Peter Handke, Nobel Prize for Literature (2019), achieved literary fame in 1970 after the appearance of his story “The goalkeeper’s fear before the penalty”, first published in Spanish in 1990. He tells part of the story – the other the reader has to imagine it– of Josef Bloch, a former soccer goalkeeper, isolated in a world that he considers hostile that he does not understand and that leads him to commit a crime. The crime, now, has appeared at the end of an atypical electoral campaign, because the kidnapping and confinement of a councilwoman in the trunk of a car has all the ingredients to be classified as such. The fact that the organization secretary of the Andalusian PSOE and former mayor of Maracena –the place of proceedings–, Noel López, appears in the summary of this matter, adds more morbidity, just today, that absurd day of reflection, which only brings the advantage to mitigate the political-electoral gibberish for a few hours. The Maracena episode, however it ends, is not the responsibility of Pedro Sánchez or his team. However, it is another setback in what has always been one of the strong points of the Socialists, the electoral campaigns.
The president and his collaborators, among whom Iván Redondo has not been among for a long time, decided to nationalize the campaign fearing adverse results and convinced of its possibilities. Now, the experts say that it was a mistake and that Sánchez should have let the respective territorial leaders work each on their own, with the global but distant umbrella of the PSOE. Something they perceived that he was twisted when they began to demand – something unusual – the presentation of the DNI to attend a meeting of the tenant of the Moncloa. The Sanchista staff, in these hours of reflection, prays – Reyes Maroto, a candidate in Madrid, even made her requests to San Isidro – so that everything stays as it is. In other words, maintaining the positions would be a success, which if they join the Barcelona mayor’s office they will present it as quite a feat. There are small details that reveal moods. Someone in the Sanchista team was considering buying a flat now or in the coming months for a long time. He has changed his mind due to the fear –certain– of a dark electoral future, now and at the end of the year. Everything is possible, without forgetting “that the most dangerous man is the one who is afraid”, wrote Ludwig Börne (1786-1837), one of the authors who most influenced Freud (1856-1939). Now, on the other hand, one should think of “the fear of the socialist adviser before the ballot box”, in an imitation of the title of the famous novel, more quoted than read, by Peter Handke.
