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Interview to Francisco Molina Martinez - 5^th July 2012

He is representative member of IU (United Left) in Zamora Town Hall 

Zamora has 68thousand habitants and it is located 250 Km north west of Madrid.

Francisco Molina Martinez is a Matematics professor and a member of the Spanish Communist Party and a member of IU an organisation that unites a number of left wing organisations.

Currently he is a Town Counsellor for Zamora Town Hall and a Member of Parliament for Zamora

He tells me that the reason for the two positions is not because of selfishness no it is because you can not be a Member of Parliament if you are not a Town Hall counsellor.

He studied Physical Sciences and he passed the selection text to be lecturer professor of maths. Currently he is retiree and he has more time for politics and he think this is his real vocation  

1 What measures is the government putting into place for the crisis.  People on the streets are worried about the diminised in their quality of life.

The Spanish government is applying the measures that they being dictated by the powerful in Europe the bankers the big owners of the land the big fortunes. They are applying measures much in favour of the ones they have the most and this is a wrong measure. The crisis is happening because the money is being going up and is accumulated at the top with the wealthy ones. The popular class don’t have enough to survive and this popular class are the ones they consume enough so the economy does not stop. Every working class family consumes lest than a rich family but because the great majority are the working class people this are the ones they move the economy. We need to have progressive tax systems and the ones they have more should pay more. We should also put a stop to the tax heaven places and that the money to be redirected to the pensioners and unemployed and for health and education. The government is doing the contrary; trying to save is cutting more the working class conditions and this measures are producing indignation in a lot of people.  The government is wrong and at times it admits to it.

I often give this example to people “if a doctor gives a sick person the wrong medication soon he will see the patience is not improving but if on top of it they double the dosage the patience will get sicker “ This is what is happening in Spain because of the actions the government is taking.

 

2 What are the unions and working class saying about this measures the government is implementing.

The unions when everything was going well they were applauding the capitalist system and acknowledging it had some faults but they felt for their trick and though it was the best system in the world. Now they are opening their eyes and they see this society is false. It could be that it was false intentionally, the politis of international capitalism made that people lived beyond their means and possibilities. On one side so they could do business and on the other side the people will think is the best system better than other alternatives like socialist or communist.

The unions when they realised what was happening they got a shock and they realised they needed the workers but the workers at this moment don’t trust the unions because they way they alliance with the employers and they signed many reductions in wages and conditions.

Now the unions are working hard to gaining the trust of the working class because they need the workers and we are recycling ideas and adopting new measures. To summarise, I often said” Have you hear of the October revolution?” “This October revolution” This is what we are planning a peaceful revolution like the Arab Spring. We are organising big demonstrations and trying that this Popular Party government won’t stay the hole term in power otherwise “it may burry us alive “ We are hopeful for a new force with a different program from the one they are imposing on us.

3 And what are the unions like CCOO and UGT recommending at this time.

Like I was saying before the unions have to change and now they realised that the most important is to save what belongs to everyone. It is important that health remains in public hands, the education too and that the pensions have been guarantee and their payments are being solvents and strong.

During the socialist government of Felipe Gonzalez in the 90’s he started to privatise health and it did not achieved anything and the debt is higher now than them. The unions now are acting in defence and they are trying to protect and save the welfare of the state

4- What is the level of unemployment?  

Because the working class has little money to expend people are not consuming, the unemployed can not consume and in the last Labour Reform Law it allows the employer to sack a worker from one day to the next without payment or compensation, currently people are not expending even if they have a job because they are afraid they may lose their jobs and won’t be able to feed their families. In this situation the small business man does not sell if he does not sell he does not order from factories and the factories are sacking employees and the unemployment rate is growing at a fast rate we are over the five millions at the moment and it will go to the six millions before the end of the year and offcourse the youth are the most affected and their rate is higher. Work has to be shared in today’s industrialised world and we should not allowed unlimited hours of work for workers.

5- Is everything being privatised? What is public?

From the three pillars of society to improve people wellbeing, health, education and pensions, they are not privatised jet because the unions are putting a fight, but there is a danger in what they want to privatise, the education system. There was a small sector of private education and it was always spoil and promoted, boosted and defended by the PP and PSOE. But we still have a public education system of quality, prestige, solvency and reliable. With the Health the PP tried to divert lots of operations to private clinics with the excuse they could not attend at all the demands in the public hospitals, is the first step to dismantle the public system and make it private the same as with the pensions. They want to reduce the pensions to minimums that are unliveable so if people want to have money at their retirement they are promoting a system of private funds for pensioners, the same for health and education but what usually happened those private funds are usually a fraud usually they go bankrupt and who pays at the end the taxpayers, society. The PSOE tried to privatise the lottery system “El Godo” but no one came forward the companies were bankrupt. Private people are the ones with lots of money the companies are bankrupt. They will privatise everything they can to make money out of it.

6 And the GST or IVA is it going to go higher

The GST is an unjust tax as is indirect tax in the pyramid society. The number of rich people are less than the working class and a rich person consume more than a working class one, but because is larger the working class consumes more and if the GST goes up they are charging the working class. In Spain the measures that Rajoy announced if the GST was at 18% now is going to go up 21% But the worst is that like in other countries there was a reduced GST for certain consumer goods like books, medications, nappies etc. it was only 4% now is going up to 18% or 21% and this increase is not going to help; if a family everyday has less money and everything is more expensive; if before they can not afford things now less the consume is going to collapse and so the economical system; this is the last hit to the working class the increase on the GST of all consumer goods. There are not exceptions or exclusions all consumer goods now carry a GST.

