Yolanda, "la phasionaria", has a dream: to be the first woman president of this country from December because the future belongs to women. It was a cut and paste of Martin Luther King's speech after the March on Washington on 28 August 1963, "I have a dream". The Galician minister is an inveterate dreamer.
Ms Diaz has not revealed her programme after eight months of listening. This absence of ideas confirms that behind so much reflection there is only straw smoke. She simulated a summary of the three versions of the tale of La Lechera (Aesop's, La Fontaine's and Samaniego's) in which, as of today, everyone is a right. Rights without duties, naturally.
Sumar is Sanchismo and podemismo. Populism to move forward on the back of the Budget and power. All together. The absence of the Podemos leadership is a tactic to avoid mortgaging itself in advance. On 29-M, with a purple party on the decline, Diaz will have won the first battle without running in the municipal and regional elections. Pedro always wins.
The 15 tempting parties, from IU to Chunta through Equo, Más País or Compromís, represent nothing more than 15 people who want to continue in the budget manger defending the banners of feminism, environmentalism, subsidised trade unionism and moving fans to lower global warming by one degree. What a troop!
Yolanda Díaz, the new shining star, has discovered an inclusive Madrid, which has welcomed her from Galicia with open arms. "Everyone is good and there's no one left out here". A Suuu-maaar!
The attendees applauded as if there were no tomorrow, not because of the historic date of 2 April - 1 April 1939 is prohibited by the Historical Memory - but because today it all begins (a phrase coined by Maduro in 2018). To begin again, said the Venezuelan. Nothing new under the Bolivarian communist sun.
The candidate spent almost an hour unveiling a dispensable secret. She will be presidential. Iglesias nominated her as vice-president and Don Pedro consecrated her as his partner in calvary.
Yolanda is bothered by the word Spain. She used the word four times during her 55-minute speech. Two, in the last minute; she ignores the term Nation and refers to us as "this country" (32 times). It reminds me of Cambio16 when he used this expression to refer to national politics. Pronouncing Spain gives him hives. We are off to a bad start. The same thing happened to Pablo Iglesias. And so Belarra and Montero continue. Spain is Francoism, fascism, right-wing, ultra-right, caverna; the opposite of the progressivism of the left.
The speech writers have not read Mahatma Gandhi: "No right without a duty", he said during his South African tour.
For the "second president", everything are rights: the permanently revisable minimum wage, labour rights, trade union rights, the reduction of weekly hours to dedicate them to leisure and with the same salary; decent pensions, the right to public housing, social rent, education from 0 to 3 years, oral hygiene, aid to young people so that they do not have to emigrate - she will never give a suitcase to graduates to look for work abroad - as, as she denounced, Feijóo did in Galicia. And, of course, the right to free abortion in the public health system and more rights without duties for the LGTBIQ+ collective.
He asked three or four rhetorical questions. One example: why don't people make ends meet? He found no solution. But he did answer the simplest one: who is paying for this wasteful party? The rich are to blame. Why is there more inequality today than 20 years ago? There was no answer. Once again the PCE, with hairspray and a white dress, to rescue us from neoliberalism.
Having been an electoral nigger, I know quite well how to articulate a speech for a rally. You have to put passion, empathy, illusion, mix it with attacks on the adversaries, inject it with demagogy and personalise it with personal names so that the applause is easy every two or three minutes. And talk of hope - like that of the Second Republic - and of the future. Let there be no lack of the future that never arrives. A melting pot of empty ideas written on the stage of the Magariños pavilion in Madrid without basketball hoops. In short; viscerality, sentimentality and drama. And a lot of theatre.
The speech was an imposture full of empty phrases. Third-rate scriptwriters. I review my notes. "Today everything begins; to add is to dialogue, to agree, to unite wills; I will never give up our dreams, there is another way of doing politics (Roca Junyent, 1977), we are going to do politics the big way (sic); we do not want to win the country, we want to transform it, we will not abandon the young, you cannot change life without imagining women; we do politics so that people are happy; long live free women".
