In the middle of nowhere

The League has begun. The ball is rolling long. Madrid and Atlético have done well away from home. Roures' lever hasn't moved Barça one millimetre against Rayo. Laporta pays and mortgages the Nou Camp. It's all a big farce that will end this winter by mired in Middle Eastern petrodollars. The World Championship forgets Human Rights. It is of little use for the Federation to force the Ukrainian flag to be shown on TV sets without indicating that the invading power is Russia. So much indignity.

Spain is hungry for shared festivities after two and a half long years of pandemic. Our country burns and dances at the same time. COVID-19 still leaves 50 people dead every day. We have lost respect for it. The crisis is now energy: oil, gas, nuclear and water. This time of uncertainty is reduced by the government to four causes: the pandemic, Putin, the volcano that devastated the island of La Palma and the Partido Popular. The Royal Decree-Law 14/2022, of 1 August, states the need to take urgent measures either to reduce citizens' bills or to secure and make the transport sector sustainable. Aid to Renfe and AENA will be extended to taxis. Fuel subsidies are maintained. 

This RD-Law is a legal Babel. It mixes the sheep with the goats. It equally passionately supports Ukrainian citizens and their sailors as it denounces pirate attacks on merchant and fishing vessels in the Gulf of Guinea, the Red Sea and the so-called Horn of Africa, with risks to crews and freedom of navigation. The text reports that Homeland Security describes the situation there as very serious after 24 February. 

It goes on to include economic measures on scholarships and enshrines the limitation of heating and cooling temperatures to 19 and 27 degrees Celsius to achieve savings of 7%. The decree gets lost in the "Hydrogen Roadmap", renewables and storage.

The final provisions amend dozens of previous regulations. The government is invoking Article 86 of the Constitution, which allows it to issue regulations "in cases of extraordinary and urgent need". 

The explanatory memorandum is a gibberish to which the legal team of the Community of Madrid - "a community in revolt", says socialist spokeswoman Pilar Alegría - is trying to find some logic. The TC will put things right. 

In any case, this decretazo gives omnipotent power to President Sánchez, as already happened with the confinement decrees, both of which were declared unconstitutional. No one has resigned because of it. 

Sánchez returned to Cumbre Vieja in a Falcon to promote his socialist candidates. Not a single contact with those affected. The people irritate him. The government has taken advantage of the summer recess to charge the PP, especially Feijóo and Ayuso, and the "intoxicating" press.

It is difficult to sign a blank cheque to this social-communist government when it is commerce and restaurants - the lifeblood of the capital - that are left in the dark. A floodlit football pitch spends five times more than the whole of Madrid's Gran Vía in fifteen nights. No one can understand it. And then there is the insecurity: will it create the late-Franco syndrome of fear of going out at night? How will it affect tourism? Some trinket shops have already complained that by keeping the temperature at 27º C they are losing their goods. And the heat in bars and shops is unbearable.

Meanwhile, on the very day it came into force, the Congress of Deputies was kept cool at 20 degrees Celsius. This is the double standard of this government that preaches, but does not practice by example, beyond taking off its tie. Because the key question is: what measures has the government taken to reduce consumption? None that we know of. Last year's 151 Falcon flights confirm that ethics and austerity are incompatible with this Executive with 22 Departments and more than 800 advisors. Departments that it does not reduce and advisers of whom we do not know exactly how many there are, nor how much they work, nor their "curricula vitae", as the Transparency Council has demanded.  

This pharaonic norm [so spelled and so fulfilled] will not be enforceable because of its complexity. The million-dollar fines are unfeasible. Therefore, it will be a winter shadow that will generate more uncertainty and legal insecurity. 

It is surprising that Isabel Díaz Ayuso is accused of not complying with the law when this Executive neither complies with nor enforces court rulings and the laws of its coup and terrorist partners. An example: the ruling of the TSJC on the 25% of Spanish in schools in Catalonia. Now, they are threatening to extend it to kindergartens. 

In just a few days, Pedro Sánchez will leave his royal residence and face the harsh reality: the rise in the CPI (10.8, the highest for 40 years, the rise in unemployment, the fall in the number of self-employed workers, the default of companies, the lack of water, the slaughter of dairy cows, the shortage of cereal, olive, sunflower, wine and fruit harvests; the increase in the cost of credit, the slowdown in the brick industry, the ruling on the ERES, the fires, the short flight of Yolanda, the black hole in Social Security, pensions, the SMI, the advance payments to ERC and Bildu for the new PGE, the polls - "there is no Alberto Núñez Feijóo effect" - and the elections on May 23rd. 

