What if we talk about the Spanish conflict?

Approximate reading time: 3 minutes, 1 second

Pedro Sánchez is once again president of the Spanish government. Theirs is resistance, perseverance and the will to power. The right is not wrong in that. He is not moved by an idea of ​​what Spain should be, nor by a messianic project of any kind. It is possible that he has spent little time thinking about what his legacy will be. In Sánchez, instinct prevails much more than strategy. He is not a hero, he is a survivor, although his ability for improbable victories is now beyond doubt. He arrived in 2018 through an unexpected no-confidence motion and is on track to become the European Union’s senior head of government.

Given what the alternative was, in any case, Sánchez’s election can be accepted as good, at least for those who are minimally concerned about human rights, the defense of minorities and the respect due to history and memory.

It’s going to be a tough legislature. On Thursday, Sánchez managed to be inaugurated in the first vote, thanks to the absolute majority that gave him 179 votes. It is a forceful image that favors him, but it hides many promises to keep and many fronts to manage. He has received the support of seven parties, something that has never happened before, and it will not be easy to maintain the level. And yet, he is going to have to do it if he does not want to fall into paralysis, given the tightness of parliamentary arithmetic. We will see. The PSOE is very good at promising, but not so good at delivering. You can ask the Basque conservatives of the PNV, who have been trying for more than four decades to obtain the full powers provided for in the autonomy statute approved in 1979. By the way, the parallel struggles between PNV and EH Bildu in the Basque Country, and between Junts and ERC in Catalonia, will also be a cause of tension. Especially in the last case.

But it is going to be a tough legislature, especially because the right has already renounced any hint of civilization. The only human, sporting, friendly gesture during the investiture seemed to come when, after the vote, the defeated leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, approached Sánchez to shake his hand. However, the glacial movement was accompanied by a warning: “This is a mistake and you will be responsible.” The general tone, in any case, was set by the president of the autonomous community of Madrid and authentic counterpower within the PP, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, whom everyone could see calling Sánchez a “son of a bitch” from the tribune of guests of the Congress of Deputies.

The right, with such a patrimonial idea of ​​Spain, really feels that Sánchez is betraying his homeland, which is still significant. In his idea of ​​Spain there is no room for Basques and Catalans with their own will. They feel the offense of this investiture as real and have taken to the streets. The decision of the independentistas to stop the move to the right sharpens the Spanish contradictions and brings ironies: the price that the PSOE is going to pay – amnesty – to govern and, according to its story, put an end to what it has always considered a problem of coexistence between Catalans, is generating a problem of coexistence of the first order among Spaniards.

The fracture is serious. We can talk about the Spanish conflict, which changes the playing field. There has always been talk of the Basque conflict or the Catalan conflict, while in vain we tried to explain, Basques and Catalans, that no, that the conflict, in any case, would be between Spain and the Basque Country or between Spain and Catalonia. Or that, strictly speaking, the Spaniards themselves had the conflict with democracy. The right-wing protests in front of the PSOE headquarters, where fascists, Falangists, ultra-Catholics and monarchists mix, put the focus on this framework and tell us about the Spanish conflict. The one who should go to prison is no longer Arnaldo Otegi or Carles Puigdemont, but Sánchez himself. And the threat is directly his own Magna Carta. “The Constitution destroys the nation,” reads one of the banners these days.

The problem, in any case, is not in the street. The right soon gets tired of demonstrating. The problem is that two pillars of the deep State, such as the judiciary and the police forces, support, in word and deed, the offensive against the government and the boycott of the amnesty that the Congress of Deputies will legitimately and democratically approve. It remains to be seen how this folder ends. They want to have the last word and they have the resources to try to make it so. Theirs are the foundations on which the current Spanish State was built. Theirs are the sewers, which are already working at full capacity. “One of the two Spains must freeze your heart,” wrote Machado.

A serene right would be able to see in the return of Puigdemont a small option of relying, in the medium term, on the Basque and Catalan conservatives to return to the Moncloa and seize power, as José María Aznar did in 1996, and remove itself. from above the Vox slab, an obvious impediment for Núñez Feijóo. But serenity has long since fled in terror. They will be hard months.

Beñat Zaldua