Or if you prefer, we can emulate that comedy by the Farrelly brothers and headline Something’s up with Sánchez. Because the fact is that the current president has successfully overcome practically everything that has been falling on him. You know: a pandemic, a volcano, a war on European soil, inflation, the energy crisis, the Catalan independence movement, irregular immigration and all the trouble with Morocco and the Sahara… Let me stop, because I’m exhausted thinking about it. And all this with a frenetic hyperactivity that has also led to a surprising number of laws and innovations. And with a coalition government, which has flats. And without a clear or stable majority in Congress. And agreeing on far-reaching labor reforms between unions, businessmen and the Government itself.
In short, this is not a country that makes waves for anyone, but the President of the Government is still an almost paranormal phenomenon. If we summarize it in a simplicity, it will be necessary to recognize that Sánchez has governed reasonably, but that he has not managed to like him. And before you tell me that the government hardly has any influence and that the economy is going well alone or better despite the government, meditate on it for a moment without apriorities or antipathy. Come on, let’s park our phobias.
In these five years of government, quite a few things have improved – I dare say objectively – but the president dislikes a notable group of people who, I say, not all of them will be abducted by the most sectarian media and the sowers of usual weeds.
Is it because he is tall? By his diction? For those slightly too tight suits? By his walk? Because he speaks English and international leaders smile at him? Because he doesn’t seem completely Spanish and very Spanish, as Mariano Rajoy would say?
They have accused him of being cold, manipulative, insensitive, among other niceties. Without forgetting that this government is basically illegitimate and that, like Zapatero, it forced democracy to achieve power and is going to betray Spain, which sums it up. Or Sánchez or Spain, an I don’t know if lucky motto of the Popular Party. In fact, for more than one Sánchez has already betrayed Spain, to that mass of the race evoked by Machado that Ridruejo interpreted as an easily irritable anti-political majority and contrary to all change. Apathy and immobility in a latent state and enormous anger when anger breaks out to the surface.
Yes, it seems quite evident to me, although in retrospect it is very easy to say, that the president was wrong by accepting the plebiscite on his person that the Popular Party and Vox proposed to him in the campaign of the municipal and regional elections. And I don’t think he was right with his reaction after the bad results, as if the general elections were the authentic and definitive plebiscite on his person. There is a cover of Hermano Lobo from the agonizing summer of 1975, with Franco and the dictatorship taking their penultimate gasps, which was a drawing by Ramón –he signed that concisely– in which you can see a speaker, clearly from the regime, perched on a rostrum and shouting to the people, a group of men wearing berets: Either us or chaos! And the people answer him: Chaos, chaos!! And the hero replies: It’s the same, it’s us too.
But in a democracy, and we have been there for many years, the election is possible. And a joke based on the fact that in this country the usual should always be in charge no longer works.
