Marga Ferré, a passionate leader of the Spanish left and Co-President of transform! europe, is preparing for a crucial election in a few week’s time that could reinstate heirs to Francoism. Italy´s magazine “Left” interviewed her during her visit to Rome for the Future Factory Forum.
Roberto Morea: Can you tell us what is currently unfolding in Spain, where snap elections are scheduled for 23rd July?
Marga Ferré: I am Spanish, and the unwelcome prospect that fascists will return to government in my country reminds me how in the 1930s the left organised popular fronts to stop fascism. It makes me think of the need for unity, as a collective project to be built against the enemy that threatens us.
Today we are not like in the 1930s. But we are nevertheless in a very special moment in history, in a state of alarm. The problem is that there is a reactionary wave, which you know well in Italy, and which in Spain is represented by the arrival of the right and the extreme right of Vox, which indeed is Fratelli d’Italia’s sister party. Giorgia Meloni and Vox president Santiago Abascal are on very friendly terms, and his victory in the recent municipal and regional elections makes it a real possibility that there could be a Spanish government with fascist ministers.
Moreover, I think that high abstention in municipal and regional elections, as has also happened in Italy, is something we need to analyse. We need to understand what is the cause of the demobilisation of a part of the left and how much of this demobilisation we can reverse to stop the right.
As I said, that means remembering the appeal of the Popular Front, and using Sumar — the new progressive coalition of alternative left-wing forces — as a collective project to be built.
Can you tell us more about this progressive coalition?
The fact is that the timing of politics is never decided by the working class. We had a proposal to create a unitary umbrella, Sumar, that would gather political forces and individuals, citizens, around a progressive agenda. But some of the municipal and regional elections in Spain gave victory to the right and this forced prime minister Pedro Sánchez to immediately call a general election for 23 July. So, there wasn’t the process which we had imagined, as everything was sped up, indeed I think too quickly. Still, 13 political parties participated in the process of building Sumar, basically the most important ones, Izquierda Unida, Podemos, Catalunya en Comú, along with some small green parties. This was the proposal of Yolanda Díaz, who, as you know, is the Labour Minister and one of the ministers with the highest approval among the Spanish people. She is the most favoured politician in Spain for her concrete actions, for some labour legislation and the way in which she has operated.
The question is what will happen on 23 July: I am for Sumar and I will vote for Sumar and I hope we will have a good election result. I am convinced that progressive left-wing thinking has a role to play not only in building alternatives, but also in denying the possibility of barbarism.
That is also why the meeting “Peace, Fights, Left, Right – In Italy and in Europe” (video below) we held here in Italy, as transform! europe and transform! Italia, was very important for us and for myself.
What do you think of the discussion on Italy that we held in this meeting?
In transform! europe we have been thinking for a long time about advancing a reflection on the Italian question. For us, it is not possible to imagine a Europe and a European left without an Italian presence. This is something in which the whole transform! Europe network believes. I and the Spanish left as a whole have an enormous point of reference in the Italian left, both at the theoretical level and in terms of the great leaders who are part of the political culture of many countries in Europe. It is very difficult to imagine a design for Europe without there being an Italian proposal. This is why we thought that any initiative that would help to open up dialogue, to create bridges to build an Italian alternative for the European elections, or at least to talk about it, seemed important to us. We are here to help a little, as transform! Italia is doing, to get lots of people talking to each other, at a very particular time in Europe and in the history of Italy.
I don’t know if I have misunderstood — I don’t think so — but it seems to me that among all the people and in all the different inclinations that I have heard, there has been a great deal of common ground. From Michele Santoro’s proposal to the political representatives who participated, it didn’t seem as if people were talking different languages, and I am not naive — I understand when there are things going on in between the lines.
So, I think that a possibility of unity — and as I see it, this is a historic necessity — can be opened up, so that the Italian left can make it back to the European Parliament. Of course, that must happen in the way the Italians decide, and it is not my role to choose. But I’d gladly associate myself with the words of Manon Aubry. Speaking as co-chair of the left-wing group in the European Parliament, at the meeting she told us that a European left without an Italian presence is incomplete, as if it was missing an arm, or a piece of its brain, I would say. So, I think it would be good if we put all our efforts into ensuring that there are voices from the Italian left in the European Parliament next year.
Transform! europe has also organised three days of meetings, seminars and workshops with the evocative title Future Factory. Can you tell us what the intention is and why it was held here in Rome?
The intention is to challenge capitalism’s dystopian future with our own future. Contemporary capitalism denies the possibility not only of an alternative, but of a different non-capitalist future. The famous line that it is “easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” is not the truth. So, the idea behind our initiative is that we can indeed fight for the future. That is why we wanted to organise a “factory” to think about a different future, starting from various themes of academic thought. This means a contest over the future, with the creation of new utopias, the return of utopia, rethinking the possibility of different worlds. Faced with climate change, the struggle of women and of course the struggle the working class, faced with a new use of time and digital capitalism, we need new ideas to share. Those ideas are something we need, and they need to be very advanced. This was the original idea of the Future Factory.
The war in Ukraine has imposed the need to focus our efforts on analysing the situation of refugees from war and security policies, which is at the heart of what we are discussing and which we originally planned to do in Sarajevo as a symbolic act.
The choice of Rome has to do with the great significance of the pacifist movement in Italy, which has been the only European country to stage large unitary demonstrations for peace. I believe we must recognise the full value of this, and that is why we are here for the first time, as a laboratory. It is an experiment, and we are very happy about it.
The initiative at Rome’s Casa Internazionale delle Donne on 14 June – supported by transform! europe and transform! Italia, – was entitled Peace, Struggles, Right-Wing and Left-Wing Forces in Italy and in Europe.
It was the occasion for two moments of discussion on the Italian situation. The first, with an introduction by Fausto Bertinotti, involved the participation of various social representatives such as the ANPI president Gianfranco Pagliarulo, Salvatore Marra (CGIL), Walter Massa (ARCI), Camilla De Simone (Paese Reale), Maria Luisa Boccia (CRS), Franco Russo (Osservatorio Ue), Giovanni Russo Spena (Lab Sud), and Patrizia Sentinelli (Altramente).
The second, more dedicated to the political developments on the Left in Italy, was introduced by speeches from the co-president of transform! europe Marga Ferré and Manon Aubry, co-president of the Left group in the European Parliament, and moderated by Roberto Musacchio. The speakers included Michele Santoro, Maurizio Acerbo (Rifondazione Comunista), Giuseppe de Cristofaro (Sinistra Italiana), Giuliano Granato (Potere al Popolo), Yana Ehm (Manifesta), Mauro Alboresi (PCI), and former MEP Eleonora Forenza, with concluding remarks by Cornelia Hildebrandt (co-president of transform! Europe) and Walter Baier (president of the Party of the European Left)
This article was initially published in Italian on the official website of “Left” magazine.
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