Political felonies

The fact that Pedro Sánchez is an unqualified politician – his autobiographical Manual of Resistance was the work of a brilliant journalist in whose parliamentary group he was a member – is a showcase of the intellectual and moral quality of our acting President of the Government, who aspires to be so again. using the Frankenstein procedure: reconstruct a zombie based on the remains of a few incipient corpses. His lack of judgment could lead him to seize the worst in the history of the PSOE and disdain the best of its tradition, which is its contribution to the modernization of Spain, the democratic reestablishment and the reconciliation between winners and losers of a horrible civil war. .

There is no ideology, not even a plan for his country or his party, in Sánchez’s political leadership, but only a story, or rather several, whose scripts he himself seems incapable of writing. He has, however, the self-confidence and audacity of good performers. Despite this, it will be impossible for him to convince anyone that his submission to Catalan separatism and Basque irredentism is part of a coexistence project of which there is no news in the electoral program of his party. And he will end up being held hostage by those who want to undermine the State that he has solemnly promised to defend. Unable to accept that he has lost the elections and that his partners in a possible coalition, except for the heirs of ETA terrorism, suffered an electoral disaster, he intends to advertise as a capacity for resistance what, if it occurs, will clearly be a surrender. The presumption that social tension in Catalonia has decreased thanks to his management is completely gratuitous. If the activism of the Catalan separatists and the violence of their most extremist defenders have decreased, it is because the process was defeated by the action of justice after the application of article 155 of the Constitution, which Sánchez himself endorsed together with Rajoy.

This article is published today, September 11, the day of the national holiday of the Catalan autonomous community in memory of the defeat of the supporters of Archduke Charles against the Bourbon army. That was the end of a war of succession for the crown of Spain that pitted England and Germany against the French dynasty and its descendant, installed on the throne in Madrid. This genuinely European conflict redistributed power on the continent and led to a civil war between Spaniards. But the political calendar of September 11 recalls much more recent and dramatic events for the history of democracies. In 1973, General Pinochet bombed the La Moneda palace in Chile, and President Allende committed suicide, leading to a long military dictatorship. A quarter of a century later, the Islamic jihad attack against the Twin Towers in New York was the first armed attack on the United States on its territory since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The celebration of the Catalan Diada responds to a historical feeling of grievance over the loss of the regional rights of the Crown of Aragon after that battle three centuries ago. But this year’s event threatens to turn the date into a relevant symbol of a new attack on our democratic freedoms, the equality of Spaniards, territorial unity and the survival of the rule of law. Threats like this are not exclusive to our country. We are experiencing a change in civilization that imposes challenges and demands on the governance of people. But when the system needs reforms that guarantee the survival of the values ​​of democracy, we suffer a devastating drought of intellectual, moral and political leadership. Incapable rulers try to hide their incompetence in the story: the discourse of demagoguery, the bonfires of populism, social polarization and hatred of those who are different.

A universal example of this trend is Donald Trump, capable of turning his probable crimes and his release on bail into a successful electoral campaign. In Spain we had a provincial version of the character, a Catalan-style Trump, with his hair tousled and the intellectual ignorance of the American, a fugitive from justice, accused like him of crimes against democracy and of using public money for his benefit. and at your whim. But that actor had almost disappeared from the map of Spanish politics; The European Parliament denied him immunity and an international arrest warrant hangs over him despite the caution of the investigating judge in the case in renewing it. Until the president and vice president of the Government defeated at the polls, now in office, have given him the role of the Catalan September 11 in exchange for saving their own skins.

I will not cite the abundant legal doctrine that establishes that neither amnesty nor self-determination fit into our Constitution, a doctrine subscribed and disseminated until recently by Sánchez himself and his ministers. Nor must I insist on the pathetic image of a vice president of the executive branch in friendly conversation with a fugitive from justice. That the Government of Spain is willing to challenge the independence of the judiciary, after the mistreatment and manipulation that both the PSOE and the PP have perpetrated against the renewal of its Council, is a discredit for our democracy and a blow against the rights and the equality of all Spaniards before the law. The additional story of this whole mess attempts to ensure that the objective is to build a Government of progress, nothing less than thanks to the support of two reactionary and supremacist formations, demanding or possessing tax benefits to which the rest of the people have no access or right. Spanish people. To stage this future progressive policy, we have recently been given a group photograph of several former presidents of the Generalitat: one accused of criminal association to steal hundreds of millions; another was disqualified from his duties for disobedience to the electoral authority and a third who escaped, curled up in the trunk of his car, fleeing from the Police after committing a real crime against the country. They were accompanied by a frailón priest so that there was no doubt as to what idea of ​​progress lies in the separatism that Sánchez aspires to co-opt.

For the rest, it is obvious that there is a political conflict in Catalonia that must be resolved politically. Pardons, a logical condition for dialogue, and other penal modifications have already been granted, including the incredible and immoral rule that benefits politicians who embezzle public money. But coexistence in Catalonia, and that of the institutions of Catalonia with those of the rest of Spain, cannot be restored without having the head of the opposition, winner of the recent elections. A President of Government, still in office, must not forget that he is the President of all Spaniards. It is not true, as some say, that the governability of the country depends on the Catalan Trump, but on the political will of Sánchez. Also of the moral quality of the socialist deputies who owe their seats to their voters, whose interests they represent, no matter how obedient they want to be to those responsible for the party that included them on the lists. If the Government and the PSOE consummate the disloyalty to the Constitution that involves forgetting the crimes of separatism, this September 11 could mark the beginning of the end of our democracy.

As concerned as Sánchez is about his place in History, he must therefore choose the story he must interpret: that of a leader defending freedoms and the rule of law against exclusionary supremacism, or that of a criminal president for whom any Disloyalty is permitted if it is remunerated.

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