The President of the Government and his Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence are wanted

I am hearing that the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has no appetite, sleeps badly and sometimes stays awake all night.

The doctors are not sure what is wrong with him, but it seems that the symptoms are the direct consequence of not having stopped being deeply concerned about the safe return of the Spaniards, interpreters and Afghan collaborators who, until just a few hours ago, remained in Kabul, fearing for their lives and those of their families.

Some dare to claim that Pedro Sánchez has had a dip in his shy personality, has fled unescorted from the tiny official residence of "La Mareta" on the island of Lanzarote, and is now unaccounted for. Others deny this and claim that he is still there, enjoying his well-deserved summer holidays, sunbathing in the warm Canarian sun and relaxing from the constant contradictions and headaches caused by his wayward ministers.

To corroborate that he has not evaporated, his collaborators stress that the residence managed by Patrimonio Nacional has become a sort of Supreme Headquarters of the Spanish Armed Forces. And that the president, from the Canary Islands, with his high level of geo-strategic and tactical knowledge, is dedicated to supervising minute by minute every step of the Air Force's risky extraction operation. And this, despite the fact that it is the direct responsibility of the Defence General Staff (EMAD) under the command of Admiral Teodoro López Calderón.

The mission to repatriate the six Spaniards from the embassy who, according to the Foreign Ministry, were still in Kabul, as well as a group of Afghan families, is being led by the EMAD Operations Command, which is headed by Air Force Lieutenant General Francisco Braco. He and his team of land, sea and air military personnel, all of whom have extensive experience in crisis management, work in uninterrupted morning, afternoon and night shifts, monitoring developments via spy satellites and encrypted communications.

They receive data and issue orders so that the landing, stay in Kabul and take-off of the three A400M military transport planes of Wing 31 sent from the Zaragoza air base are protected against possible Taliban attacks. And for the return journey to Spain to be successful.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, and the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, have expressed their solidarity with their boss and have vanished from the public arena. In the early hours of Thursday morning, 19 August, Minister Albares finally appeared, got up early and went to the Torrejón Air Base (Madrid) to receive the rescued. Without his personal welcome alongside the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá, the Afghan new arrivals might feel undervalued.

It is clear that the presence in Congress and before the television cameras of President Pedro Sánchez, Defence Minister Margarita Robles and his recent Foreign Office colleague José Manuel Albares to give a political account of the operation to the opposition, those in coalition with the government and all Spaniards is not a 'casus belli' situation. However, it is good to know that very recently, at the prestigious Harvard University, a couple of veteran professors of International Relations defined two new and revolutionary concepts that were unknown to humanity: that of "leadership" and that of "example".

The Harvard men cite the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio and the Carthaginian Hannibal as antecedents. They also claim that one Winston Churchill, apparently Britain's prime minister in the first half of the 1940s, successfully practised "leadership" and "example" in confronting Adolf Hitler's Germany, Benito Mussolini's Italy and Hideki Tojo's Japan with blood, sweat and tears. But it is not certain that this was the case, nor that Winston Churchill was nothing more than an invention of China's Xi Jinping or Russia's Vladimir Putin.

But in the Moncloa Palace, in the central headquarters of the Ministry of Defence in Castellana 109 and in the Palace of Santa Cruz they do not want to risk exercising "leadership" and "example" and have drawn conclusions from what, according to some gossips, happened to this Churchill, if the existence of this British character is true and not a fallacy.

The story goes that Churchill, after defeating the Germans, Italians and Japanese in a titanic struggle on four continents, lost the elections in July 1945. Pedro Sánchez, Margarita Robles and José Manuel Albares want to avoid at all costs that the practice of "leadership" and "example" will bring them something similar. However, when all the A400M four-engine aircraft are back on Spanish soil with their crews and passengers safe and sound, it is not to be ruled out that the three politicians mentioned above will come to the fore in sequence as the architects of the success achieved.

It is foreseeable that they will be lavish in front of television cameras and in statements to radio stations, news agencies and newspapers that they "feel proud" of the Spanish military and all the men and women who made the rescue mission possible.

The question is whether, at least, Admiral Teodoro López Calderón and Air Lieutenant General Francisco Braco, as those directly responsible for the extraction operation, will receive authorisation from Minister Margarita Robles to tell the cameras and the media about the critical mission. And whether they will attend the Congressional Defence Committee before or after the operation to explain the operational details.