Another week without rain
Let's start at the end because the end is impossible. "What I could not do is stop fighting". The phrase comes from Rafa Nadal, the man who made the impossible possible. A lesson in life after his triumph at the Australian Open. He is the first player in the history of tennis to win 21 Grand Slams. The strength of values and sacrifice. An example to extol the culture of effort. I watched the match again and even knowing the result, it was agonising to see how he overcame Danill Medvedev's 2-0. A miracle of will. Excellence versus mediocrity. Thank you, Rafa. Mallorca's international airport deserves to be named after you as Barajas airport deserves to be named after Adolfo Suárez. Marquis or Duke, you are already the greatest in Spain. We love you.
The people of Castile and Leon went to the polls in a drought. The PP won by the slimmest of margins and fell far short of their expectations. PSOE and UP lost 20% of their seats. VOX emerged as the big winner of the day. Ciudadanos was mortally wounded. UPL confirms its perseverance. Soria's cantonalism has broken the left. Bad for Casado and worse for Sánchez. Neither with Tezanos nor with the BOE nor with the disembarkation of twenty ministers have the results turned around. The culprit: Garzón. Rural Spain has not forgotten the attacks on agriculture and livestock. And, of course, the rise in B-oil, gas, electricity, fertilisers, the labour counter-reform, the uncontrolled distribution of funds and the SMI. The Castilians and Leonese are a noble and brave people. Comuneros of soul. No one is more than anyone else.
Tudanca's change has been reversed after his third consecutive defeat. Lastra read in Ferraz a paper from the Moncloa propaganda factory as if the socialists had not run in these elections. The extreme right is no longer valid after the doctor's bedding in with communists, separatists and heirs of the ETA terrorists. VOX is a party committed to Spain and its unity and that is where its rise lies. It needs to manage public affairs and that is what its electorate has asked of it. Sánchez, despite last week's parliamentary baraka, will not have slept so well tonight with his own fellow travellers.
The PP, despite its secretary general and its president, has only one correct path: the one set by the people. A coalition government with García Gallardo in the vice-presidency and a similar distribution to the one they made with Ciudadanos in 2019. Together, the centre and the right add up. Because the objective is clear: to put an end to the Sanchist empire vote by vote. Facing each other, the left and the ultra-left, enemies of the nation, benefit. Never before have elections in Castilla y León been so decisive and hopeful for all. If Genova 13 forces Mañueco to practice variable geometry, he will end up a prisoner of socialists and cantonalists. Ayuso won in Madrid beyond acronyms and VOX has reaped all that was sown in a rainy street campaign. It was a downpour during the final vote count. It has been seven weeks without a drop of rain. Water is a major problem. It has to rain cats and dogs.
Summer February
The tragedy is that the Ebro floods dissolved into the sea like a sugar cube in the rain. Without water there is no life. And water belongs to everyone. It has not occurred to any party, out of cowardice, to propose a State Pact for Energy (renewable, hydraulic, solar, biomass and nuclear) while we are 67.87% dependent on the outside world. The more green and eco-sustainable we are, the less sovereign we are; the less free we are. Thank you, PSOE; thank you, PP. Let's dig up Narbona's desalination plants and eat the brine for breakfast. Today's social-communist progressivism and popular inaction are tomorrow's ruin. Before 2030.
I note in my diary the Sanchista feast during and after the approval - "penalty" - of the labour counter-reform, by Yolanda Díaz thanks to the own goal - "and into the top corner"- of the Extremaduran Popular MP Alberto Casero, a real secretary general of the party, who made a mistake, lied alleging a technical failure and has not had the courage to show his face and say: "I made a mistake and I'm sorry". Don't be sorry, Your Honour. You have already entered history. Those who know you in Trujillo say you are a good person; it is not enough to do the dirty work in the provinces of Teodoro, the Murcian count-duke of Pablo Casado. What a troop!
It is true that Meritxell Batet lied in parliament, assuring that "the Bureau has already been informed of this technical incident" - the electronic emission of Casero's vote - but the president has already shown her governmental partisanship by censuring opposition MPs and has only rectified her position when the magistrate Llarena forced her to comply with the TC ruling by expelling the podemite MP Alberto Rodríguez from his seat for kicking a policeman. It has already broken the discipline of vote by not abstaining in Rajoy's investiture.
The only positive thing has been the behaviour of the two magnificent UPN MPs, Carlos García Adanero and Sergio Sayas who voted NO in tune with their electorate while the president of their party José Javier Esparza sold out to the plumber Bolaños in the Moncloa for a plate of lentils: permanence in the Pamplona City Council of the current mayor, Enrique Maya and 25 million euros plus the greeting of Bildu. And on top of that, Esparza keeps silent because it is a "secret pact of state". Like the presidential Falcon.
The people of Navarre do not deserve a man who preemptively surrenders to the enemy. The CEOE, the self-employed, the PP, Ciudadanos - which has played the role of doormat - and Yolanda, who will not be Podemos' candidate with her cross-cutting project towards nothingness, are all the losers in this unequal battle. The only winners, as always, are Sánchez, Junqueras, Otegui and the PNV, which will tear up the IMV (Ingreso Mínimo Vital) by breaking up the single Social Security fund. The lehendakari is just a stone's throw away from the pensions and the axe to fragment the State where it hurts us most: solidarity. Recovery is neither here nor expected.
