The nothingness and the mud
- The global statesman
- At the end of the breakout
- Yolanda, Puigdermont...
- Post-election scenarios
- Horizontal memory, vertical democracy
The last parliamentary session has confirmed that this Government goes to the control sessions to control the opposition. Not the other way round. It does not answer any questions. To avoid the serious problems of corruption -starting with the Amnesty Law which is the mother of all corruptions-, Pedro Sánchez uses the Falcon to preach "urbi en orbi" that he is going to recognise the Palestinian State. Alone or in the company of others. He doesn't know, he doesn't answer.
The global statesman
Meanwhile, the Sahrawis are left to rot in oblivion. We get along marvellously with Morocco, but neither the borders of Ceuta and Melilla are opened nor do immigrants stop arriving in the Canary Islands. The break with Algeria costs us a pretty penny. Gibraltar is now pimping us with Cameron, the Brexit artist, as foreign minister. Diplomat Sánchez has yet to congratulate Milei on his victory in Argentina.
He is against Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, but Spain is the EU partner that keeps buying more gas and oil from Russia to massacre Kiev. In Venezuela it continues to shamelessly support the dictator Maduro while preventing the opposition from standing in the presidential elections. And he continues to protect the Castro-Canels in prison in Cuba while they starve and wait for electricity to arrive by ship from Vietnam, "although, comrades", says Beatriz, first secretary of the PCC in Santiago, "it will take time to arrive because there is a lot of ice and the steam comes in zig-zag". That's what she calls telling the people the truth.
The president has not yet discovered the Strait of Hormuz, but his crusade against Israel continues. It is a pity that his government and parliamentary coalition partners do not subscribe to his policies towards Moscow and continue to demand the severing of relations with Tel Aviv.
At the end of the breakout
From the third year in the Moncloa, all Spanish presidents discover their international geopolitical vocation. Saving the world either from climate change or from enemies within becomes their special mission. National problems take a back seat except for saving the gudari Otegui.
The day after, the problems are still there: the Amnesty Law and the institutional conflict between Congress and the Senate; corruption from Tito Berni to Koldo, via Barrabés and Rubiales and Begoña's letters of recommendation - the family's great Achilles heel - with European funds are splashed across Air Europa. The suitcases of Delcy Rodríguez, Aldama, president of Zamora, Correos turned into a wasteland, the assault on Telefónica with money from the autonomous regions and local councils, the improper behaviour of the government's "inidoneous" attorney general who now wants the prosecutors and not the judges to be the ones to investigate judicial cases. As if this were North America.
In short, concentrating the three powers in the Moncloa (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) in the image and likeness of comrade Bolaños. And always with the approval of the charismatic leader. To recover the "democratic verticalism" with the single party, the parliamentary coalition of enemies of the Constitution, of the municipality and of the nazional-socialist and pro-independence trade unionism of CC. OO. and UGT.
The PP has crumpled as usual and has not cited the ex-minister Ábalos, nor Sánchez or Begoña. Another farce. A decaffeinated cold war.
Colonised the TC, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the State Attorney's Office; the Court of Auditors, the public and private television stations, the University, the tamed Banking and Electricity companies, the Stock Exchange, the CEOE, Mercasa, the Church with its cross of San Andrés in the IRPF, the Army without bullets, the Police without means to stop drug traffickers, the only thing left to do is to win the pulse of the countryside. And Ayuso and her boyfriend. The self-employed have been deactivated. And in the end, everyone on their knees.
Sánchez insists that "5 times more jobs are created here than in the EU", but he does not say that 15% of Spanish families live in poverty. Nor that many cannot make ends meet. Inflation is sky high. Our purchasing power is what it was in 2009. That is the reality.
Six years after the arrival to power of citizen Sánchez, the Government has not delivered a single key of the 183,000 homes promised. We are in an election period. At the end of the escapade, we are left with a country with no budget, no government and an infinite debt.
The worst of the "Sanchinistan" regime is yet to come. The truth is that the doctor began his mandate denouncing the corruption of the PP and now he is going to put an end to the corruption of the PSOE too. How? Very simply: by legalising it as he has done with pardons, amnesty and the embezzlement of public funds.
The exploits of Koldo - "the exemplary socialist militant, according to Don Pedro" - are nothing compared to the great corruption that is looming and that no one wants to expose: the squandering of European money, the lever to get out of the pandemics. The "Next Generation" funds (145 billion in European solidarity) that only the government knows into whose public and private pockets they have gone. With its vote, Vox allowed the Moncloa to manage them at will. And there we are: everything is a dead sea of silences and an ocean of opacity.
