The year we lived dangerously (II)
In the first part of this river chronicle, we talked about King Felipe VI's Christmas speech in Peter Weir's film (1983), his call to preserve the Constitution of 1978, his moral duty to maintain unity and his concern that the seed of discord might settle among us. It has been a ray of hope at the turn of a year full of uncertainties.
We exposed the president's agreements with his nationalist partners, analysed the unease and tensions created by the amnesty law and the price Pedro Sánchez has to pay to stay in power. We review the president's trip to Barcelona and Strasbourg to give an account of his six-month rotating presidency, which has ended with the migration agreement, the AI agreement and Brussels' misgivings about Spain's attitude of not joining the Red Sea operation and the confrontation with Netanyahu. In this second instalment we will focus on relations between the government and the Opposition, partisan diplomacy, state security and the remainder of the year.
The day after
First meeting between the head of the government and the head of the first opposition party. Thursday 22nd, with the background noise of the National Lottery draw. The Children of San Ildefonso are still there.
The invitation that Pedro Sánchez made to journalists in the corridors of the Salón de Pasos Perdidos on Constitution Day spread like wildfire. Appointment at the Moncloa. But if the members of the Government and its partners do not trust the president, it is logical that Feijóo does not trust him either. First he demanded an agenda that never arrived. They met face to face in the post-European presidency debate.
An unequal debate. All the time in the world (president) against 20 minutes (head of the opposition). The Galician gave him the size he needed to remind him of the ordeal he went through in Strasbourg, where he was booed after citing the Third Reich by none other than the President of the EPP, Manfred Weber. The German, faced with the Spaniard's disdain, asked for the floor to underline that "Sánchez loves conflicts and that they are not resolved from the centre". The architect of walls and ramparts who has divided us into progressives (all of them) and scum (PP, Vox and UPN) has caught on.
The Berlin Wall, erected by the USSR, lasted 28 years. A serious mistake that confirms that its international credibility is in tatters. Earlier he had starred in the incident with Netanyahu in Israel. Hamas' congratulations and now the recognition of Yemen's Houthis say it all. A few hours ago he tried to block the EU's agreement to intervene in Operation Prosperity Guardian, and then, after pressure from Brussels, he accepted the unblocking on condition that Spain did not participate, so as not to anger those who keep him in power. This time Podemos used for the first time its 5 votes of decaffeinated transfuguismo. Thank you, Margarita. The executive's internal stability is as weak as its external stability.
Don Pedro's mirror reflects an immortal image. Only he is always right. He speaks with such arrogance that he thinks he is Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte himself.
Now that the 15th Legislature has been set in motion, his objective is to secure an amnesty internally in order to continue to rule. In parallel to his European decline, he has opted for the populist path: to lead the Puebla Group and inject 21st century socialism into the EU. That is why he has lashed out at Javier Milei, president of Argentina. For the first time in Spain's history, King Felipe VI went without a minister of the day; Foreign Affairs replaced him with a secretary of state.
There is no record of the populist Pérez-Castejón congratulating the Argentinean president 18 days after his inauguration. Nor did he do so with Feijóo. The rudeness towards Italy, the Netherlands and Great Britain is part of our president's egomaniacal behaviour.
He despises the opposition and all those who do not play along. The mantra that "Feijoo has not accepted the result of the general elections", the anger, the insults... it is all pejorative Monclovite propaganda to discredit the enemy. Pedro has no adversaries. And, moreover, the PP is responsible for all the country's ills by joining forces with VOX. The truth is that Abascal's declarations to the newspaper Clarín are an obvious mistake; he denies everything, rectifies it days later in Rome, and then again denies it in the European plenary session. The thuggish intimidation of the Madrid spokesman, Ortega Smith, is the best Christmas investment for the paid followers of the Moncloa. And then they complain that fish is expensive!
