From tragedy to farce

On the occasion of the soap opera that the British royal family has been going through following the interview that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave to journalist Oprah Winfrey in which they made accusations of racism against unidentified relatives who had made comments about the skin colour of the child they were expecting (which by all accounts would not surprise me at all), Prince Harry himself made a reference to his mother to comment that history repeats itself. What he didn't say is that it does so first as tragedy and then as farce and I think that applies perfectly to his case.

Another farce is what we are experiencing in Spain with the events in Murcia and Madrid. Apparently the PSOE (Ábalos with the blessing of Sánchez) and Ciudadanos (Arrimadas without counting on the Executive of her party) agreed to unseat the government led by López Miras (PP), formed by a coalition of PP and CS, with a motion of censure on the basis of accusations of corruption and scandals related to undue preferential vaccination against COVID-19 by cronies. Everything seemed to indicate that the manoeuvre would succeed, and they were already congratulating themselves in Ferraz when three regional CS deputies refused to go along with a manoeuvre orchestrated from Madrid and did not support the manoeuvre, to the delight of the PP and the anger of the socialists, who accuse it of "betrayal" and describe what happened as a "Tamayazo" (The vote held on 30 June 2003 in the Assembly of the Community of Madrid, in which two elected PSOE parliamentarians (Eduardo Tamayo and María Teresa Sáez) prevented the election of Rafael Simancas with their abstention in the second vote of investiture, is journalistically known as the "tamayazo"). As I write there are rumours that everyone in Murcia is courting three previously expelled deputies of Vox. What was missing!

All this is a disgrace and it is no wonder that democracy suffers from such behaviour. It cries out to heaven that politicians should engage in such shabby manoeuvres in the midst of a pandemic that is costing lives, and which has plunged us into a terrible economic crisis that is destroying a lot of jobs. The current situation in Spain is a drama for many families. But what's more, everyone here looks bad: Arrimadas because she has shown authoritarian tendencies by not consulting her executive beforehand, and because it has become clear that she does not control her own party, as demonstrated by
 
the uprising in the ranks of the CS in Murcia that has put an end to her plans. And that is regardless of whether he wants to re-found and re-centre a party driven to irrelevance by the whims of Rivera, whose success has gone to his head to the point of blurring his vision. Much of what is happening in Spain today is a consequence of his refusal to make a pact with the PSOE when he had many MPs that strengthened his negotiating position and would have spared us the embarrassment of the second vice-president of the government we have. The PSOE has also lost out because it has made a mistake, has bet on a losing horse and has been exposed. Another success for Ábalos after his Barajas incident with the Venezuelan vice-president who was banned from entering Europe. And although they are jumping for joy, the PP also comes off badly because what happened reinforces its image of corruption, the reason initially put forward for the failed motion of censure, and that is the last thing Pablo Casado needed while Bárcenas continues to testify about envelopes of undeclared envelopes of undeclared envelopes paid by its top leaders for many years.

And Madrid... Díaz Ayuso, who should not have trusted his CS partners in government, dissolved it and called elections on 4 May as soon as he was told what had happened in Murcia. And this regardless of the fact that CS assured her actively and passively that Murcia was not with her, because when there is no trust, nothing works. The PSOE, caught unawares and without a candidate (after trying in vain to convince the Minister of Defence to present Ángel Gabilondo again) then pulled a motion of censure out of its pocket (just as Más Madrid had done a short while earlier), which has no chance of success without CS, but with which they hope to stop the elections being called because they fear that Díaz Ayuso will strengthen his position and could even achieve an absolute majority with his slogan of "Socialism or Freedom", as if there were no such thing in Spain (it is curious that in this he coincides with Pablo Iglesias and Puigdemont, he will have a fit when he realises this). The result is a legal imbroglio of regular size that is in the courts.
 
All this makes me perplexed and irritated while I wait for a vaccine that does not arrive, and that irritation increases when I find out that my taxes are being used to buy the Minister of the Interior a treadmill at home. My God, what hands we are in!

Jorge Dezcallar Ambassador of Spain