In the week of the arrival of the translators to Congress, politics once again demonstrates that it has its own language. Some things are said that mean another. And there is no device to translate it. Tell Borja Sémper, one day he doesn’t want to do the canelo and the next day he speaks to you in perfect Basque. Translation: Sémper tries hard to present a kinder image of his party, but his party is not one for kindness.
In the PP, the hard wing has taken the most baroque steps of the Castilian Holy Week and has set the pace for the Galician one. This Sunday Feijóo will be the forced guest at the event that he says he organized but that everyone knows he did not organize. No translation is necessary. If next week there is no investiture, Feijóo will have his Last Supper closer, and he will look around him looking for who has betrayed him, with a good chance of getting it right, whoever he chooses.
But nothing should be ruled out, not even Feijóo’s investiture. Let’s not forget that, no matter how much of a Casado face he is being given, Feijóo could become President of the Government next week. The offensive for four unexpected votes (translation: socialist turncoats) to fall on Feijóo’s side has not been seen since the abstention of PSOE deputies for Rajoy’s investiture. Woe to that socialist deputy for Albacete who this weekend shares an event with García-Page.
The slogan is clear: we must prevent crazy Sánchez from becoming president again at any cost. Not like Feijóo tried, who had only had conversations with Junts to get to know each other. “I have seen things that you would not believe,” one of the negotiators around Puigdemont told me. Translated: the PP offers were very juicy.
Never in such a short time have former presidents of PP and PSOE reappeared almost at the same time, trying to correct the course of their parties. First Aznar, and then the socialist president and vice president who changed Spain in the eighties and who have come together again so that it does not change forty years later. They have gone from “NATO, not in the first place” to “Amnesty, don’t even think about it.” They were the most harmonious duo ever known in Spanish politics. Simon and Garfunkel with Pimpernel influences.
Invincible when they were together. Best seller until they broke up. Now they are returning to the stage because they want to sell many copies of their latest album: “Spain hurts us. Great successes.” Seeing them together has been shocking. Another miracle from Pedro Sánchez: without him, the reunion would have been impossible.
I recognize that Sánchez, with his changes in criteria, makes it easy for him. But there are statements by the static duo that are inappropriate for someone who has had such high responsibilities. Guerra, hairdressers aside, lies when he says that there are inspectors who do not allow children to speak Spanish in the schoolyard. And González slips when he affirms that the independence movement is a minority in extinction. Then Puigdemont comes out and declares that, when they talk, “the price of quicklime goes up.” Is such a broad brush necessary?
I am glad that the parties do not have a single thought, and I am amazed that it is men over 80 years old who are messing things up. Ageism angers me. But it must be very hard to carry the weight of saving the country periodically. And there they are, taking the stage, awakening the interest of the public and critics. Petting it. Articles in five columns, even in the medium that reviled them the most. El Mundo, so many years after destroying them, has them on its cover photo, as if it had decided, yes, to grant them amnesty.
