28-M is the mother of all electoral battles. In two weeks the political, economic and social landscape could turn 90 degrees. And in December the other 90. Five autonomous regions (Rioja, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, the Canary Islands and Valencia) could swing from PSOE to PP-VOX. We are facing the inverse change of 28-O 1982. There are only two alternatives: Sanchismo with its podemite, Yolandist, coup-mongering and philo-terrorist partners, and the unknown of Feijoo-Abascal betting on a return to the constitutional path. Change depends on a handful of votes. Your vote, and mine too.
The electoral campaign is an extension of the government's mandate. Pure and simple propaganda. The agreements of the Council of Ministers are brought forward at the president's rallies without being known and debated beforehand by the Committee of Under-Secretaries. The members protest in the corridors of Congress, but swallow and sign the decrees at the oval table, without reading them. All for the Falcon, the bonuses and the endless lies; in other words, to survive in power. Governing is what counts.
Drought, electoral thermometer
The countdown has begun. Spain, more tense than ever. In housing and in the hunger queues. The president has become a note hander. On Thursday, Sánchez watered the countryside with 2,190 million more. And with 420 desalination plants that will not be operational until 2028. Pig farmers and hunters, once again pushed into a corner.
This is the first round of municipal and regional elections that must be definitively overturned in the general elections in December.
It is fair and necessary to put an end to Pedro Sánchez, vote by vote, democratically, before he and his radical partners destroy the treasuries of all of us. The opposition is half-clear: is it necessary to dismantle Sanchezism? Yes; the shadows come from the lack of understanding between Don Alberto and Don Santiago.
Otegui's provocation, endorsing 44 terrorists, seven of them accused of murder on lists in the Basque Country, confirms that today's socialism will continue to have Txapote's friends as its preferred partners in the coming years.
The president, insensitive in Congress, acknowledged the depth of the information-electoral coup and, from the Spanish embassy in the USA, had no choice but to pretend to be uncomfortable. "It may be legal but it's not decent," he commented. But let's not fool ourselves. Don Pedro wants to stay in La Moncloa at all costs for another four years and, as an appetizer, he extends Otegui's proposal, "voting Budgets for prisoners" to "co-governing in the north", neutralising the PNV. The PSOE is already pivoting on the former Batasuna. That is the problem: they will be partners for life, hovering on a distant horizon.
The Extraordinary Council of Ministers against the drought has been another pretext to counteract the vileness of ETA's successors. Because the big lie is to proclaim that ETA died ten years ago. No, it is more alive than ever. Zapatero's promise - "we will whiten you in the institutions" -, upheld by Rajoy and extended by Podemos, Yolanda and Ferraz, is still going on while they impose the Law of Democratic Memory that extends Francoism to Felipe González's 83. A pre-emptive surrender.
Separatism is the first national emergency. And, then, water. Yesterday's measures have aggravated relations with the countryside. More desalination plants have been promised (they are promised until 2027) and water infrastructures are another fairy tale. A Secretary of State for Agriculture, -still in his job-, predicted months ago: "Spain does not need water, there is a surplus of irrigated land".
With such an aggressive and nonsensical policy as the abolition of the PHN, the destruction of dams (Francoist reservoirs) to replace them with "water damming solutions" and a ban on water transfers "until the Kingdom of Valencia is annexed by Catalonia", it is not going to be easy to win votes in the agricultural desert universe. Farmers, stockbreeders and fishermen want to sell their products at a fair price. Hunters demand respect, the same respect they feel for the countryside.
The Moncloa factory of ideas and witticisms has mobilised the socialist party to sell the goodness of the Executive, especially to its own parish. The drought requires a State Pact. Objective: to save the commander-in-chief. Sánchez is doing everything possible to save Sánchez.
Eclipse of candidates
The president travels around Spain in all directions - in Falcon or in private jets costing 250,000 euros every three days. Ferraz says the bills are paid by the party. He preaches miracles like "loaves of bread and flats". Already 187,000 homes have been awarded. He has involved Defence, when Margarita Robles has privately admitted that she did not know that the land was provided by Defence, against payment, of course, to improve the armies.
