Peaceful Turn

I’m trying to explain to my students (in Spanish) what “El turno pacifico” means*.

“Imagine, for example, that Obama and Romney get together and decide that, OK, to hell with the elections, we’ll just agree to hand the power over to each other every 4 years, and the votes can be falsified to make those results look legitimate. This is pretty much what happened with Spain’s “Peaceful Turn.”

“Ah! I knew this!” a student exclaims.

“What?” I ask.

“I knew the system in this country is completely corrupt! It makes no sense to go to the polls in November because the results are already predetermined.”

“No, no,” I say, horrified. “I was talking about Spain in the early XXth century. Not the US. You should definitely vote in November. The elections are real.”

“Yeah, right,” the student scoffs.

I think I should stop giving contemporary examples to avoid making students even more suspicious of the political process than they already are.

* “After almost a whole century of political instability and many civil wars, the aim of the Restoration was to ensure political stability in Spain. Under this plan, El Turno Pacífico (or “The Peaceful Turn”) was a system . . . whereby the two “official” parties . . . alternated in power. Its key features were that the government would first be chosen by the king and would then “make” the election, ensuring victory. After a period in office, it would then be the turn of the opposition. The Turno Pacifico excluded all other parties from the possibility of victory. This was achieved by electoral fraud: caciques in most constituencies would instruct their clients how to vote. . . It lacked a responsiveness to popular opinion as (until about 1914) the outcome was broadly decided in advance.”