Manuel Fraga Iribarne, founding member of PP and franquist minister, is dead

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RIP, an interesting guy. It will be interesting to see how history will judge him in 15-20 years. I'm kind of legitimately 'saddened' (though it isn't the right term, I'm not crying a river, but it's a bit sad) by his death, given that his conversion to democracy played a pretty big role in ensuring a democratic transition and by the admittedly low standards of the Franco cohort, he was one of the good guys. Certainly his political ideas were horrible and he did horrible things too, but I wouldn't say 'good riddance'.

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TBF though, party youth wings everywhere (especially in left or right-wing parties, less so in centrist parties) are full of crazies and hotheads. The MJS in France is pretty radically and militantly left-wing, while the Jeunes Pops are pretty insane young bourgeois who are probably very much racist and would panic if faced with a brown guy.

I haven't met any official Young Purgatories here, so I can't judge, but the YLC are pretty moderate but that's because we're boring centrists who attract fairly moderate and normal people.