How much will social peace cost us until spring? Dialogue is more urgent than ever for the Energy Pact to go ahead. Connection through the Catalan Pyrenees, PHN, extension of the useful life of the five nuclear reactors still in use that generate 20 percent of our production and study of our energy potential (fracking) and rare earths such as lithium and uranium. We are talking about reasonable proposals so that Spain does not come to a standstill. The answer will be unredeemed progressivism and sectarian and populist ideology. 

This autumn will be very hot because the PSOE is exhausted. It does not connect with the street because it has "touched" all sectors and has pissed them all off, if not sunk them. Businessmen, bankers and the press.  The disqualifications of the "chairman" of La Moncloa - "the media intoxicate and I am not going to change the government" - indicate that Sánchez and the PSOE are wounded. 

Wounded socialists are dangerous. Above all, because they have a lot to lose.  Hence the urgent attempt to pass the Official Secrets Act to shield the Sanchez regime from freedom of expression. Censorship - the fines in the draft range from 50,000 euros to 3 million - has arrived. Iglesias resuscitates: "The media should not be private". 
If the PP gives in to the renewal of the CJPJ and the TC, Sanchismo will have put an end to the separation of powers. The future of Spain, in the hands of an autocrat. Then will come the weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:50).

The Falcon will fly again to Lanzarote to pick up the august presidential entourage. The permanent election campaign is inaugurated.

The PP leader is winning the polls. He has left his hands free for the barons to manage their regional estates. Ayuso, Moreno, Mañueco, López Miras and Alfonso Rueda have no other ambition than to take him to La Moncloa. The artificially created confrontations in the Factory of Ideas on the road to La Coruña do not hold water. Alegría, Montero and Patxi repeat the same mantra as always: the Popular Party is unsupportive. When they think the same as the PNV and ERC in this matter.

Governing by means of RD-Law -and this is 125 in 4 years- is the antithesis of democracy. When authoritarianism replaces Parliament, we are on the verge of fascism. 

Núñez Feijóo has landed where he wanted, after his trips to Barcelona: in the government newspaper. To say that he gets on better with Urkullu than with Abascal reflects that, as a Galician, he mimics sectarian nationalism. He forgets that even the CIS gives him an absolute majority only with the votes of VOX. Has he already forgotten how they betrayed Rajoy at the last minute?            

The PNV is a machine of infinite disloyalty that seeks to cuddle up to the right in the face of the PSOE-Bildu pact that is looming in Euskadi and Navarre. Feijóo's rapprochement with the Catalan powers that be (ex-convergentes) without a nod to the constitutionalists, supports the hypothesis that he is 'Galicianising'. Beyond the popular velebrities to wrest a few votes from the PSOE, the only votes available are those of Ciudadanos. That is why it is important to know the alternative political, social and economic programme as soon as possible. 

The Law of Historical Memory will be repealed. That's right. And the Personal Income Tax will be deflated to make ends meet. Very good. And the extension of the useful life of the five nuclear reactors. Great. 

We have the right to know about the PHN - we know that PSOE and Podemos want to eliminate 85 reservoirs for environmental reasons -, the recipes for the countryside, for the self-employed, for industry. Their vision of the EU and its future enlargement, the commitment to NATO and the 2% of GDP, the unfulfilled promises to Zelenski by Pedro and Margarita. The swerves with Morocco, Algeria and the Maghreb; the invasion of the Balearic and Canary Islands, and a policy of its own in Latin America that respects human rights.

We assume that in this time of austerity he will reduce the government to 15 ministries and advisors to 300. Will he close the Table of Shame with the coup plotters? How will the victims of terrorism be treated? Will it be possible to study in Spanish throughout the national territory? Will there be state competitions for doctors, judges, teachers, professors, secretaries, and health personnel? Will he eliminate the Celáa Law and remove her as ambassador to the Vatican?  Will he suspend simultaneous translations in the Senate until unemployment has dropped below double digits? Will he put an end to censorship in the press? Will he de-politicise all the institutions in the hands of this Government, from the CIS to RTVE, including the CNI, Indra, the Post Office and the Zarzuela Racecourse? Will he unify the oath or promise formula of the Law of Laws for access to public office?

