I really don’t know what happened in central and specially north Europe. Like how the Finish gave up their long appreciated non-NATO alliance that so much prosperity gave them is beyond me. Talking to Finish people today (lots coming to Spain!) is like they are in amnesia and unable to verbalize an answer… social media?!
Vox won’t do damage per se, but it may force the leading Right-wing party PP for some concessions. I highly doubt Vox will ever lead in Spain. Madrid right-wing cannot get too bold or Catalans and Basques will be soon doing referendums… an irony, when Spaniards vote for more nationalism, it will get less Spain. After 2 years observing Spanish press and social media, I see a tremendous disparity between that and the society, marking strong manipulation.
It is, no completely by design, but mostly incidentally, but it is. Spaniards also are showing themselves as far more pragmatic and tolerant of the new realities than the rest of the EU. Now, the current PM is likely to loose in the next elections and a right-wing PM will take charge, but it will be forced not to change course drastically regarding China or Palestine or would see mobilizations in the street fast. Spain, if it plays the cards right, could see becoming with more gravitas in Europe.
Fun Fact: Vox, the ultra-right wing party in Spain started in 2014 with a large amount of cash from abroad from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)… yep, because nothing spells Spanish nationalism better than being primarily financed (80% in 2014) by Iranian dissidents that have no money and likely was Israel behind it all. Also, and that is just my personal speculation, the complete and unprecedented blackout last summer and the puzzling track breakage on the fast train were purely accidental too.
Spain will rip some of the benefits since China is moving assembling plants to Spain as we talk after Spain being one more opens to trade from China. For Spaniards will be a smooth transaction moving from German and French brands to Chinese ones. Europe as a whole will still loose the engineering jobs though while continuing blaming Russia and China for all their mostly self-inflicting wounds.
Again… if Sanchez did more (and I don’t think he is such a great guy, but at least he is right here), his shaky coalition would fall and elections would be called. I think he will still win, but polls says the Right would win being Israel’s beloved VOX the king maker and you will see Spain participating in the genocide like UK or Germany does… there are your “results”!
Again, Spain should do far more, I ultimately trust on Spaniards here, but I understand one may want to proceed more cautiously here.
To help understand what is happening in Spain:
This government is a a very precarious situation, even before the ongoing genocide. It is form by a delicate coalition. Now, Spain has traditionally been very sympathetic for the Palestinian cause, and the majority of parties reflect that sentiment.
Spain is a NATO country so as such it needs mainly US weaponry that US, oddly, to say the least, assigns Israel to be the distributor of critical parts.
Spain has an army military elite and a Police force (Guardia Civil) that is very linked to the Franco dictatorship so these tend to quietly push their weight for the Israel’s side of things.
Grande-Marlaska is the Interior minister in this coalition. He is from the ruling Socialist Party, but he is well known for years to be very right-wing on many aspects, among them, to side with Israel and working to undermine Spanish position on Gaza. He is the ultimate person to authorize purchases many of these purchases we hear about. The president should had fired him long ago, but, I presume, would severely risk the coalition and cause votes to leave to the Right.
Since a decade, there is a very right-wing political that, like in most on Europe, is disrupting the political panorama. Nothing bad, per se, but this political party (VOX) was very, very strangely was finance early on by the “People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran”, a anti-Iranian organization… why are anti-Iranial organizations doing financing extreme-right wing parties in Europe should been raising some eyebrows but did not. What I do highly suspect is that these groups are not being financed by disgruntled Iranians but some other entity with deeper pockets and with even more eager to see a regime change in Iran.
Spain police forces, like in most of the world, tend to exaggerate claims of terrorism arrest. Let’s not even go that most these terrorist groups have actually links to some western intelligence groups, but overwhelming majority of arrest are for " distributing terrorist links", aka to pass links of joining Al-Qaeda in Syria (oh, the irony!) or passing videos that you would have found on Twitter anyways… it is a bit like when peer-to-peer file sharing was deemed as clear copyright violation and sent to prison but that you find exact music now in YouTube and composers still get nothing but this is now legal and YouTube lauded as a success story.
Now there is a case of an attempt of assassination of right-wing politician (Vidal-Quadras) that very early on was blamed on an Iranian agent… there is no proof at all that Iran is behind, probably the only intel on the individual was provided by the CIA or Mossad and happily the Guardia Civil takes it without any further question. Of course, the Cui Bono here never applies in these cases… why would Iran attack politicians of the country in Europe more sympathetic to Palestine and even Iran is never asked… same as why “Islamist” ISIS never attacks Israel but only to countries that Tel-Avid has in the bull-eye at the moment and the occasional attack to Europe to make them remember how bad Islam (ironically, to blame the countries that ISIS is actually attacking!!!).
In Spain, awkward things are happening since Spain position on Gaza. In spite economically performing good in an ailing Europe, nation-wide blackouts happen for first time, bullet trains cannot run because someone “steals” copper lines, private calls gets release (always in only one side, that is!), etc.
So yeah, that is why Spain says one thing, but them a contract with Israel gets signed, and Spain gets shunned for not wanted to spend more in military… Lets be frank, the overwhelming majority to purchase US weaponry… I would love to Spain dedicate that extra defense spending in diversifying its weaponry on Chinese J-35 (1/2 operating costs of F-35 anyways) and you will see if increase defense is actually Europe’ s rational or the facade behind a massive Money Laundering.
I always have been a bit into the prepper mentality, but it does smells very fishy when it is not talked by individuals or small communities but rather organized from the top-down nation-states… The reason is because the former us driven by a “just in case” theme while the other is “preparing the population for war”; Both are very different in nature, one is purely defensive while the other is always coupled with strong offensive measures, not to mention it also polarizes people into war-like environment and censorship of dissidents.
After the first year fully immersed in Linux, I would say most would agree with that statement “One can turn any distro into another”, at least in what matters to them.
To any newcomer I recommend to choose the environment (The tendency is for the tech-minded that come from Windows is to choose KDE, less tech-minded or straightforward thinking choose Cinnamon and exclusive Mac and Android users tend to choose Gnome).
The second thing to select is your stand on Stability vs Cutting edge. The rest of features are far, far less relevant and you can easily fine tune to your like and these is what people mean with that above statement (even the environment and stability could be customized too but most would not be able to do it).
At the end, the distro is a choice where you pick the first two parameters and the exact distro you pick is more based in convenience and/or philosophical criteria.
My case: I played with 5 environments and KDE is my cup of tea. Then, I choose a distro in the middle of the road with updates (OpenSuse Tumbleweed) and while extremely happy two updates within 8 months gave me two hiccups (nothing mayor) but I decided I needed more Stability. While I consider Fedora to be the “best” distro by just a hairline, since it has the most resources, but philosophically I am against due to IBM being its main backer, not to mention, US may cause problems “exporting” in a near future… yes you can fork, but you still being dependent in the main source for a while, not to mention supporting IBMś aims. So I am Debian (MX Linux actually) all the way now. However, I recommend to most Mint (for the most conservative) and TuxedoOS (for those looking for a more contemporary look) to most people I encounter.
The rest of distros, or are just niche (for instance Deepin and Kylin cater for Chinese language, Cachy for gamers, etc) or are distros with far less resources to do it properly, but I passionately applaud their existence since they all are contributing with the good cause.