_pirata.pdf</a></span><span class="author-p-9991"> ).</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8593"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8594"><span class="author-p-9991">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.</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8595"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8596"><span class="author-p-9991">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. </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8597"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8598"><span class="author-p-9991">Best regards, liebe Grüße, nos sincères salutations, saludos</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8599"><span class="author-p-9991"> </span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8604"><span class="author-p-11951">Spain's PP directory board</span></div><div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid8481">
<br></div>