Whatever scientists say, the perpetual motion machine exists. The perpetuum mobile is called politics. The game of governing men has no beginning or end. Each horizon is nothing more than the prologue of another border with which to continue feeding our cabalistic hobby. Whoever invented the wheel must have done so after becoming a politician. Or at least after having studied it in minute detail and verifying that it is impossible for it to stop spinning.
Will there be a government or will we go back to the polls? What will happen now with Puigdemont? Will Feijóo continue to lead the PP if Sánchez gets re-election in Congress? Has Vox passed away? Will ERC put an end to ruffianism once and for all after verifying that pimping a podemite candidate does not quite work for him? Has the spirit of the 15-M movement definitively died at the hands of the old party officials from Sumar? Is bipartisanship back? Is Aragonès in a hopeless countdown? Is the silver bullet that Junts won at the polls life insurance or will he use it to commit suicide? Too many questions for so little answer. horizons. Guess. For now, let’s limit ourselves to saying that the results of 23-J are, in a way, like a poorly poured beer. Lots of foam. So we will have to wait to be able to bring the jug to the lips. Since it’s almost August, it’s going to be easier to spend time soaking up some real blondes.
Regarding the fundamental question posed by the arithmetic of the new Congress, we know positively that Junts wants to negotiate and that Pedro Sánchez wants to be president. We are also aware that the formal requirements of the former are unaffordable for the latter. So we can take it for granted that in order to reach an agreement both formations will have to give in to their original approaches. And it does not escape us that at the apex of the negotiating pyramid are Pedro Sánchez and Carles Puigdemont, a man for whom the Prosecutor’s Office demands the immediate issuance of a new search and arrest warrant.
A severe swallow for both will be a necessary condition for the investiture. For the socialists, the ordeal will begin as soon as it begins. Negotiating, even through intermediaries, with someone who is – to use the fiercest political terminology – an outlaw is equivalent to eating an Australian toad for breakfast first thing in the morning.
And for Junts, the champions of coherence, the bowl of broth is no less bitter, although desired. The junteros already know that in order to close an agreement, they must sell the intangible heritage that their commanders value most: coherence. You are leaving the government of Catalonia because you do not confront Pedro Sánchez enough and now you are the one who is also signing up to renew his president’s contract.
Impossible pacts require their protagonists to drown in contradictions in order to have any chance of being formalized. Also a long cooking time to make them digestible for their parishes, building a narrative of dissimulation that exalts what has been achieved without accentuating what is delivered in return.
Not even with the best of wills could the path be cleared by the fast track. And Carles Puigdemont is right when he balances the fact that Pedro Sánchez has the most serious problem. After all, no one can accuse the former president of the Generalitat of not having warned: confrontation and destabilization. It is those who will now go looking for him who need him. That happens, paradoxically, at a time when his legal situation has tended to become more precarious. You never know which deck a lifeboat will end up launching from.
The socialist is obliged to practice the vertical bridge, and the juntero MEP, to come down from the pedestal of coherence. Secret and public assignments by both parties. As with the Sánchez-Junqueras pact. Perpetuum mobile: politics. And at this time, let’s insist, only cabals and assumptions. Advice to players: wait until later to cross the bets. But if you are impatient, for now do yourself a favor and cover them all.
