The late-Franquism rises in Aragón

To be successful, the most important thing any organization must do is read the moment it lives in and react to change and context. Last 23-J —post-electoral surveys through—, a part of Spanish society mobilized to stop the incorporation of Vox into the Government of Spain. He did it as, day by day, he was verifying the consequences of the agreements of the extreme right with the extreme right: prohibition of plays, institutional leaders withdrawing from minutes of silence against sexist violence, withdrawal of LGTBI, anti-vaccine and denier flags. presiding over regional parliaments…

The electoral expectations that the Popular Party had generated, and which were not fulfilled, have left the conservatives in a state of shock. So much so that in a scenario of uncertainty such as the one that has been created, where it is not clear whether the inauguration of Prime Minister will be possible or we will have to return to the polls shortly, the Popular Party maintains the course that led to the failure of the 23-J without being able to understand what happened. It does so, moreover, at a time when the slightest caution would force all the actors to measure their steps, so as to guarantee that any movement does not turn against them in the event of a hypothetical electoral repetition.

Far from this prudence and from reading what happened in the campaign, the Popular Party, with a magnificent result but knocked out by the failure to comply with its very optimistic forecasts, is now incapable of reading what happened, and exhibits a lack of project and leadership. An example is the agreement signed with Vox to govern jointly in Aragon.

Despite the fact that the president of the PP in Aragon and candidate for the presidency of the regional government, Jorge Azcón, represents the most liberal and least right-wing wing of the popular, the agreement reached is an unmitigated ideological victory for Vox’s postulates. Perhaps that is why the man who is going to be sworn in as president of the Aragonese Executive did not want to go to the signing of the pact, avoiding a photo that, however, will have to take place sooner or later.

Instead of a project capable of solving Aragon’s problems and placing it on a path of modernity in keeping with the times, conservatives and the ultra-right have chosen to display a textbook retrotopia, drawing an Aragon that goes back decades. To the usual neoliberalism contained in their agreements, this time built on the basis of school checks and bonuses for donation, inheritance and patrimony taxes up to 700,000 euros, they have added a return to the most reactionary imaginary of late-Franco Aragon, when the rural world was considered, from the paternalism of the capital, a kind of indigenous population to which to promise water for irrigation devoid of profitability without a development model or any alternative.

In coherence with the above, PP and Vox have agreed to repeal the Democratic Memory Law in a community where the Civil War was especially hard, and in which, according to the latest update of the map of graves prepared by mandate of the aforementioned law, they would remain pending exhumation of the remains of more than 10,000 Aragonese murdered and thrown into more than 600 anonymous graves.

The Aragon that popular and ultras draw in this agreement is completed with a proclamation that establishes them as staunch defenders of the unity of Spain. It is being done in a land of agreements where none of the regionalist or nationalist parties have ever even come close to flirting with independence, and where socialists and popularists have governed for decades with the conservative Aragonese Party and/or the progressive Chunta Aragonesista.

Just as in the first decade of the century Esperanza Aguirre tried out neoliberalism in Madrid, today the absence of proposals from the popular, beyond the latest and outdated version of such a model, is covered with the flags of Vox’s late Francoism, giving rise to the essay of a pseudo-project that could well be described as “neo-Franco”, to the extent that it awakens a good part of that imaginary. At least in Aragon.

Far from betting on innovation and building a 21st century development model for Aragon, which could perfectly be done from conservative paradigms, PP and Vox return this community to the cultural context, desires and mantras of the late seventies, with a of the most powerful images of the node: the inauguration of reservoirs. Back then by the Generalissimo.

Not a single mention of climate change, the cause of increasingly frequent and extreme droughts, which forces us to rethink in depth a relevant part of the Aragonese economy. Nothing to say about agricultural and livestock models that generate added value based on quality, excellence, commitment to organic farming or extensive livestock. Not a mention of the potential of the rural world as a guarantor of land care and responsible tourism.

None of the ideas that are being worked on today when it comes to depopulation, sustainable territorial development, social cohesion or innovation, looking to the future, are found in the government agreement. Just a melancholic look at an idealized past that never existed: roads and reservoirs. Roads that, if they are not accompanied by other policies, will not serve to get people to go to towns, but rather to enable them to flee from them more easily, as is the case now. Reservoirs that, if built —the same people who have signed the agreement know that it is impossible to comply with—, would be destined to be empty, as they are already this year due to the drought that has made rivers disappear even in the Pyrenees. Where will the water come from to dam? Forecasts of a decrease in flows in the Ebro basin due to climate change are around 25%.

That the conservatives are still in a state of shock can be seen at this point in the agreement: “We will promote the Plan for the Pyrenees endowed with 250 million euros over the next eight years; a strategic plan to be developed in the four regions of the Aragonese Pyrenees and which will be 50% financed by the central government”. Will they be aware that, at least for the moment, they will not be the ones who will decide from what they call the “central government”?

There will be those who console themselves with the thought that the large management structures have been preserved from the ultra-right. They didn’t want them at all. They lack both cadres and experience in the Administration. His war is another, but no less dangerous for that. It is about building a story that legitimizes their return to the past, the one they offer to those who tremble when looking to the future. It may seem good or bad, but regardless of how each one values ​​it, these retrotopias prevent the challenges of the future from being addressed, and therefore force an opportunity cost to be assumed that will set an Aragon devoid of a project back decades in a constantly changing world.

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