Happy St Lucy's Day pic.twitter.com/JzcikBjsBY

— Oliver McCarthy (@OTGMcCarthy1979) December 13, 2022

'Half a century after the death of Franco, Spain is a far better place', whinny the twerps at The Economist.

And if you ignore the utterly dire state of things in Spain since 2008 you might even be able to go on thinking that's the case.

The reality is of course quite different.

The most macabre thing is that the twerps are well aware of the problems that population collapse is going to bring. They're just incapable of even thinking of solutions.

Prex Speculatoris?

Domine Iesu, Verbum Dei aeternum, doce me esse liberalem. Doce me tibi servire prout mereris, dare et non aestimare sumptus, pugnare et non curare vulnera, laborare et non quaerere requiem, laborare et non postulare praemium, nisi scire me voluntatem tuam facere. Amen.

HRH The Prince of Wales chatting with Eugene Levy (Apple)

[H/T: The Crown Chronicles]

The Catholic position on immigration

The philosopher Ed Feser writes in UnHerd:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that prosperous nations are obliged “to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.” But it qualifies this by adding that such nations are obliged to do so only “to the extent they are able.”

And the Catechism goes on to say: “Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws, and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”

The Church acknowledges, then, that a nation may put conditions on immigration, that it need not take in all those who want to enter it, and that those it does allow in must follow the law.

The Catechism reflects the longstanding teaching of the popes. For example, Pope Pius XII, while commending the United States for its generosity toward immigrants, observed in 1946 that “it is not surprising that changing circumstances have brought about a certain restriction being placed on foreign immigration. For in this matter, not only the interests of the immigrant but the welfare of the country also must be consulted.”

The economic needs of its own citizens are among the considerations a government may weigh when determining how many immigrants to let in. In a 1996 address, Pope St. John Paul II affirmed that “illegal immigration should be prevented” and that “the supply of foreign labor is becoming excessive in comparison to the needs of the economy, which already has difficulty in absorbing its domestic workers.” Likewise, in a 2011 address, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that host countries also have a “legitimate concern for security and social coherence” so that “states have the right to regulate migration flows and to defend their own frontiers” and “immigrants … have the duty to integrate into the host country, respecting its laws and its national identity.”

And in a 1988 document from the Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace, we read that “it is up to the public powers who are responsible for the common good to determine the number of refugees or immigrants which their country can accept, taking into consideration its possibilities for employment and its perspectives for development, but also the urgency of the need of other people.” Overly heavy migration waves, the document warns, can lead to “rejection,” especially when “another culture is perceived as directly threatening the identity and customs of the local community that receives them.”

Fr Martin Adolf Bormann

He was Martin Bormann's eldest and AH's godson. The second photo is presumably from the day of his ordination.

As a boy, he was actually arrested by the Americans whilst he was serving Mass.

Sadly, he later "left" the priesthood to get "married" to a nun.

And finally, before he died, he was accused, whilst he had been ministering as a priest and working as a teacher in a posh boarding school, of having had gay sex with one of the young boys he'd been in charge of.

(Funny how these things happen, but a grimly instructive irony that the same accusations that had been made against Catholic priests by the Third Reich in the 1930s should again be made against the son of the Party Chairman only a generation later!)

So all-in-all a partly inspiring but mainly tragic life, and a story of a young faith successively betrayed, first by the Third Reich and then by the Catholic Church itself at the Second Vatican Council, when it turned its back on its heritage and embraced the same Americanist ideology that had already done for Germany.

On his soul, and on the souls of all the Faithful Departed, may God have mercy!

Over 21% of Spaniards think the Franco years were ‘good or very good,’ survey shows

Among voters of the mainstream conservative Popular Party (PP), more people believe the dictatorship was ‘good’ than ‘bad.’ And 61% of far-right Vox voters believe the democratic system is worse or much worse than Francoism ever was

Pro-Franco rally in July 2018 in Cuelgamuros Valley outside Madrid.
SANTI BURGOS

NATALIA JUNQUERA
Madrid - OCT 13, 2025 - 16:55 WEST

More than 21% of the Spanish population considers the years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975) to have been “good or very good,” according to the latest CIS poll, compared to 65.5% of the population who says they were “bad or very bad.”

Disapproval of the dictatorship is four percentage points higher among women, who needed a man’s supervision to do things like open a bank account under Franco. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the dictator’s death, and the Spanish government has organized hundreds of events to celebrate the country’s significant transformation since then.

By political sympathies, within the mainstream conservatives of the Popular Party (PP), a majority (35.4%) believes the years of the dictatorship were “good,” which is 4.5 percentage points more than those who believe they were “bad.” Among voters of the far-right Vox — whose leader Santiago Abascal has stated in Congress that Spain’s current leftist administration is worse than the Franco dictatorship — the percentage of those who believe those years were good rises to 42%. The perception about this historical period marked by a lack of freedoms changes radically depending on the voter’s political affiliation. Thus, the gap between Socialist voters and Vox voters who consider the Franco years to have been “very bad” is 58.2 points.

By age, almost 20% of young people between 18 and 24 years old, who did not personally live through the dictatorship, believe it was “good” or “very good.” These percentages vary according to age: 15.9% in the 25-to-34 bracket view Francoism positively; so do 18.5% of those aged 35 to 44; 20.6% among those aged 45 to 54; 24.5% in the 55-to-64 group; 22.6% in the 65-to-74 group; and up to 25.8% of those over 75 rate it positively, although the majority overall believe it was bad or very bad.

A Vox lawmaker,Manuel Mariscal, said in Congress in November that “thanks to social media, a lot of youths are discovering that the period following the Civil War (1936-1939) was not one of darkness, but of progress and reconciliation to achieve national unity.”

[EL PAÍS English]