It was the last time they were seen together in public. It was April 22 and the festival of La Vanguardia was celebrated on the eve of Sant Jordi. He was already at the Alma hotel. And she arrived, turned into the soul of that party. None of those present raised as much expectation as her.
He, who a year earlier had left organic politics after his defeat in Madrid and had chosen her as his successor, had the fly behind his ear. Things were not going the way he wanted. However, when he had the chance, he went to her and gave her girlfriend a conscript hug at the train station. Without losing her smile, she blurted out: “You’ve been very curmudgeonly lately.”
This is how Lola GarcÃa described it last Sunday, and Yolanda DÃaz herself reminded me of it when we finished recording the interview that is broadcast tomorrow. We made an appointment with the vice president at a Japanese restaurant and she was an hour late. I fell asleep at the table waiting for her. Literally. And I got scared when she woke me up. It’s not good to start an interview right after a narcoleptic micronap. And less when you know that in that interview they are going to observe you with a magnifying glass.
DÃaz arrived with the smile that almost always accompanies her, that squints her eyes and reduces any type of tension. After half an hour of talk, I put some words that Maruja Torres told me about her and that in her day I did not broadcast: “I would like to break her smile, but not to hurt her, but so that we could talk about something without empathy.” And don’t ask me why, but from that moment on the smile of the Sumar leader faded, as if Maruja Torres had given her a bite of a poisoned apple.
The thing was in crescendo as the questions progressed. It was the first time he had seen Yolanda DÃaz visibly angry in a television interview. She neither empathizes nor empathizes. Answers without hot cloths. forceful. Maruja will like her.
The vice president is fed up. She says that she did not want to be a minister, or a vice president, or a candidate for the presidency of the Government. She reminds me of those students who leave the exam saying they are going to fail and get a nine and a half. If you don’t want to be a presidential candidate, you don’t travel more than 20,000 kilometers in seven months.
The Spanish minister who has squared the CEOE to double the minimum wage in Spain, who imposed the ERTE in the midst of a pandemic, and who approved her labor reform in extremis, the last thing she expected was that one of her own would do the most to her the impossible life “I’m going to fuck your life,” Pablo Iglesias told her ironically when he designated her as her successor. What he didn’t know is that she was going to want to fuck him so much.
Iglesias and DÃaz have known each other for years. They are (or at least have been) friends. Very friends. And I think that the situation they are going through hurts both of them. Next Saturday, April 22, they will meet again at the Sant Jordi festival at La Vanguardia. Mr. Conde de Godó, rent adjoining rooms from the Alma Hotel so that all of us who do not want to miss the greeting between the betrayed and the betrayed can fit in. Mr. Jordi Juan, buy yourself a blue helmet for the occasion. Mr. Pedro VallÃn, rent a priest’s suit and officiate a remarriage ceremony between those who loved each other.
Mr. Iglesias, Mrs. DÃaz, treat yourself to a rose and a book. And put an end to the suffering of so many left-wing Spaniards who have been having a hard time with their show for months. Do you know that their schoolyard fight can end Feijóo and Abascal in Moncloa? Think about it for a moment, and may Sant Jordi bless you.