Returning to the lions and the plenary session, Sánchez asked Don Alberto for a private meeting wherever and whenever he wanted. And the PP president seized the opportunity: on Friday, without intermediaries, in Congress. "For you the reason", nodded the president with cockiness while insisting on the "tantrum" that has not left him since July. The current tenant of Genoa 13, told him of the "embarrassment" caused by his supremacist attitude.
In the end, the expected meeting between the two, the day after their surrender to Mr. Pere Aragonès y García, the PP obtained a resounding no to withdrawing the amnesty, another no is no to handing over the Public Treasury and the Social Security Fund (to the Basque Country) and another no to backtracking in Pamplona.
And a yes - to remove only the term "handicapped" - from the Law of Laws. And furthermore, a principle of agreement - with the European Commission as supervisor, to renew the CGPJ - the only thing the PSOE lacks to turn Sánchez's orders into dogmas - and to reform the Law on the Judges' governing body to guarantee the independence of Justice and thus return to the constitutional path (Art. 122), abandoned in 1985.
This is the wet dream of the president and his valido Bolaños. They would give half a legislature so that the reform could be carried out with the urgency of the amnesty law. It is a trap-agreement because the PSOE wants to follow Alfonso Guerra's reform when he buried Montesquieu. It is the supreme rule so that the rule of law does not bow to the executive. The most exciting temptation of Sanchismo. To be the master of the world. The supervision of Europe - our territory - is not comparable to that of the government's verifiers with the separatists outside the EU. But they have already been equated with the Geneva tragals.
Feijóo lacked the reflexes to demand an essential condition: the immediate recovery of the CGPJ's powers for the appointment of the more than 100 high-ranking officials in the National Court, the Supreme Court, the High Courts of Justice of the Autonomous Regions and Provincial Courts. This is where the balance of power tips in favour of the government and against the judiciary.
The PSOE will appoint its friends digitally, as it has already done in the Attorney General's Office, the Attorney General's Office and the Lower House.
Party diplomacy
The experience of the latest appointments at all levels confirms that the Moncloa is the first Placement Agency. The appointments of politicians to diplomatic posts: United Nations (Héctor Gómez), UNESCO (Miquel Iceta) and OECD (Ximo Puig) have generated unease in the diplomatic world. But no one will move because there are bonuses for all those who do not move in the photo. Reinstate astronaut Pedro Duque for Hispasat after being paid 18 months for "loss of earnings" is as immoral as putting Miguel Ángel Oliver at the head of EFE, after paying him for two years for services rendered at the Moncloa. Even the partner of the minister for the EEA has already been relocated as a director of Hispasat. José Félix Tezanos has already revalidated his position without having asked about the amnesty. Exemplary.
Of course, he keeps Irene Lozano in a high position to edit the books of his war campaigns. The last one, "Tierra firme", a title copied from the writer Concha Espina (1869-1955) was attended by 12 ministers. Days before, the television presenter Jorge Javier Vázquez came to Moncloa to "script" the theatrics.
Everything is imposture in this man who has decided to nationalise Telefónica in order to promote his trusted people who have been there for decades. Now they will become the Trojan horse with the excuse of neutralising the Saudis. That is what they called in Kirchner's Argentina, the "present state".
State security
Another of our president's feats, when the calendar reaches 7 January, will be to decriminalise insults to the Crown, the burning of national symbols and flags and apology for terrorism. SUMAR, the person responsible for the initiative, tells us that he wants to expand freedom of expression. When have the communists ever expanded freedoms? It is 50 years since the "Gulag Archipelago". Reread Aleksander Solzhenitsyn and you will experience communist paradise.
It is one more link in the chain of tying the Monarchy short. A low blow to the Royal Family postponed from 2021. It is freedom of insult instead of freedom of expression as Víctor de la Serna rightly points out in EL MUNDO. Another hymn to violence without borders.
Since the dismissal of Paz Esteban, Spain's secret services have been disorganised. And worse: the agents are afraid after the Parliament's accusations.
