Moncloa is planning to organise a Master's Degree to justify unjustifiable decisions

Admired, beloved and most excellent Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Mr Jose Manuel Albares, and of Defence, Ms Margarita Robles.

In order not to take you by surprise, I am pleased to inform you that next week a new edition of the Advanced Master's Degree in Justifying Unjustifiable or Erratic Decisions (JUSDECIE) is scheduled to begin at the Institute for the Accelerated Training of Ministers and High Government Officials (IFAMACARGOB), which although it sounds Russian, is not, and in which you must enrol on a voluntary basis.

The Master, the envy of national and foreign students at IESE and IE and other top management training centres, includes the modulesThe master includes the modules "Push the balls out", "DI never said this", "I do not know", "Ask anyone ...", "I can't explain....". I remind you that the IFAMACARGOB classrooms are located on the premises of the Palacio de la Moncloa, Semillas building, entering on the left, first floor, lift.

With the President's approval, the new edition of the Master's course includes the disciplines of "I have no knowledge of what you are talking about", "Today I have not seen the press, heard the radio or seen the television", "I would not like to finish without...", "But first let me tell you..." and "Ask me whatever you want and I will answer you whatever I want". The course will be complemented by a Seminar on Practical Euphemisms for Progressive Goody Two-Shoes (EUPRAPROBUN), in which, for example, missiles, cannons, machine guns, rifles, torpedoes, tanks and fighter planes will be qualified as material, element or thing of defensive use to defend the defenders. 

I know, Minister Albares and Minister Robles, that you both passed the JUSDECIE advanced master's course in your younger years with a cum laude grade. However, the Grand Chancellor of the Supreme Order of the Bullshiting has considered that you should revalidate it. The reason for this is that he has observed that the two have dithered in trying to convince Spaniards that sending arms directly to Ukraine is not a rectification but an evolution, the latter concept implying that changes take place very gradually, as the British Charles Darwin theorised with monkeys. They have made a mistake, my lord and lady!

The Grand Master has found that the well-intentioned and coordinated voluntary departure of the two into the media arena to justify a radical change of criterion in less than 24 hours leaves much to be desired. Not that it is surprising. It is one more of the very numerous and rapid changes of course by President Pedro Sanchez, which leave Spaniards bewildered, whether for better, for worse, or for worse. You know this well, but you have no choice but to put up with it, remain in office and trust in the reward you will receive at the end of your penitent journey.

Mr and Mrs Minister, it so happens that in your coinciding declarations with the intention of explaining at all costs the words uttered on 2 March in Congress by the head of the Executive, you have both left your Cabinet colleague and government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, in a very bad place. After all, she, too, knows the method: disappear for a couple of days and put up with the downpour of making a fool of herself. 

On 1 March, in her laudable task of teaching those who do not know after each Council of Ministers, the precocious politician and former mayoress of Puertollano (Ciudad Real), in the face of repeated questions from the insidious journalists present at Moncloa, firmly argued time and again that Spain is going to send arms to Ukraine "within the mechanism of the European Peace Support Fund".

A decision that he described as "coherent with the position that the government has maintained and continues to maintain in this conflict". And that Spain's contribution in the form of offensive means "will be made within the Union, through a centralised mechanism for the contribution of arms or other offensive means to Ukraine" (?) What a solid argument! Unbelievable!

But the journalists were still going on and on. Isabel Rodríguez, with the infused science and authority of her position as spokesperson in all fields of knowledge, replied once again: "Spain is committed to providing Ukraine with mechanisms (?) for the offensive" (?) Unintelligible!

The men of letters returned to the charge and told the minister that Germany, Belgium, France, Greece, Portugal and the Netherlands had sent arms directly. And they asked her why Spain had decided to be different. Isabel Rodríguez's response was like one who hears rain: "I reiterate what I have just said. Spain is not going to send arms directly to Ukraine. We will do so within the European Peace Support Fund". 

Tired of repeating herself, the spokeswoman then recalled what the Moncloa communication gurus had told her minutes earlier. "If you are in a hurry, repeat the word "union" or "unity" from time to time, which works like the balm of Fierabrás". And so the good woman did: that if union here, that if union there, that if "the strength of union", that if "the most powerful weapon we have against Putin's war is union", that if "the union of all Europeans", that if "political and social union in Spain".

But at the wrong time. After defending to the hilt the goodness of sending arms for peace in a centralised way, denying their direct transfer, and giving his word that the government "is coherent with the position it has maintained and maintains", Pedro Sánchez, in less than 24 hours, left it at the foot of the horses and assured that arms would be sent to Ukraine in Spanish planes.

After the president's surprise announcement, a reasonable one by the way, but a complete change of criteria with respect to what had been stated hours earlier, José Manuel Albares, Margarita Robles and a few other ministers stepped into the ring as subordinates, came into the fray and denied that the radical amendment was a rectification. Vehemently, they argued that it was nothing more than an... evolution. For some, an expression bordering on the ridiculous in the context in which it was uttered. For others, a nineteenth-century verbal flourish.

I'm going to finish, but first I'll let you in on a secret. In Moncloa there is a pond with small turtles, and on 12 February, the date of the birth of Charles Darwin, the patron saint of the theory of evolution, it seems that a number of high-ranking presidential advisers celebrated the Briton's birthday on its banks. To one of them, by name... (I omit it for discretion), seeing the little turtles reminded him of the huge, sluggish ones Darwin had seen on the stopovers of his voyage on the HMS Beagle. 

And suddenly he had a brilliant idea to limit the government's many erratic swings. From now on," he said, "we are going to explain to ministers that we do not rectify, let alone correct. We evolve our decisions". And colorín colorado, rectifying has become evolving, like primates before they become human beings. If Vladimir Putin finds out, he will turn the attack on Ukraine... into a pseudo fallas in Valencia, as the feast of Saint Joseph is on 19 March and is close at hand. Because the Russian invaders are not short of mascletás, cremá de fallas and real fireworks castles.