The best way out for Spain from the political situation generated by the last general elections is – in my opinion – for the PP to facilitate the investiture of Sánchez by abstaining in the second vote. But this is only a specific episode, albeit an important one, of a change in the general direction of the PP, which requires a long view and which must be defined by three attitudes:
1. Clarification of its relationship with Vox, expressed in a total rejection of any pact with this party due to its status as a radical populist, which distances the PP from its vocation of centrality.
2. Avoidance of constitutional blocking maneuvers, such as his irrational and sustained opposition to the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary.
3. Establishing a negotiating proposal to deal with the Catalan problem, which in reality is not such, but the Spanish problem of the territorial structure of the State, conditioning Spanish politics for more than a century. The significance of this fact is so great that – for example – it has determined the last electoral result: the PSC has given victory to the PSOE, having become the party of refuge for a large part of the Catalan right, orphan from the end of CiU of process results. It deserves, therefore, a separate paragraph.
Today, the PP has little more than a token presence in Catalonia, due to the absence of a clear integrative project, which starts from the frank acceptance of a determining fact: the secessionist will of a significant sector of Catalan society .
With no other intention than to provide an index of the issues to be addressed and agreed upon, I reiterate a scheme that has been repeated a thousand times to which this project could be adjusted, within the framework of a federal State with a Senate endowed -as a true territorial chamber- of broad decision-making powers:
1. Recognition of Catalonia as a historical and cultural nation. 2. Exclusive “identity” competences of the Generalitat in language, education and culture, within the framework of the Constitution and with faithful compliance with judicial rulings.
3. Financing: a) Setting a limit to the contribution to the solidarity fund (either by specifying a percentage, or by the strict application of the principle of ordinality), b) Creation of a shared tax agency.
4. Consult Catalan citizens on their acceptance or rejection of this proposal.
I add for those who are scandalized on one side of the river and the other that, to negotiate, the first thing to take into account – according to Josep Tarradellas – is what the other side will never give in: the Catalan identity for the ones and the unity of Spain for others. A transaction always hurts everyone, because there are reciprocal concessions of something viscerally felt as one’s own, but it is fruitful.
The realistic implementation of a project developed with a long view requires it to be executed with a short step. Thus, I think that Feijóo has rushed to demand from Sánchez a “responsible dialogue” for the “stability of Spain”, because the country “does not deserve an ungovernable or blocked situation”.
It is true, but Feijóo has to start by doing what Sánchez will never be willing to do, despite the PP being the party with the most votes: facilitate the investiture of the opponent through his own abstention. If the PP abstains with the aim of facilitating the governability of Spain, its credibility, as well as the moral authority of its leader, will increase and subsequently facilitate its political action.
Actions and not words. It is the time of the moderates and their leadership is vacant. It will be occupied by that politician who thinks about what he is going to say before he says it, who says what he thinks afterwards and tries to do what he says. That is, the one who has credibility, or what is the same: moral authority.
And, finally, good will is needed, something more than keeping the forms, even if these have also been abandoned. Sharpness, irony and a point of humor are needed. And it is necessary to avoid, for this reason, the personalization of politics, among other reasons because the current leaders do not give for that much. Thus, for example, “repealing Sanchism” is enormous nonsense, since the current drift of the PSOE is only an episode of transitory radicalization, recurrent in the honorable and more than a century old history of this axial party, which does not hide diminishes his repeated essential contribution to the government of Spain and to the realization of the ideals of peace, freedom and justice.
