When this week ends, there will be five left to invest Pedro Sánchez. Deadlines will expire. The stew is made from ingredients so hard to chew that it requires a slow fire and many days of cooking. For weeks, the acting president had been argumentatively set on the empty optimism of a difficult but taken-for-granted deal. Now, on the other hand, the Monclovite sprinkler of arguments chooses to water us with prudence and the warning that maybe when the case comes there is no other option than to go back to the polls. Negotiating logic.
The message is for Puigdemont, clearly. Something like, Carlos, deploy the landing gear and don’t be too ready. Let’s see if this will end for you and Junts like castles in the wind and while you wait for the “historic compromise” you demand, what will end up coming over the horizon is another election campaign.
Since Puigdemont has already shown that he can withstand little water, he is more of a prickly cactus than a tropical plant, his contributions to the networks continue to keep bread at prohibitive prices: listen, socialists, you will agree with a party that maintains the legitimacy of the 1-O and that he will not renounce unilaterality. By the way, what about self-determination?
Meanwhile, the CIS takes out barometers, the latest yesterday, which prove Puigdemont right when he adds to his negotiation letters that, should the elections be repeated, the political balances will be as fragile as they are now. Both Puigdemont and Sánchez have shown in their political careers that they are not afraid of Russian roulette. We will see the gun change hands several times as the negotiation accelerates.
Don’t be afraid. The projectile is incendiary and both are needed alive. The last shot will not be fired. We like paradoxes. Here’s the latest: the agreement is closer, now that the PSOE has cooled its optimism, than when it was taken for granted simply because it was.
Domestic matters pass while the world puts us in place. Catalans, Spaniards and Europeans, choose as many categories as you like, we are already pygmies on a map where the new giants emerge shamelessly.
Europe is like a headless chicken after the Hamas pogrom in Israel. The United States unable to impose its agenda in the area while making light of the fact that the deteriorating president has a meeting canceled by the Palestinians, the Egyptians and the Jordanians. In the end, Biden’s agenda is reduced to asking Israel to do what it has to do, but without going overboard. So much for the role of the Democratic president of the most powerful nation on Earth in the 20th century.
Meanwhile in Beijing, Xi Jinping, relaxed and calm, partying with guests from all over the world. Up to 130 countries are queuing up to compliment the host and his card holder – to return with interest – of the New Silk Road, which, unlike the old one, is spread across the planet.
The Chinese emperor is enjoying a mass bath just as the Middle East is turning upside down again. Chance and Hamas wanted to give China the gift of the summit acting as a contrast to what we are warning about with Biden and with Europe. There will be no better time for Xi Jinping to boast that his economic diplomacy has already produced the results he intended. Earning the right to act as an arbitrator, whenever you feel like it, in the new world order.
That’s why Putin – wasn’t he isolated?, hadn’t the whole world turned his back on him?, hadn’t the war been lost? – has been the star guest. And the Russian president has taken advantage of the tepid ball centered by the Chinese friend. Erected as the only president with dialogue with all the actors of the conflict in the Middle East, including the terrorists, Putin returns to the chessboard to remind us, with the help of China, that, when we were here day after day that the war could only be won by Ukraine we did nothing but attend a strenuous propaganda exercise.
The investiture of Pedro Sánchez distracts us from the global game that does change our lives. So let’s have fun until we die, as Neil Postman advised.
