Demands to tear down Margaret Thatcher Plaza in the centre of Madrid in Spain are indicative of the left’s new aggressive policy of “cultural editing” – further illustrated by the fact there are plans to replace the square, which only opened last year, with a monument to a gay rights activist.
Former Spanish President Aznar told me in 2008 that he wanted to underline the connection between Spain and the United Kingdom. He had done great work in this cause in office, and less than 5 years prior Spain could be argued to be Britain’s closest ally, at least in Europe.
The commemoration of the achievements of Margaret Thatcher, one of the issues closest to our hearts, was finalised just last year in the naming and unveiling of a Plaza in central Madrid in her name, the first place to do so outside the UK.
But already the city’s newly elected left-wing Mayor, Manuela Carmena, has theatened that her delegates “do not want a space for public use in town to be named after the Iron Lady who enslaved the workers”.
Plans have already been submitted to tear down the memorial to Thatcher, and replace it with one to Pedro Zerolo, a left-wing firebrand from the Spanish “LGBT lobby” movement who died early this year. Another set of plans says it should be named after inventor Nikola Tesla.
There is no sense of irony in her statement that reflects that under the Thatcherite principles of Aznar and former mayor Aguirre, Madrid overtook Barcelona to be the biggest job creator in Spain, with the third largest GDP of any city in Europe.
And while Madrid (unlike London) has been a stronghold of conservatism, politically and culturally, since its inception as capital in 1561, the appointment of new ministers is a signal of where the political left wants to take the city, and indeed the nation.
There were anarchist protests during LGBT Pride weekend recently – celebrating the decision of the US Supreme Court – during which one reveller attempted a mock sodomisation of the city emblem. The city’s flag was torn down and a rainbow flag erected, while others performed public sex acts and urinated on monuments.
Most in the UK have missed the dismal tide of socialism that is sweeping across Spain via fledgling parties like Podemos, Ahora Madrid and Indignados. In the long-term their arrival could be more significant than the radical left movent in Greece. The Partido Popular (sister party to Britain’s Conservatives) have largely capitulated and tacked left, raising taxes and spending. Unsurprisingly, two months ago, they lost the regional Madrid elections, a city they have held for 24 years.
The Spanish left are jubilant in their success in emasculating the Partido Popular and taking control of the beating heart of conservative Spain. What is most interesting, in consideration of the weeks’ events globally, is that the recognition and understanding the left have held since the rise of the Soviet Union of the importance cultural symbols has now become totally uncompromising.
Margaret Thatcher Plaza, the Confederate Flag, or maintaining the Union flag on British Ministries and Embassies is now not simply frowned on by the left, these “affectations of a bygone era” must be culturally edited, regardless of the inconvenient realities of history or centuries old law or protocol.
The difference between what Aznar wanted to achieve, and what the left wants to achieve, is that he sought not to tear down history, but to add to it.
The left won’t simply erect their monuments to “LGBT activists”, Marxist thinkers or their own political acolytes alongside those of less favoured figures and ideas in the spirit of inclusively they profess to promote, they will do so on the burning rubble of the monuments that once commemorated Western civilisation at its best.
The so called “progressive” movement actually hate nothing more than pluracy or diversity, their strategy has now clearly emerged as ‘live and let die’. Only they know how to do tyrannical totalitarianism properly.
“Let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness– but let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”
Ronald Reagan “Evil Empire Speech” on the Soviet Union, June 1983.
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