I take this title from Saint Gregory the Great, who reprimanded bishops who are silent when they should speak, calling them “dumb dogs unable to bark”. I don’t want to be one of them, and that’s why I set out the reason for my criticism of President Sánchez’s government action, which is compatible with the Socialist Party’s firm defense.
I always voted UCD and since it went out of business I have been a loyal Socialist Party travel companion. The reason for my decision was twofold: 1) It seemed to me that, as the PSUC had done exemplarily before, the PSC was the party that could best integrate Spanish immigrants into Catalan politics. 2) I thought then, as now, that social democratic policy executed with energy, rigor and prudence is the best way to achieve coexistence in peace and justice. And I don’t regret it, on the contrary: I value very much what the Socialist Party contributed to the transition and to the consolidation of democracy in Spain.
There are episodes that show the good work of those years. Thus, it was the right (UCD) who carried out the tax reform and the secularization of family law (civil marriage and divorce, which today seems like nothing, but which in the 1980s was common), and it was the left (the PSOE) who did the industrial conversion. In other words, each party did what the other could not have done. There was one thing that united everyone and transcended partisan interest: a sense of community. In 1992, Spain had fallen for good, as it was said of the patient overcoming a crisis.
But 2004 arrived (the Atocha attacks), the watershed in Spain’s recent history, and that sense of community weakened that made the miracle – yes, miracle – of the transition possible, without the presidents RodrÃguez Zapatero (return to the Civil War) and Rajoy (appeal against the Catalan Statute) succeed in preserving it; in fact, they helped liquidate it.
And then, President Sánchez arrived, for whom I have voted in the two elections he has won to date. Therefore, my negative assessment of his presidency is due to his alliances and his way of governing (abuse of decree law, institutional colonization…). I insist that: 1) I have never considered his Government illegitimate. 2) I value his successes in social policies, I support the pardons granted and I praise his personal practice in international politics. But, despite this, I distrusted from the beginning the coalition with the Podemite radical left and the legislative pact with the pro-independence parties. Because? To be clear that both pursued and are pursuing the destruction of what they contemptuously call the 78 regime, each for their own reasons: a) to implement a model of authoritarian social constructivism, and b) to achieve the independence they aspire to.
This implies in both cases the destruction of Spain as a historical entity and political project of the future. With the clear understanding that Spain is, for me, a human community formed over the centuries by geography (the inevitable peninsula) and by history, and legally articulated in the form of a State, which constitutes an area of ​​solidarity that generates rights and obligations With the precision that this State must be federal – not confederal – because the plural reality of Spain requires it.
Here lies the reason for my soca-rel criticism of President Sánchez, whose continuity at the head of the government I consider a serious risk for Spain to survive as a political entity of solidarity. That is why I distinguish between President Sánchez and the Socialist Party, which has often split throughout history, but with essential contributions to the common flow, and absolutely essential for Spain to develop in peace and justice.
This is where my complaint comes from: that voices have barely emerged from within the party, that, faithful to the best socialist tradition, have distanced themselves from the president’s radical-populist drift. Because, when Pedro Sánchez has passed, the Socialist Party will have to follow its path. What will those who have been silent do then?