7 What is going to happened to the people that pay not taxes and where do they hide their money

The United Left program touches that area if we accept the theory that there is no deficit. To be able to expend no more than what we have there are two ways one is to cut expenses and this is what the government is implementing but if there is not consumption there is less revenue taken and when the revenue is less and less this is what they are applying now the powerful in the system.The other way to reduce the deficit and to increase the revenue is to reduce the expenditure like what are we doing in the Afghanistan war, we can save expenditure there; what are we doing feeding the catholic church, we can save there; what are we doing feeding (keeping up) the royal family, we can save there. There are many other areas of money wasting and they do nothing for the to protect the average citizen. Our theory in IU( United Left) is that the taxes have to increase progressively people who earn more should pay more. Now the super rich only pay 50% but in the past when crisis in 1929 they paid much more in USA. According to our research in IU the black money that currently is in circulation is astronomic and it could save the crisis of all European nations. Spain a country with more number of 500€ bills and they know how many they are in this country and they can not find them anywhere so they are hiding them because if you want to hide money you look at the way that it ‘s not too bulky and for that you need the largest paper currency.

 

 

 

There are two types of money that don’t pay taxes one is the black money and the other is the hidden money in tax heavens.

The president of the Spanish government Rajoy has put in place an amnesty for any one with black money to came forward and they will only pay 10% penalty to legalize the money and with this amnesty they won’t be charged legally. Recently they released the figures and only a few people have came forward. They should have came out more because this is a way of making business, because the money comes from not charging GST as many business would ask you with GST or with out. When selling a unit and if they did not charged the GST when they should, that money was not declared. A lot of the black money comes from the mafias, selling drugs, illegal arms trade, prostitution they don’t pay taxes on this money. This money is profit of crimes and mafias and we should try to find it but one of the defects of the Spanish system is that there are hardly any tax inspectors. The tax inspectors are the ones complaining that they get the orders from the top to investigate families that they may have to pay 4€ or some one who has a small business o some one unemployed but gets a small job for a day and he is trying to survive. The tax inspectors are telling their managers” we need to catch the big fish and also we need more inspectors and to act in cooperation with the police because of the larger illegal amount of money we are talking about”. The money from the tax heavens is easier to find and I am saying in a kind of jockey way I tell people that I was against war and the armies but it will be good to use the armies and send them to the tax heavens like Luxemburg or the Caiman Islands to arrive to this places with the tanks and break in the safe boxes and them to bring them back to Spain and distributed the money between the needy. What we can not accept that a working class person will keep paying their taxes and the magnates that first were mafia bosses and them magnates because they want to multiply their money they are “white gloves criminals” People are asking themselves why there is no money and the experts are saying yes there is money so lets look for it. We could solve the deficit problem without having to cut public services.

What has happened when the capitalism crisis started the affluent classes were better prepared to benefit themselves from the crisis and we see now that the sacrifices are made by the working classes of Greece or Spain they are the ones paying the banking institutions when they are the ones they owe money to us because they had speculate and play with our money and they lost it. They want to get as much money as possible and they want to privatise everything so every aspect of your life you will be obligated to pay to the rich owner. An example close to the Zamora’ town hall: In the past the companies did not favour to support old people in their homes with services; they just to tell us it was a waste of money but now they compete for the money the town hall funds to support elderly people in their homes and they have created their private companies and now they are private companies doing the home care services. When justice depends of a private enterprise there is no justice because all they are interested in it is to make more money. Now there are waiting lists to wait for operations while the services in public hands the list will be logics first comes, first served or the most needy first but when the private enterprise will take over I could be the last one on the list and pay a big fee and jump to the top of the queue or if I have enough power I could put my self up the top; this is the type of degradation it could happen.

Here in Spain they always have ruled us the political parties that supported the right wing in politics and the big fortunes, they always made the laws to suit themselves.

Capitalism is a society in which the laws decided to help the capital with the excuse that if it creates work and wealth it is money to for the businessman.

It always sounds good something that creates work and pays workers but it is a lie the businessman does not creates wealth or work places a business man only wants to multiply his capital and if to do that he needs workers he will contract workers but if he does not need then he doesn’t. Very different from a socialist society that it looks after the wellbeing of its citizens.

Here a wealthy family that has to contribute with taxes to the revenue of the nation but if they don’t want to pay taxes there is trick it is call SICAV. When wealthy person with three or four other people create a false society because as a wealthy person his taxes are 50% but with this false society he is only going to pay between 2 to 3% and that false society does not do anything as it is not any longer a person now is a society and it does not have to pay much taxes.

We need to pay taxes so the society in which we live has good services and good ways of communication internet a well harmonize society it does not happened in Spain. Here is a robbery because is not a fair tax system.

8 What is IU program for the province of Zamora

Our group IU it was formed in 1983 and the same persons in the group we have been meeting continuously every week usually on Mondays and we analyse everything that is happening and this have given us a political culture and a very important knowledge about the issues that affects people. We are always in the streets demonstrating with the people fighting for their rights we always carry the loud speakers this have given us a big profile at a local level and in the last elections as a provincial capital – there are 52 provinces in Spain- we obtained in Zamora the largest percentage votes per province capital for IU and out of 25 we are 4 from IU. They were other cities in Spain but not capitals of provinces that obtain more IU representatives.