A nonsense. As an example, the reconversion of the Madrid barracks of Campamento at the entrance to Madrid on the Nacional 5, a few kilometres before entering the Paseo de Extremadura. The agreement between Defence (Bono) and Madrid City Council (Gallardón), with the consent of the unclassifiable ZP in 2009, has still not been reallocated to build social housing or free sale flats. The government has passed a Housing Law that protects squatters and harms homeowners. And this creates more legal uncertainty.
We are one step away from the Venezuelan ¡exprópiese!, recently inaugurated in Catalonia by Aragonés. The first measure of communism is to do away with private property. And with the rule of law. And Bolaños tried to storm the authorities' box on 2 May when he was not invited by Ayuso. Abuse of power by "a minister of Spain". With so much stress, no wonder his gall bladder failed. Very painful. Once removed, doctors advise rest.
Sánchez eclipses regional and local candidates wherever he goes; he travels from one stage to another, always with the spectators controlled by the order service, to avoid being booed; in recent weeks his praetorian guard demands the ID cards of the attendees and that of the PSOE from the militants. He promises what he cannot deliver: decent housing for all, subsidies for emancipation, free commuter vouchers and what in my younger days (1968) was called a kilometric Renfe (Iberrail) to get to know the world.
The quantification of the promises is put by the newspaper EL MUNDO at more than 20,000 million. I imagine that it also subscribes to the proclamations of Sumar and Podemos. The universal pay of 20,000 euros simply for turning 20 and a 32-hour working day per month (Yolanda) or the creation of the "Fair Price" supermarkets (Belarra); I suppose they will force him to appoint Juan Carlos Monedero himself as manager and CEO of the revolutionary food initiative.
The president is targeting young people because he knows they are the most vulnerable segment. In reality, he is investing time and public money to win the general elections after his European presidential tour. He is presenting himself as if he were the first councillor to every mayor's office in Spain and as president to the 12 CCs in the race. A single candidate, to walk inexorably towards the hegemonic and eternal party: Bolivarian populism.
A pleaser without a foreign policy
The strategy to revalidate his mandate, trying to please the US, China, EU, Morocco, Italy, Russia, Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, is risky; in his lightning visit to Biden, he has brought with him a commitment to expand the Rota base with two more anti-missile destroyers and to take in immigrants who cannot cross the border of the American dream; He does not want to bother Beijing about Huawei's 5G, we must continue to cajole Doña Ursula so that the alarms of the European funds do not go off, Morocco knows everything and cannot be distracted by the concession of sovereignty over the Sahara.
It is necessary to be sympathetic to Meloni after decreeing the migratory emergency, Russia remains our supplier of liquefied gas and uranium. In South America, from Mexico to Argentina, they have the right to insult us like Petro. A foreign policy "his way" and without consensus.
Our man with the Falcon never knows how to say no to our former overseas provinces, because ZP and Garzón, Don Baltasar the prevaricator and advisor to the former M-19 terrorist and friend of Pablo Escobar, "would get angry". How and how much Colombian President Gustavo Petro has laughed and humiliated Spain, the King, Congress and the Government! He took a few million for "the total peace process". And the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic - "a very socialist woman" (Margarita Robles dixit) - with the yoke and arrows included.
He insulted us in word and deed, threatened the Attorney General's Office and the Supreme Court from the palace of El Pardo and uncovered his cards: "that the poor should not buy "cars" because they then vote for the right" and, "that if what are now crimes (drug trafficking) are repealed, crime will fall and peace will be achieved". An exact copy of what Don Pedro has done with the coup plotters and embezzlers of public money. Another AMLO.
Voting PSOE is still not tax deductible.
Spaniards have more than a hundred reasons not to vote for Sánchez. It pains me to generalise because some PSOE candidates, starting with those from my town, are personal friends and, moreover, good people. They will get elected. The danger is the secretary general of this unrecognisable PSOE. Now, precisely now, we must vote nationally.
Before the plebiscite of 28-M, Inés Arrimadas, in the last session of parliamentary control, recalled with clarity and courage, eternal truths with undesired effects, which occurred after the first five years of the socialist government, always at the stroke of the BOE. I quote them verbatim from last Wednesday's Diario de Sesiones del Congreso".
