Sánchez is divisive and enjoys being so. So was his inauguration speech. Without concession of any kind to those who will be your opposition. Democrats theirs and those who are on their side. The others are anti-democratic. No nuances. A well-armed trap, but a trap.
The first forty minutes were a permanent stab in the pain nerve of the people. Employ them. Draw them as Vox’s Siamese siblings. For Sánchez, Feijóo is an ambassador of Trumpism in Spain, of the illiberal way of doing politics. The heritage of the far right attributed to the right.
Putting conservatives and reactionaries in the same bag was essential for Pedro Sánchez. In addition, enlarging the trap is very easy for him, because they serve him carnasse in dojo. Such as the pacts between the PP and Vox in autonomous communities and cities. Or the outbursts of some popular voices who perhaps should join Abascal’s party, or the inexplicable support of Mariano Rajoy for the Argentinian candidate Javier Milei.
Putting the PP in the sack of Trumpist national populism allows Sánchez to give meaning to the phrase with which he intends to establish the initial framework of the legislature: making a virtue out of necessity. The need? Stop red-and-yellow Trumpism. Virtue? Dare to do it with the amnesty law and the pacts with ERC and Junts to save the flag of leftism. But the fact is that Sánchez’s only indisputable need was to continue being president.
Progress against reactionism. Environmentalism against killers of the planet. Feminism against masculinity. Rights against cuts. Binomials with which Pedro Sánchez justified in his speech the amnesty and the agreements with the pro-independence parties. The agenda of the reunion and coexistence was only a light filler. Sánchez told the Spanish yesterday that his pact with the “bad guys” is only to avoid the “worst”.
But his speech was incomplete. He neglected self-determination, the international verifiers who will supervise the meetings between the PSOE and Together in Switzerland, and other issues that independence has raised to give the go-ahead to the investiture. Sánchez did not want to play with the elephant, but there were two pachyderms in the chamber. Each with seven deputies.
The president spoke of the amnesty as if it were the beginning and end of concessions to pro-independence parties. And it is true that this worked for him last term with the pardons, because ERC decided to compensate for the failure of the State-Generalitat negotiation table with Rufián’s Podemite speech. But unless Puigdemont has decided to deceive Junts voters, on this occasion the PSOE will not be able to take refuge in the multicolor progressive flag. And the focus of the legislature – beyond the amnesty – will be on the pro-independence agenda. And that means more concessions or a failed legislature.
Sánchez knows by now that expressions such as the “reunion agenda”, with which he justifies the amnesty, are for Carles Puigdemont, and also for aERC, due to the drag effect caused by the first, a nonsense. That is to say, that neither feminism, nor the environment, nor the minimum wage, nor promising the moon in social rights, will divert the focus from the pro-independence agenda.
The leader of the PSOE acts politically with the success of the survivor when he thinks, like Juli Cèsar, that “when we reach that river, we will cross that bridge”. But he will be reminded every minute that the manager of the flow of the river this time is Puigdemont. And that he will be the one who will decide how the rushing waters will go down, and if the bridge and Julius Cèsar end up being swallowed up by the current before time. In addition, Junts will not be able to count on the most arch-progressive agenda either.
If the negotiation has been difficult, the legislature will be even more so. If the president fully trusts that the entirety of his investiture partners will endure four years behind a shield against the right to the sound of Bella ciao and “No passaran”, the engine of the new Spanish government will be nailed in a three and nothing All the more reason, with the Catalan elections around the corner and ERC and Junts competing as always – but with more venom – for the pichichi of pro-independence orthodoxy.
