Twenty years ago, Vargas Llosa wrote, in his Epitafio para un caballero dedicated to Fernando Belaúnde Terry, these words: “Oratory is no longer a value in political life. Today, politicians are generally puppets who are programmed and manipulated by image makers, advertising experts and advisers according to perfectly functional techniques”.
Why has this happened? Different causes are listed that I do not deny, but I will add another: oratory has declined because, in the hour of truth, transcendent decisions are taken outside Parliament. However, be that as it may, the truth is that current parliamentary oratory is of a lower quality than that of the nineteenth century and that of the Second Republic.
The transition from the flourishing nineteenth-century tradition to the new republican oratory is manifested in Gil-Robles’ judgment of Alcalá-Zamora’s oratory: “The very correct form, although overly pretentious; (…) the bright periods, if sometimes dark (…) But, next to that, what a pitiful background of voids, injustices and common places!; what an overflowing and sick vanity!”. Josep Pla collects a malevolent comment from Julio Camba in this regard, which I quote from memory: “You, friend Pla, what do you like more, the Niagara Falls, the fountains of Montjuïc or the oratory of Niceto Alcalá-Zamora?”.
The oratorical excellence during the republican period was achieved by Manuel Azaña. Azaña himself, already trained at the Madrid Ateneo, knew the effectiveness of his word. Here’s what he says: “I spoke to the packed room, and in the middle of a sepulchral silence. (…) And feeling good as well as the general expectation put me on my feet. I found myself as master of myself and of the auditorium as I was at the Ateneo. I spoke for a very short time, with the consent of all, and from the first moment I found the parliamentary tone, and the aplomb and serenity that had been missing during the session”.
Likewise, the republican experience also showed that the academic rhetoric of Ortega y Gasset and Unamuno, both members of the Constituent Assembly, did not have the same effectiveness as the usual oratory at the time in the political arena.
During the dictatorship of General Franco, one cannot speak of a continuing parliamentary oratory of the Spanish tradition for three reasons: 1) There was no Parliament deserving of that name, but organic Courts. 2) It was not spoken, but read. 3) It was not performed from the seat, as was tradition, but from the tribune, perhaps because doing it this way is more comfortable for the reader, since he does not have to gather the papers, as would happen if he were to read them from the seat, being able to deposit them on the lectern.
Imagine if President Sánchez had had to hold for more than an hour the bill of paper that Ramón Tamames referred to. The practice of reading was so widespread at that time that, when a minister – Federico Silva Muñoz, who was from Public Works – intervened without paper support and spoke as in the old days, it caused a sensation.
There were those who said, for such a feat, that he was “a circus guy”, forgetting that Silva, as a lawyer for the Council of State and a lawyer for the State, had a proven practice of speaking without the need to read.
And the transition arrived and, with it, the recovery of a parliamentary life typical of a representative democracy. But the recovery of the old parliamentary practices did not arrive: more is read than spoken, and it continues to be read preferably from the tribune. Perhaps the latter is futile, although I don’t think so, but what does constitute a scandal is that our political leaders, starting with the first swords, have to read their main interventions.
what’s wrong with them Do they not know the lesson or is it that, deep down, they despise Parliament so much that they do not take the trouble to prepare their speech for several days, as Churchill did during the war and sometimes from his bed? This week, Yolanda Díaz may have started to make some difference on the day of her alternative.