At the end of Sanchista's escapade, we will return to the crisis that his mentor ZP hid from us. The legislature, without public accounts, is dead.
Yolanda, Puigdermont...
... And other "beatings" of the pile. Yolanda, after the electoral success of Sumar in Galicia, is no longer what she used to be. The Communes have confirmed that she is no longer in charge of the coalition. Begoña's desperate defence - "this harassment by the 'right-wing' is machismo" - betrays that she wants Caesar to forgive her sins and weaknesses.
Without budgets in Catalonia, in Barcelona City Council and in the Palacio de los Leones. He is no longer anybody. Then he attacks Garamendi denouncing the end of pensions. And he ends by philosophising: "Let him assume the post he holds". No waste. While he gets tangled up in the lists for the European Parliament, the tavern keeper from Lavapiés revived his revenge in Bilbao: after assuring that Don Pedro would accept a Basque government of Bildu, he described Mrs Díaz's party as "the left that is good for nothing". What a troop!
With Aragonés García anything is possible. Pardons were not possible, and pardons were obtained, nor was it possible to change the Penal Code to dismantle the crime of sedition and the reduction for embezzlement of public funds. And it was possible as it was possible to "invisibilise" the "democratic terrorist tsunami". And it was possible with the amnesty. It only remains to reach the final station: the referendum of self-determination. Sánchez will make it possible.
Otegui was, along with Rubiales - until he was poisoned by Jenny Hermoso's "beak" - Sánchez's other protégé. How can it be understood that his name disappears from two reports of ETA murders as head of the executions? Who gave the order in the Guardia Civil to whitewash this terrorist? It all goes through Marlaska. Always the minister present from El Chivatazo of El Faisán to the zodiacs of Barbate. The abertzale leader never revealed the price he demanded from Sánchez for his investiture. But he has been clear in his last electoral act in Irún: "We will demand a referendum on self-determination before the end of this Legislature".
Puigdemont has moved his residence to the south of France to arrive in Barcelona under the pro-independence canopy of his faithful on the night of 12M. It is clear that the Sánchez-Putxi pact is a two-way street: the two will govern simultaneously or the deck is stacked. The most touching thing has been the emotional blackmail of the coup leader: "Either I am president of the Generalitat or I go home". What a great opportunity not to vote for him!
This week the images of Rato (Don Rodrigo), one of the most powerful men of the 1990s, disguised as a biker on his trip to court were pathetic. No less pathetic were those of Zaplana (Don Eduardo) betrayed by his bosom and desk friend. Both PP politicians have been unable to explain their enrichment. I dealt with both of them in Congress. Five lustrums later, their ambition has been transformed into a Manriquean copla. We are nobody.
And finally, we end this melancholic loop with the incorrigible Feijóo. He was on the verge of dynamiting the Galician campaign by revealing that he had held talks with Junts before his failed investiture. A few days ago he insisted that "if Puidmemont renounces his maximalist plans - independence - and returns to the constitutional fold, I would be willing to make a pact with him. What planet does this man inhabit? He lives between the Círculo Ecuestre and La Vanguardia; he has not understood Catalonia. I hope he does not speak, like Aznar, Catalan in private.
Talk to Cayetana, Mr Núñez (Don Alberto), or to Antonio Robles, a friend of the Madrid MP Álvárez de Toledo, and they will explain to you in unison what it is to feel "foreign in your own country". No more unforced errors, no, Mr. President of the PP.
Post-election scenarios
The three elections are decisive to stop the "populist and podemite regime" that Sanchismo represents.
The future of the president lies in the ballot box. And ours. On Sunday 21, forty-eight days before the communal spirit (1521) greens up in Villalar, the Basques - minus the 200,000 exiles of the 70s, 80s and 90s - have a new date at the polls.
The Tezanos poll puts Bildu two points ahead of the PNV. It seems to be a ploy for the PSE to remain decisive. The alternative to Xabin Etxea's party is a Bildu-PNV government with 75% of nationalist seats. The PSE would be reduced to ashes and the Monclovite tenant would be more of a prisoner than ever in the Congress of Deputies. Urkullu believes that there will be general elections in autumn. Has the autumn of the patriarch arrived?
The run-up to the 12-M elections is even more decisive than the Basque elections. Puigdemont is playing the "all or nothing" game. It takes guts to present himself as the "legitimate president", a thug fleeing in the boot of a car. That Illa repeats as the leading force and at a great distance from Junts and ERC reveals that the Catalans have lost their minds, despite the disbanding of Ciudadanos, which will die of pride and satisfaction at the cry of "Stop them!