More questions: will you continue to use the Falcon, the superpuma and the Audi 8 at the same time? Will you defend the head of state from the attacks of the extreme left and the enemies of Spain? And finally, Mr Feijóo, will you commit yourself to repealing the Organic Law of the CGPJ to allow judges to elect judges as enshrined in Article 122 of the Magna Carta? In this unfinished business of regeneration, we would also like you to include the prior appeal of unconstitutionality, the reform of the Constitution to politically and economically disqualify all those who threaten the unity of the Nation (see Amendment XIV of the Constitution of the United States).

Too many questions, yes; but on the answers will depend enough votes for you to lead the future or not. There are many millions of us citizens who vote rationally. We know in advance who we will never vote for. And we never give blank cheques for four years without knowing why.

Keep the electoral machinery well-oiled because the next election in spring will set the course for the general elections. Propose State pacts (for energy, water, education, the countryside and the depoliticisation of the institutions) and let PSOE, Podemos, Yolanda del alma mía, ERC, PNV, Bildu, Teruel Existe and the mariscada unions say "no, it's no". That is the right way to go. Everything points to the fact that you will have an absolute majority with VOX. Take advantage of it. Don't do like Don Mariano who turned his immense majority into paving the way for the Redeemer Don Pedro and allowed himself to be given two coups d'état by his pachorra. 

The world is in turmoil. Ukraine attacks Russia's Achilles heel in Crimea; China bares its teeth at Taiwan after Nancy Pelosi's visit; Spain, Portugal, France and California burn, drought spreads to the Rhine, floods wreak havoc in Japan and Thailand, Khomeini keeps his promise and civilly kills Salman Rushdie in New York and Israel repels the Palestinian Intifada. Argentina changes its economy minister in less than a month as the cost of living rises 48% since January. Cuba bleeds to death in lightning-stricken Matanzas and Nicaragua viciously represses Catholic priests. In Mexico, 43 people a day are killed by murder. Venezuela, Peru and Chile walk desperately into poverty and Petro, the M-19 guerrilla pulls out one of Bolivar's 8 swords to humiliate the King of Spain and announce the reform of the Constitution to stay in power forever; he opens negotiations with the Colombian guerrillas and resumes diplomatic relations with Venezuela. 

Joint military manoeuvres between China, Russia, Iran, Algeria and Caracas have begun on Maduro's territory. Provoking Washington is not the best way to end famine in the region.  

It was Latin America's time to support the energy-starved European Union. But they prefer to continue printing (fake) money, deceiving the people and pushing a populism that leads directly to nothing.

The return of the warrior Pérez-Castejón brings us thermal and political stress. The higher inflation is, the harder it is to bring it down. But nothing is happening, according to Calviño. Everything is under control. We are riding on an atmospheric blowout like the one in Cullera that nobody foresaw. Ribera has put her foot down at the call of Olaf Scholz to continue the Midcat pipeline that she blocked three years ago.

The fronts are "wide open" to fight inflation, protect people, improve public services and develop the ecological transition. All at the same time. And without consensus between the major parties. The Count Duke of Bolaños will be the master of Emperor Sánchez's secrets to illuminate the dungeons of obscurantism, at the cost of millionaire fines, and thus crush the non-conformist media and strangle freedom of expression. 

When they succeed in achieving the doctrine of the single party, the altar boys of the PSOE with the deacons of Podemos and the separatist deans will have reached the Visigothic reign. The socialists will take over the republican monarchy, the podemites the army and the bishops will be appointed from among the nationalist clergy. With this philosophy, we have learned that those convicted of corruption in the PSOE are more honest than those acquitted in the PP. 

It is only in this context of impunity that one has to read Felipe González's letter to Griñán - "I would make him a minister again", he says, while deliberately forgetting Manolo Chaves. Let us remember that the PSOE's code of ethics does not allow pardons for corruption. Pedro Sánchez will pardon them just as he will pardon and grant amnesty to Puigdemont, Junqueras and their parish priests.

It is enough for the podemised president - a being without principles or values - to humiliate Botín and Galán in public, to reveal his sick power syndrome: "If they protest, it means we are going in the right direction". 

Very difficult times are ahead. Unity and prior dialogue - not imposition - are essential if this dry storm is not to bury the fiction in which we live with this adventurous and wasteful executive.  We are walking through a desert of doubts in the middle of nowhere.

We have 16 months ahead of us, sailing on chained lies. In a few hours Spain goes into election mode. 

Antonio REGALADO runs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA in:

aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com