"Because you have pardoned the seditious, you have pardoned the rapists, you have released them from prison early, you have reduced the sentences of the corrupt for embezzlement, you have brought the terrorists closer to the Basque Country. However, they have increased taxes for families, they have raised self-employed workers' quotas, they have called judges 'fachas' [they have called businessmen 'capos'] and they have taken the civil guards out of Navarre".
And he continued: "Mr Sánchez, you are a reverse ruler: you help those you should be persecuting and persecute those you should be helping. In Game of Thrones you would go with the "white walkers". But this can be seen even here, in Congress; you treat a party like ours worse than a party like Bildu with 44 candidates on the municipal lists, convicted of terrorism, seven of them with blood crimes".
And he insisted: "Of course, as the elections draw near, you want to cover everything up with a supposed shower of millions, and you go into ticket distribution mode, but, at the end of the campaign, I think we'll see you say that "voting for the PSOE is tax deductible".
He ended: "But look, nobody believes your lies any more, and Spaniards can see that in this country the scoundrels benefit more than the hard-working people. You said you couldn't sleep with Podemos in government; I'm sure you sleep soundly because you don't care about anything. There are many Spaniards who find it hard to pay the mortgage, fill the shopping basket or worry about their children's future, while squatters and criminals sleep like a log. Well, enough is enough. It is time to reverse the insomnia, to wake up at last and put an end to this nightmare government.
The president took the reality with little restrained rage, did not take a single note to reply and took revenge on the spokeswoman of Cs, accusing her of making apocalyptic noise and of aligning herself with the right and the extreme right.
I don't remember forgetting that
Voting is a duty and a right. And the ideal tool to change history. Now is the time. To the reasons of Doña Inés del alma mía, I add these others that I will remind you of at Christmas: governing with populists and communists, pardoning women who kidnap their children, mistreating the Spanish in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia; bringing ETA prisoners to their homes and for the deaths in Ceuta and Melilla (Marlaska); for handing over the sovereignty of the Sahara without explaining it to Parliament and for allowing data to be stolen from her mobile phone.
I forgot to forget about Don Pedro's misdeeds. Others I say: for the perverse effects of the Sisí Sánchez-Montero law, which has benefited 1. 047 paedophiles, rapists and sex offenders - "the most progressive law that would dazzle the whole world"; for not having publicly apologised to the raped women and their families while he gave Bildu his condolences in parliament for the suicide of an ETA member in prison while he was serving his sentence, for misusing the CIS, RTVE and all institutions in a partisan and ideological way, for the 250 million embezzled in trains that do not fit in the tunnels, for being the most expensive government in history, for removing the civil war past, for locking us up in times of pandemic unconstitutionally, and for the 160,000 deaths of the Covid-19 that were the result of the "Covid-19", the "Covid-19" and the "Covid-19". How can we forget the corruption of "Tito Berni" before voting?
The list would be endless. But there is more: the administration (Social Security, Judges and Prosecutors, Treasury, National Police, Civil Guard, etc.) is more deteriorated than ever. There is no way to get an appointment either in person or online. The latest thing is to turn the TC into another Legislative Chamber. They have created a new right: the right to abortion, after declaring constitutional Zapatero's law appealed by the PP in 2012. And they have enshrined prior censorship in Congress by censoring the truths of Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo by assuring what was known; that Iglesias is "the son of a terrorist". Vote what you think.
We have six years ahead of us with Conde Pumpido - "the one who will stain his robe with the dust of the road" - as the defender of all Sanchez's outrages.
Commissioner Villarejo - representative of the state's "maximum" sewers - has announced that he will vote for Pedro Sánchez because "he is the bravest president". That's up to him.
After five years of socialist mandate, to vote for Sánchez/PSOE, is to vote for Podemos, is to vote for Yolanda, is to vote for ERC, is to vote for the corrupt convergents of 3%, is to vote for Puidemont, is to vote for Más País, is to vote for PNV, is to vote for Más País, is to vote for Compromís, is to vote for Colau and her squatters; for Revilla, for BNGa, for Teruel exists and moreover, for Bildu; that is to say, for Eta. Vote. Vote in freedom. See you at the polls. Sunday, 28. The world in your hands.
Antonio REGALADO directs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA in:
aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com