The most likely outcome is a tripartite presided over by Don Carles. What a role for Illa and his co-religionist in Ferraz 80!
All for the peace of the convent. And if not, Puigdemont's prophecy will fall like a bolt of lightning: "If I don't preside over the Generalitat, Sánchez's days are numbered", warned the fugitive. Neither the Popular Party nor VOX are decisive there. Re-establishing the republican-neoconvergente pact will not be easy. The Catalans are doomed to another decade of misrule and blackmail to justify state "repression".
Socialist government ministers repeat that there will be no referendum. The president does not say no, nor does he say yes: "We are in an election campaign", he throws a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The European elections (6 June) could also be destabilising for the PSOE if the loss of seats is similar to the one in Galicia. Dropping below 15 seats would be a resounding failure. And the "trio of skulls", as Sánchez disparagingly called the VOX candidates (Buxadé, Girauta and Tersch) in the Chamber of Deputies, may be maintained in the 11th European Legislature. Yolanda will have a blood test to confirm her weak leadership. And Podemos wants to empower its star without a popular mandate: Irene Montero.
In these direct single-constituency elections with no provincial excuses, we will be able to gauge whether there is a real alternative on the other side of the horizon of change. Or we are condemned to put up with Sánchez for another three eternal years. We have to hit Sanchismo where it hurts the most: at the ballot box. Not a single vote in the Basque Country, Catalonia and the whole of Spain.
These three electoral scenarios will show us in just 60 days that we still have a shred of hope and dignity left. In any case, we will continue to resist.
Horizontal memory, vertical democracy
The president has no time in eight long hours of debate to show solidarity with the families of the civil guards murdered in Barbate, but he lacks the time to go to Cuelgamuros to visit skulls, tibias and perones, victims of the civil war. His greatest achievement is to have exhumed the remains of Franco and José Antonio from the Valley of the Fallen. Neither of them ever wanted to be there. "Let the dead bury the dead" (Luke 9, 57-62).
It is such a despicable horizontal imposture to persecute the dead of the Civil War (1936-1939) while forgetting those who died in the checkpoints of the Popular Front (1934-39) and paying homage to the ETA criminals who are released from prison with jobs and their own homes, as Bildu is promising in this campaign to its prisoners.
The European Parliament has condemned fascism and communism, but this government continues to cut open the victims of almost 90 years ago. The order is blunt, military: "Don't touch the ETA members, coup plotters and public embezzlers".
Political and moral corruption has no electoral value. This is the double yardstick for those on the other side of the Sanchista wall. A wall higher every month than the walls of Ávíla de los Caballeros, twelve metres above the ground.
I almost blush to hear Don Pedro say that "he loves and believes in Spain". This is a top-down democracy, unions with mariscadas included. Has he changed his mind? No. It scares me that Bolaños and his people are perverting the language by stressing that "national sovereignty resides in Congress" in order to set in motion a constituent process. No. National sovereignty resides in the Spanish people (Art.1 of the Spanish Constitution). We are moving towards a vertical democracy where Sanchismo, his mariachis and the separatists share the spoils hand over fist while the train never arrives on time in Extremadura.
From "nothing at all" we have gone from "nothing to mud". Always muddying the field. This is the most accurate definition of Don Pedro Sánchez-Pérez Castejón. These are not, precisely, the most exciting images of the Moncloa's factory of ideas for winning elections.
Ninety-three years after the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic (14 April 31) we have entered a new cold war with anti-corruption commissions that will not bring any transparency; we are spending 80% of our energies on useless confrontations. Going back to the extreme right and the extreme right when we have a social-communist government and anti-Spanish parliamentary partners only leads directly to the greatest crime in politics: wasting time.
The president is so narcissistic that he is going to die of self-love. He is a slave to PNV, Bildu, ERC, Junts, Sumar and BNG. As Cicero taught us, a slave does not want to be free; he only wants to have more slaves. Nothing better for this than to revive vertical democracy. With the amnesty of '77 we went from dictatorship to democracy; with the amnesty of 2024 we are going from democracy to dictatorship with a Profiden smile.
Fiscal or media terror are the new weapons integrated into Artificial Intelligence (AI). Objective: to instil fear. All good things are on the other side of fear. Very soon, if we don't tune the vote, it will be too late.
PS. As I close this Bay I read in EL MUNDO that the Norwegian Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol, a Labour member, has resigned after a university commission annulled a postgraduate work of hers that contained intentional plagiarism; it was therefore an academic fraud. He who wants to understand, let him understand.
Antonio REGALADO is a journalist and runs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA at:
aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com