Forty-eight hours after Casero's popular self-coup -long live the socialist César Imperator- Yolandita stuck out her chest (metaphorically speaking) and knocked out the Employers with the new SMI: (1,000 euros for 14 payments retroactively from 1 January). 60,000 fewer jobs by December. And, at the same time, another direct blow to the jaw of the Spanish people with the Law on Housing and "squatting". Farewell to property. These 40 days without rain will take us directly to the desert of indecency.
The triangle of indignity
No wonder Spain has become, according to The Economist, a flawed democracy in the Democracy Index 2021. With Sánchez, all negative rankings are attainable because Everest is his destination. From the lack of transparency in European funds to the whitewashing of ETA assassins who negotiate directly with the Interior Ministry. Azkárraga (SARE); Kubati (ETA) and Marlaska-Sánchez (Government of the Nation) Suffice it to say that Kubati, -Antonio Rojas Ruiz-, the murderer of Yoyes, is sentenced to 1,210 years in prison. Together with the head of prisons, they were preparing the release of 170 prisoners with blood crimes. And where is the Great Marlaska, the week, moreover, in which the Latin gangs have murdered two people and have terrorised Madrid with their machetes and razor crosses? Hiding and not showing his face like a coward and accomplice of the ETA pack. The once hero of the Faisan is today the pusillanimous lion of the Wizard of Oz.
After the European Parliament's condemnation of ETA's crimes against humanity, another "Nuremberg" should be set in motion to make these wretches pay for the 350 unsolved murders. But the triangle of indignity is working in the opposite direction: taking to the streets -all for supporting the budget-, placement in public institutions and in two or three years lifetime pensions. "The socialists will do things that will make our blood run cold", Maite Pagaza's mother said after her husband's murder. They have already invented "prison doping", that is, living like a king at the expense of the public purse. We are left with the wall of Justice to put an end to the privileges of these thugs protected by the Spanish government.
Shattered institutions
Catalonia continues not to comply with the resolutions of the Supreme Court. Laura Borrás has tried to close the Parliament in order not to comply with the order of the TSJC that has ruled the expulsion for disobedience of the deputy of the CUP Pau Juvillá. They have already found another manger for him so that he can continue to collect from the nationalist teat. As if that were not enough, the Generalitat has managed to ensure that, thanks to the denunciations, teachers who used to teach in Spanish will teach exclusively in Catalan because of economic repression and the opening of disciplinary proceedings. This has a name: Nazism and Cuban communism. This weekend, the accused Borrás encouraged the demonstrators on the Diagonal, in Barcelona, to block the street, as they have been doing for several years, against what the Generalitat is now proposing. Same dogs with the same collars.
Parallel to the current events, and taking advantage of the premeditation, the pardoned coup-plotter Junqueras last week encouraged the Molt Honorable Aragonés to "deliver the definitive coup d'état". What have the Government and the PSC done? Look the other way and divide the positions in TV3 and the CAC.
The Andalusian Parliament has concluded that the former presidents of the PSOE and the Junta, Chaves and Griñán, are responsible for the looting of the Faffe. The multidirectional corruption could splash Susanita, encapsulated in the immunity of the Senate. Meanwhile, the mayor of Alcorcón, Natalia de Andrés, sentenced to five years of disqualification, is entrenched in her seat and her Madrid boss Juan Lobato is waiting for the "sentence to be enforceable". Like the mayoress of Móstoles. Wholesale embezzlement.
I end this chapter of socialist corruption by denouncing the JJSS who have asked the Government to turn the Casas del Pueblo into offices where the "bono joven de alquiler" is processed. Are we in Venezuela? These socialist ninis deliberately confuse the PSOE, the Government and the State. Quite an example of honesty.
The drums are beating in eastern Ukraine: will Putin dig a border strip and walk forever through Donbas and Lugansk to Crimea? Will the Russian tsar be satisfied with that? What will NATO and the EU do? A slice of Ukraine for gas and oil and everyone will be happy? Will Moscow prevent Sweden and Finland from joining the Atlantic Alliance? Russia has 20,000 kilometres of borders and only 1,200 kilometres belong to Europe. An exit to the Black Sea - expansion to the south - has always been an ambition of the tsars to summer in Sevastopol. Russia's 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border does not bode well. It could be a ruse, a diversionary bait for the Chinese military to launch its air and naval force against Taiwan, catching the US on the wrong foot.
The rapprochement between Beijing and Moscow also strengthens their alliances in Latin America (Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, perhaps Chile) where, as in Africa, the two giants are taking control of raw materials and rare minerals. The East's strengths are our weaknesses. Maybe the coronavirus pandemic is just a parenthesis in the new policy. It is the EU's time. It is our time. The time of defence and the time of freedom.
Until war comes - gods forbid - let us emerge from this space of internal and external uncertainty. Canada and France have started the post-COVID revolution. When we are drowning in the swamp of populism, there is little point in knowing where north is. We can only learn from Rafa Nadal that "the only thing you can't stop doing is to keep fighting". And resist against everything and everyone.
Antonio Regalado directs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA at:
aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.co