The expulsion of four American agents and the arrest of two Spanish spies, one of them in prison, is undermining the morale of one of the best secret services in the world. Junts, ERC and Bildu's membership of the official secrets commission puts the nation's security in the hands of its enemies. Nor has the government explicitly protected the CNI. We shall see what the Pegasus case reveals.
The rest of the year
The Women's World Cup was neutralised by the Rubiales and the Negreiras; Carlos Alcaraz won Wimbledon and Nadia Calviño conquered the top of the EIB. This is the highlight of 2023.
Podemos has left SUMAR to survive in the Mixed Group, but will not break with Sánchez because it has to get to May to put Irene Montero in the European elections. And Yolanda is doing what she knows how to do better than anyone else: betray all her cofrades, enter the next PSOE and leave everyone hanging as she did in Galicia. Ah, the mayor of León, the socialist José Antonio Díez Díaz has called for the independence of his province. With a pair. A week ago we learned that 1.7 million of Don Pedro's voters are repentant. The best - the photos of the president with the fugitive - are yet to come. Pedro and Carles are whitewashing each other. When will the Sánchez-Otegui exclusive be published?
On the external front, the Hamas massacre against Israel on 7 September - 1,400 people cruelly murdered - has unleashed an endless war with thousands of collateral victims. Israel, the only democracy in the region, is legitimately defending itself until the terrorists, who have squandered most of the aid received by the UN since 1948 on building tunnels that only serve to sow death and terror in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, have been wiped out.
The kidnapping of 135 innocent people confirms that Hamas is a group that no one dares to take to the Hague Tribunal. Its leaders live quietly between Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Qatar.
Gaza has shifted the focus of world public opinion and aid to Ukraine. Europe, NATO and the US are abandoning Zelensky and his heroic people in the wake of Putin's invasion. Forty-six months after the invasion (24 February 2022) the UN has not invoked a ceasefire on Moscow. This crisis is now joined by the new Red Sea front where Tehran's hitmen want to strangle democracy and Western values. The earthquake in northeast China, the floods in the Far East, the Icelandic volcano, the Argentine resurrection, the African famine and immigration in South America - eight and a half million displaced people in Venezuela alone - augur an even more difficult year than the one that is ending. A small detail for lovers of paradise: no Venezuelan citizen has gone into exile in Castro's Cuba.
The local and regional elections in May and the general elections on 23-July have paralysed our country for most of the year. Corruption, nepotism, caciquismo and incompetence continue to be our familiar demons since the 18th century. Now we must add the constitutional disloyalty of which the King spoke and the selfishness of the rulers.
One month into the new government, it has failed to inspire a people betrayed for five and a half years.
The outlook after the battles is not very promising. We must start the New Year with a baggage of the best memories: we have survived the most difficult year of our lives, full of lies, nepotism, Cainite hatred, arrogance and colonisation of all sectors of society. Let's put the bad times in the dustbins. The duration of the flight is 12 months.
On this journey, unfortunately, seat belts do not work. We will live dangerously. The next stopover will be called uncertainty, even if they dress it up as progressivism. Negotiating with coup plotters and intermediaries outside the EU only leads to permanent pre-emptive surrender.
Concord will not be possible if it is built on inequality and privilege. Cessions to separatists and the enemies of Spain have always been irreversible. The Popular Front will freeze our hearts even more. They have stolen our money, our narrative and now they want to erase all their crimes. The rule of law cannot ask for forgiveness from criminals while they assure that they will come back for a second coup financed by all of us.
The most serious thing is that the national government is the driving force behind this unprecedented attack on the Magna Carta. The aim: to change with the amnesty the regime of the democratic transition that has given us the best years of our history. Unfortunately, we are no better off than we were twelve months ago. Neither politically, nor economically, nor socially, nor morally. We have the most deliberately divisive Executive that has erected an infinite Chinese wall to prevent alternation. Despite government harassment by land, sea, air and outer space, they will not take away our dignity and hope in the coming year. New year, new struggle, Happy 2024!
Antonio Regalado directs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA at:
aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com