The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, the most chaste Trumpist in the Council of Ministers, has asked that the tone and aggressiveness of Spanish politics be lowered. The head of works of Pedro Sánchez for the construction of the wall with which he wants to divide Spain between good and bad has made it a condition that it is the PP that takes the first step in the armistice. Mr. Puente forgets that his first condition is that of a minister, not that of a tavern parishioner emboldened after the intake of the third mixture. Their slips go far beyond political confrontation and operate with the logic of the most genuine sectarianism: pointing out, insulting and denigrating the media and journalists. It is not credible who asks for peace from pipes. But we agree that he does his job tremendously well. They elected him minister to do what he does: dig trenches where only those of one color fit.
Another government already completely corroded by Trumpism is that of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. At the Post Office, Steve Bannon’s handbook is diligently applied. If Trump makes t-shirts with the photo of his arrest, the Madrid president does the same when he converts his son of a bitch dedicated to Sánchez into a rolled-up I like fruit, but with the same meaning. Also the coddling and intimidation of the media and informants, including talk of hooded editors trying to raid the president’s home, are commonplace in her cabinet. Since Ayuso endorses these practices to her, they must be attributed even if they are carried out by others.
So much artillery fire only aims to darken the sky to the point of blinding us. Yesterday we saw it again in Congress. To the request of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, reasoned, to require Pedro Sánchez to explain the relationship between his spouse, Begoña Gómez, and Globalia, the parent of AirEuropa, when this company was rescued with 616 million euros , the president of the Spanish Government fled the study and asked for Ayuso’s resignation.
It wasn’t enough. Next, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, the same one who openly proclaims in front of the taxpayers’ micro tax data as if the Tax Agency were her farm, took Núñez Feijóo’s wife out to dance. He accused the popular leader of diverting subsidies for 115,000 euros to the company where his wife worked when he was president of the Xunta. This information had already been denied in writing by the same company, but what does that matter when what is involved is a tie in the mud. Are you talking about my wife? Well, let my ministers talk about yours.
The dance of boyfriends, wives and couples these days comes to show that the request for serenity that the minister Óscar Puente has cynically put on the table is a utopia. At least if the person who has to put it into practice is a political class corrupted by forms that a few years ago could have surprised us, when we saw them in the USA, but which are now common currency among us as well.
It’s up to the rest of us to take note of the calm. And applying it means getting informed, evaluating and forming an opinion on each issue separately, without being seduced by Macedonia which tends to mix all the ingredients. We have on the table, among other dishes, a case of alleged political and institutional corruption (the Koldo case and derivatives), a case of tax fraud by an individual emotionally linked to a president of an autonomous community (the González case) and meetings of Begoña Gómez and Globalia, which of course do not prove anything, but which do deserve a clarification to remove the shadow of the conflict of interests surrounding the figure of the president in the name of the transparency he boasts of.
If nothing is the same, nothing should or can be judged the same. In the same way that a scandal or a suspect evaporates the others. If in couple matters it is law for one nail to remove another nail, in politics it should not be so. Don’t get caught, even if there are a lot of people hunting.
