A Government cannot lose its authority. When that happens, their days may be numbered. Through this prism it is necessary to observe what happened yesterday at the festival of Dos de Maig, day of the Community of Madrid.
The story, already covered by all the media, is well known. The protocol services of the Community of Madrid blocked the passage of the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, when he tried to go up to the tribune of authorities that presides over the May Day military parade.
We are talking about a celebration that over the years the Popular Party has characterized as if it were an alternative national holiday, with a military parade included. The party of the right while the president of the Spanish Government is booed, year after year, around the tribune of the Twelfth of October parade, an area where families of military personnel are concentrated. ideological struggle Agitation and propaganda. Culture war, as they call it now.
A minister of the Government of Spain had never been prevented from accessing an act of this nature. In previous editions, when the Popular Party governed Spain, it was common for vice-president Soraya Sáenz de SantamarÃa to be present in the tribune accompanying the head of Defence, MarÃa Dolores de Cospedal, despite the terrible relationship between the two. They were scenes of institutional normality. A normality that is broken today. If yesterday a minister had been blocked at an official event in Catalonia or the Basque Country, the cries would be heard all the way to the plains of Ukraine. (The Minister of the Presidency participated a few days ago in an event of the Basque Government in Gernika on the occasion of the 86th anniversary of the bombing by Nazi aviation).
Yesterday in Madrid there was a very calculated confrontation over the notion of authority. It is noteworthy that the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, present in the tribune by virtue of her position – there was to be a military parade -, impassively observed how a Cabinet colleague was blocked, without saying anything.
It was up to her to stop the act until the situation was clarified. It seems that in the central government there are two classes of ministers: those who are on the job and those who observe it.
Advised by an aulic councilor who conceives the political struggle as a fight without limits, Isabel DÃaz Ayuso has said that I am the authority in front of all of Spain. “Political incorrectness” versus “progressive dictatorship”. This is the framework, as the Valencian political scientist Anna López recalled yesterday in the newspaper Público. The opponent becomes the enemy and, consequently, must be out of the picture. It is a dynamic present in many countries. Democracies will not die suddenly, but they can rot slowly as gestures of degradation of institutional life accumulate. Something smells like a process in Madrid.
The slogan “Illegitimate Government”, launched by the extreme right at the beginning of the legislature and gradually assimilated by the Popular Party, has materialized in the Puerta del Sol.
The central government has shown ingenuity and Ayuso has taken another step to seize Vox’s electorate. “I am the authority”. Message also for Alberto Núñez Feijóo, about whom cruel articles are already starting to be published in the conservative press of Madrid. They are losing faith in it.