And she continued: "Look: I don't belong to anyone; we don't belong to anyone because we only belong to ourselves; this is a feminist country. We have to work less to live better". And then she combined the sheep with the goats, calling for pacts between the city and "the rural areas", another green pact, another energy pact, a pact to care for dependents and another pact with the men and women of culture "who make us laugh and cry". He denounced algorithms "for not being neutral", and reached the height of ecstasy when he pronounced his most brilliant and cheesy ideas: "Nobody can die [in the Mediterranean,] looking for a better world; you can't do politics without tenderness and equality is freedom", as he was taught in his family (a slogan of the PSOE in the 1980s).
She confessed that politics "is not about cheating", (has Pedro told him that?) and announced that "the time of women" has arrived; after confusing honesty with honesty, he declared himself to be Europeanist, progressive and demanded a new Charter of endless human rights until "economic democracy" was enshrined. Not a single mention of the Magna Carta of '78.
She was proud of Ada: "Barcelona is an international reference"; Joan: "Valencia is a sustainable city"; Alberto: "You know where you have to be"; Enrique: "Thank you for your vision"; Mónica. "Rita: "Thank you for teaching us how to add up", and Iñigo: "Your intelligence for supporting our project for a country". And then he named the parties that have joined Sumar. "Thank you for being here". She failed to sing "Bienvenidos" by Miguel Ríos.
The audience applauded as if it were a rock and roll concert. I have to admit that the opening acts spent more than an hour in trite populist ideas paying obeisance to the new leader. The atmosphere was more inflamed than in Asturias and Castellón when she humbly announced that, after much hesitation, she will run for the general elections as a candidate for the presidency of our country, of Spain, for her father, for her mother and for her daughter.
Our Yoli wants to be the first female president of the government. This time she emphasised the word ESPAÑA. A tin patriotism. A country project for the next decade with the aim of "changing the lives of our people". An unstoppable project. The Byzantine Empire of the next two lustrums.
The Minister of Labour has told us the story of La Lechera. You know how it ends: the girl slips, the pitcher shatters, the milk spills and goodbye to all dreams. It's true that dreaming doesn't cost us anything.
A perfect staging by La Moncloa backed by the PSOE to make a pincer movement against Podemos. Let's hope that three "national" left-wing parties run in December. PP and VOX could come close to an absolute majority. The last word is still in the hands of the 1.5 million votes of Ciudadanos.
The story for the star with the golden hair and the fashion models has begun this Palm Sunday. Too many palms. It's a big notch on her "curriculum vitae".
But the news of the last few days has been frenetic and Ithaca Bay does not end or begin here.
Our well-travelled president appeared in China, after greeting 40 world leaders. We describe his attitude as courageous, if it is true that he defended the theses of Ukrainian President Zelensky in the Throne Room, and asked Xi Jinping to put pressure on Putin to withdraw from the occupied territories of the Dombas. Pedro Sánchez has not revealed Beijing's response. A bad sign.
From the Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo, the president, defying Caribbean jet lag, diverted the Falcon to quell the premature fires of the Levant. He blamed climate change deniers and the Junta de Castilla y León for last summer's fires. Sánchez and his string of ministers are never responsible for anything.
Hours later, Cantabria and Asturias were burning on all four sides intentionally. After the 250,000 hectares burned in Spain last year and the drought, this government has done nothing to change the law, prosecute the culprits and store water when it rains too much. No reforestation policy, no vigilantes in the mountains and no legislation to severely punish arsonist terrorism
Meanwhile, the water war rages on between the former Castilla La Nueva and the Mediterranean East. When will there be a National Hydrological Plan? Never. It loves division. Sumar is a platform of subtractions and remainders.
At least we expected the president to bring from China a commitment to reduce Spain's trade debt (25,000 million Euros/year), but the tenant of La Moncloa has made no move to reduce the balance between the two countries, which have had diplomatic relations for half a century. Neither a white cat nor a black cat. The mice are still there.
