Let’s stay calm”, a political scientist asked his colleagues at the table during the televised analysis of the results of the election day. His appeal for calm clashed with the uncertainty that was beginning to drip, viscous as sweat on a cloud-smothered Sunday. It was evening on the beach, and the holidaymakers were left without a sunset ceremony despite having voted by mail. The night felt like a half-done bun, with several black pins held between the lips. But what was going on? The omens of a conservative tsunami were fading and all those pinyon mouths that announced verano azul fell silent. Demoscopy specialists revised their calculations, dismissing polls and trackings, which pour out anticipated results as if it were a very expensive club.
Triumphalism is usually associated with heat, and the day, with a humid 35 degrees on the coast, accompanied it. Competitors tell each other that it is necessary to go out and win, to repeat a lie as many times as necessary, to show off virtues with good positions and hide weaknesses even if it is with false data. This is what we witnessed during this campaign in which Pedro Sánchez defended himself like a dog. With the patience of that animal that the opposition has used by playing a funny game with its name. Perro Sanxe – which has nothing to do with Sanxenxo – shouted his detractors mercilessly, as if by repeating it so much they had to strip him of his human nature. Perhaps they forgot that, in Spain, there are already more pets than children under 15 years of age, and that the passion for these now sentient beings – thanks to the coalition government – ??represents one of the few remnants of tenderness that remain in prosperous, also lonely, societies. It is fair to remember that, in 1996, when Felipe González was a worn-out figure, the left resorted to a Doberman advancing towards the camera while a voice-over spoke of “a negative Spain”. Animalist movements were beginning to have a voice and Aznar won that election while pet trainers and psychologists flourished.
The PP and Vox have come up short because popular sovereignty has sensed the return of an old ghost. In the way in which Santiago Abascal got away with the purple hooks while they murdered a woman simply for being one. In the disregard of urgent matters that condition the future of our children, such as climate change. In the arrogance of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, resorting to fake news, with the journalist Silvia Intxaurrondo, to whom it took 48 hours to prove the truth, apologizing as if he were Citizen Kane: “I read it on a teletype”. The word began to be googled from Pontevedra to Algeciras, and some of us remembered the redactions with linotype: too much of the past.
No one can rob Sánchez of the hormone of resistance, the feminist testosterone. He has thrown punches and insults at the player’s sportsmanship on the court, and has even made a self-parody of Sanchismo by showing off his athletic figure in jeans during the tour of the sets. Just like ex-president Zapatero, who became the Paulo Coelho of the socialists, as inspired as he was effective.
Some PSOE-affiliated businessmen commented a month ago that if Felipe did not ask for a vote for the party, the outlook was grim. They were wrong. The silence of González is trading down. Because Pedro lost the election, yes, but Perro won it.
