Report for an Academy. An academic giving a cold scolding to professional politics in parliamentary headquarters, sitting at a table in the center of the chamber, next to the chamber’s stenographers. After Tito Berni and his nocturnal wanderings around Madrid, the Academy. After the thermal social bonus charged by the number two of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and by the number one of the opposition to Díaz Ayuso, the Academy coldly admonishing professional politics. That was the most fearsome torpedo that could have hit the Government’s waterline today, on the starboard side. At the time of writing these lines (early afternoon on Tuesday March 21, the day of the beginning of spring), it cannot be said that the Tamames torpedo is causing havoc. We will have to wait until tomorrow to make a final balance.
In the first place, Ramón Tamames has not spoken from the center of the chamber, as planned at the beginning of last week, when the presidency of Congress was aware that the Vox candidate for the presidency of the Government was not in physical condition to go up and down the short staircase that leads to the speaker’s box. On Monday of last week, Tamames received a call from the president of the Congress, Meritxell Batet, in which she offered him that solution (the table next to the stenographers) and he was delighted. Report for the Academy from the center of the chamber, away from the rostrum and the seats, places reserved for professional politics, today in low hours.
This stage layout was corrected a few days ago during a meeting between Batet and Tamames, accompanied by the Vox spokesman in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros. In that brief meeting it was decided that the candidate, assisted by an usher, would sit in one of the seats in the chamber, right next to the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal. In a few words, Vox wanted to keep Tamames short, after the numerous interviews granted by the candidate, boasting of his independence. Vox wanted to underline before the television cameras that this is his motion of censure, not that of a loose verse. In Vox they became nervous before the continuous statements of the candidate, delighted to have met and determined to distance themselves, thinking about his posterity. The intense media campaign promoted by the Popular Party to present the motion of censure as a buffoonery, as a charlotte, as a miserable waste of time, seems to have had some effect. Those of Vox have seated Tamames next to the boss so that the public did not have doubts about the really existing hierarchy.
The harsh initial intervention of Abascal, a compendium of all the slogans of the Spanish extreme right, with a sharp personal allusion to Pedro Sánchez, which we will talk about later, has reduced Tamames to the role of a troupe. Next, a veteran speaker, old glory of the Immaculate Transition, will address them, that seemed to be the message. Sánchez has contributed to this scenic articulation with his long reply to Abascal, who in turn has answered him. As the preamble became the real debate, the academic hypothesis faded: the old professor checking up on professional politics. Tamames looked at the clock and made a face of not understanding anything. I have come here to talk about my book, another protagonist of the transition once said. When, finally, he was given the floor, Tamames was already on a secondary plane from which he has not been able to leave.
Perhaps affected by the public leak of a draft of his speech last week, the candidate has wanted to synthesize a series of statements that needed more development. It is not easy to write a good parliamentary speech. Tamames has a fit mind, if we take into account the conditions of his age, he has a splendid memory, he handles vocabulary well and he retains one of the characteristics that Santiago Carrillo already criticized him on the political level back in the seventies: he is able to pay attention to many topics at once, without effectively focusing on one main argument.
His speech was not the report to the Academy that could have put the Government in trouble. The initial intervention has had various moments of ‘brother-in-law’, to use an expression that has been widely used in recent years to refer to men who tend to express themselves on any subject, not always well informed, with the intention of standing above others people. Tamames has left in the dark the accusation of Sánchez of heading an “absorbent autocracy” (a covert dictatorship), without a doubt the harshest accusation that appeared in the draft of his speech, published last week by elDiario.es (filter facilitated due to the fact that the candidate sent his text to several acquaintances to press their opinion). Examples of ‘cuñadismo’ in the candidate’s speech: “There is also the issue of Latino gangs. It’s not some kind of West Side Story to celebrate.” “We are giving water to our Portuguese brothers.” “SMEs are not companies of the future”. Cuñadismo in the Central Committee, that has been the stamp of Tamames. Carrillo, who knew how to underline the axes of his public interventions very well, would have given him a rant today.
Among so many notes from radio talk shows, Tamames’ reference to the war in Ukraine may have gone unnoticed, very little in tune with the Atlanticism that Vox boasts of. “What is the European Union today? Has the United States come today to bring us the war in Ukraine and will China have to come to save us from the war in Ukraine? Regrettable ”, said the former leader of the PCE. It is the only paragraph of his speech that somehow refers to an old militancy almost forgotten by a man who in the nineties helped the right to take control of the Madrid City Council and later joined the first crusade against Felipe González as a commentator on Antena 3 Radio and La Cope.
The United States, guilty of the war in Ukraine. It is possible that some militant from Podemos or from the United Left, a eurosceptic sector, gave a start this morning. That’s not the Vox line. It is not the line of the Popular Party. It is not the line of the PSOE. That is not the line of Yolanda Díaz, very prudent on the matter, who a few months ago recognized Ukraine’s right to defend itself. Abascal has also had a very significant moment in this regard, when he has criticized the increase in military spending in Spain. The leader of the extreme right has affirmed that Pedro Sánchez is working for the position of Secretary General of NATO. Here is one of the poisoned arrows of the debate during the morning.
In short, Vox has staged eaten Tamames, the candidate has not been able to make a good speech and the Government has taken advantage of the circumstance to make intensive use of the rostrum to confront the extreme right and warn voters about what It could mean for Spain a future government of the Popular Party and Vox. Sánchez has also done something else: she has given a lot of prominence to Yolanda Díaz in the noon time slot of the newscasts and she has gone up to the rostrum dressed as an arm of the sea, all in white. Díaz has taken the floor in prime time with three objectives: to vindicate the PCE, defend the government coalition, in the present and in the future, and project himself as leader of Sumar at a time of tension with Podemos over the preparation of the candidacy in which theoretically they should go together. Díaz, who has liked his team a lot, has been very tough with Tamames, much tougher than Sánchez. Aitor Esteban, spokesman for the Basque Nationalist Party, has been even more so. At ninety years old one can still learn new things and Ramón Tamames may have learned today that the debate on a motion of no confidence is not a social gathering at Cope with Pedro J. Ramírez, Federico Jiménez Losantos and Luis María Anson.
The leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has not wanted to go to Congress, where he could have occupied the seat of the Popular Party in his capacity as senator. In the morning he held a meeting with the diplomatic corps accredited in Spain at the Swedish embassy. Feijóo’s absence is debatable. A Galician politician, a good professional of silences and pauses, cannot play Swedish when it comes to projecting the will to power. Politics is now resident in Congress.
