Aznar, dislodged on the screen and Sarkozy, condemned by the French justice. They are the almost simultaneous image of the depression of the classical European right. If you add the problems of Angela Merkel’s German CDU, the pioneering disintegration of the Italian Christian Democracy by corruption and the populist impregnation of the British Tories under the baton of Boris Johnson, the panorama of the conservative discourse that emerged after World War II It seems agonizing, with the risks that this implies of being overcome by a greenish nationalist, exclusive and populist discourse.
But real painting, with all its nuances, is always more complex than the attempt to reduce to a few lines the current situation of the European right, educated, bourgeois and Catholic (they have been some of the main brands that it has shown during decades).
The journalistic reappearance of José María Aznar these days has been an exercise of pride and presumption that corroborates the difficult situation of the traditional Spanish right. Not assuming any error in the accumulation of corruption cases, nor in the management of the 11M attacks (the great modern Spanish attempt at massive manipulation), nor in the slavish following of the United States in the Iraq war certifies the crisis of the PP . It is not a novelty in Europe. It is almost the norm. In the Spanish case, the lack of a defined discourse, with a prolonged back and forth between moderation and radicalism, is the main mark of the stage of Pablo Casado, who has been seen to pass in a few months after electing the falcon Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo as a squire for his project to get away from police action after the referendum for the independence of Catalonia. Insecurity defines times of turmoil.
If you go down to the Valencian terrain, these tensions are also observed, with the addition of the lack of autonomy that the organic weakness of Isabel Bonig confers. As has been seen, Núñez Feijóo is one of the few who dares to question the boss. It does so from the protection of a total leadership in Galicia. Moreno Bonilla also dares to challenge the central power. Governing removes fear and pressure.
But beyond local exceptions, the situation of the classical right in Europe is delicate. And it means for the old continent to enter a dangerous terrain of quicksand. There was no alternative to Merkel’s total policy. That’s what she said. But the great economic crisis arrived, he had no other response than liberal dogmatism and what he has today (almost a joke of fate) is an Alternative for Germany, radical and xenophobic, which tries to stand up to him, although in recent months it has been deflated in the polls. In Spain, the alternative to a right that followed the German doctrine submissively, was first called Ciudadanos and now, Vox. Merkel has changed the pace in the new pandemic crisis, on the verge of personal withdrawal, but it remains to be seen if she has yet arrived on time.
Because for some analysts, what is behind these new movements in Europe is a paradigm shift. More than a dispute between acronyms, a clash between a liberal, green, bourgeois and urban center would be at stake (Merkel fits into that box, but also Macron from a progressive perspective) and an ultra-nationalist, radical, populist and fundamentally rural and social sector. middle cities. The model may fit into Central Europe, but on the Mediterranean shore such a pronounced dichotomy between inland and coast seems difficult.
On the other side would be a left in which, in general, the previously all-powerful social democracy in Europe has been in decline. In France it is reduced to its minimum expression. In Germany it seems outmatched by the Greens. In Italy it is difficult to find it. British Labor is not recovering from the Corbyn disasters.
The Iberian peculiarity remains, where the socialists resist from apparently different positions. In Portugal, António Costa represents a moderate left, capable of understanding with a traditional right that, from that pactist attitude, seems to hold up better than in other places. In Spain, seen the events from a minimum temporal distance, possibly the PSOE resists strong today thanks to the miracle Pedro Sánchez. The trauma and the internal drama of 2017 with that battle supposed a revolution from within: the irruption of a new left from the acronym of the centennial party. What would have happened to the PSOE with Susana Díaz? It is a uchronía, but perhaps we would have another surprised traditional left. But that is fiction. What is real is a more compact social democracy than the traditional right, at least in the Valencian Community and Spain. The real thing is also that stability is trading lower. And what is real is the pressure of new forms of politics, which evoke tragic periods of a not so distant past.
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