The president changed his moult in La Moncloa and flew to support Illa (Don Salvador) so that he could become president of the Generalitat and thus avoid having to pay in cash for his secret agreements with ERC.
The amnestied coup perpetrator Clara Ponsatí and the former president of the Catalan Parliament Laura Borras continue to laugh at our rule of law. The MEP has come to provoke the Spanish government on behalf of the fugitive Puigdemont and the latter has been sentenced to four and a half years for embezzlement of public funds. Incomprehensibly, the TSJC advises the executive to pardon her so that she does not go to prison. A time bomb for Sánchez and Illa on the eve of the local elections in Catalonia. They could have kept quiet and then reported in favour of the corrupt ex-president. There are togas with too many fistfuls.
Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in his first year at the head of the PP, puts his foot in his mouth, accusing the president of paying obeisance to South American dictators in the presence of Felipe VI at the dwindling Ibero-American Summit. He is not learning properly.
The illusion after taking over from Casado is on the decline despite the coalition government's continuous mistakes.
And among these mistakes, those of Marlaska, slammed by the Supreme Court as no minister has ever been since the Transition by demanding that it reinstate Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, removed from his post for fulfilling his obligation to collaborate with Justice and not with the Ministry. The revenge of Marlaska, an unworthy civil servant, is infinite and he claims that he will not comply with the sentence because "he has lost the confidence of the exemplary member of the Guardia Civil
At the very least, it should rehabilitate him to regain his promotion rights to generalship. And compensate him after the humiliation. His arrogance and incompetence have turned him into a burnt-out minister. And on top of that, he is a coward: "I did not dismiss Colonel de los Cobos, the Secretary of State did it at the request of the Director General". How brave this man is!
Remember the three IRA members murdered in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988. Margaret Thatcher, appearing before Parliament: "I fired the shots", she said. That is called political responsibility, Mr Marlaska.
To the Minister of the Interior's scorn, he has also tried to accuse the command of the Guardia Civil in Parliament of committing irregularities with the reserved funds.
This is a false and defamatory accusation. This is the true profile of a sectarian member of the Government, who has tried to interfere in Justice. A judge on the verge of prevarication. By their deeds you shall know them.
The photo of the four lieutenant generals forced to escort the ex-director general of the Guardia Civil, María Gámez, on her farewell, dishonours the entire institution. We already know that, while she headed the Benemérita, she bought several luxury flats with bank loans without collateral and that her husband and her two brothers hoarded positions and commissions from the EREs in the Junta de Andalucía during the PSOE-A caliphate.
And Marlaska, after finishing his dirty work of returning ETA terrorists to Euskadi, comes to the defence of this allegedly corrupt woman, praising her "impeccable democratic decency" in the midst of the crisis of the Institution over the barracks affair. Another new Andalusian and socialist roldana.
A minister recused by the Cortes with a record as ignominious as the 30 deaths in Melilla, the neglect of his duties in Ceuta, his collusion with Morocco, his record of bullets in the election campaign, the young gay man in Malasaña, the little silver knife and his contempt for all the ESF under his charge. A gem.
Minister Escrivá manages to get pensions approved in Congress with the abstention of VOX. They criticise the Royal Decree-Law and do not vote in coherence. The same as Cuca Gamarra and Inés Arrimadas with the Tamames motion. And then they say that fish is expensive. Pensions are an electoral type that has an expiry date: January 2025. Provisional pensions with no economic memory. A dynamite charge in the Toledo Pact.
We close this month of March worried because Spain is approaching the point of no return for the nuclear shutdown of our four nuclear power plants in use. No enriched uranium has been purchased this year. This means that this government and those to come (the PP and VOX do not answer) have abandoned this energy declared green by the European Commission. And that we are betting everything on the sun, wind and desalination plants. Pensions and renewables, two more tales from La Lechera. Happy Easter.
Antonio REGALADO directs BAHÍA de ÍTACA in:
aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com
