There are not many who know Pedro Sánchez intimately. Me neither. But I know something about him. I have been able to interview him on three occasions. The first, in Nou Barris, when Susana Díaz is said to have said: “It’s not worth it, but it’s worth it to us.” He was a tight-fitting, overacting Pedro Sánchez, but willing to sit at the table of a family of socialists critical of his party. The second, he had just left his position as a deputy so as not to join the necessary collaboration of the PSOE for Mariano Rajoy to achieve the investiture. We met in a bar and he arrived with an open wound, defeated but ready for anything. And the third, in the last electoral campaign. The Sánchez of the comeback, the one who advanced the elections when he had it worst. The Sánchez who instead of having fun went to El hormiguero to fight, and burst out laughing with La Pija and La Quinqui.
I find it incredible that that politician who went out all out not even a year ago has emptied himself in nine months. My first reaction to his letter was this tweet: “If he resigns he will go big, dismantling his attachment to power. If he doesn’t resign, he becomes the leader against trash politics. He always wins. And they know it.” But this time Sánchez, the great strategist, doesn’t give a damn about the electoral effectiveness of his decision. He is in another. For the superhero capable of avoiding all dangers, his haters have found kryptonite. It’s that moment in Superman II when the hero no longer flies.
I have no idea if in two days Sánchez will find the necessary strength to continue. What is clear is that he has not softened his haters one ounce. I have heard Feijóo speak with contempt about compassion, something so necessary in a civilized society. And Puigdemont boasting that you have to leave the house crying. He’s not used to not being the first lady of the party.
I have never seen a president of the Government concentrate so much hatred. Nor had I ever experienced scenes like the ones I have experienced these days. I was leaving a nightclub in Madrid, and a man who was around seventy blurted out to me without saying a word: “Get out of here and go suck Sánchez.” They must be things of the freedom of that community.
I don’t know if the haters are calculating correctly. We live in a society of emotion, sometimes too much, and Sánchez is transmitting an emotion that many of us can share. That “I can’t take it anymore” that almost all of us have said at some point. The fact that he is President of the Government still gives more value to the confession. Meanwhile, the haters are attacking Sánchez as someone mocking the famous soft man from Fary.
The human has crossed politics in an unprecedented way when it is most dehumanized. Politicians no longer have rivals, they have enemies. They no longer disagree, they hate each other. When the human intersects with the political, we are dislocated, we short-circuit, because the human is already almost alien to politics. We have been working on this dehumanization for a long time. Sánchez is not his first victim.
The PSOE has summoned its people, like someone who goes to see a friend during low hours to keep him company, although he doesn’t really know what to say. Do not rule out that the PSC tries to fill the Sant Jordi again so many years later.
It’s not a question of getting into more mushy nonsense. But politics has the opportunity this weekend to rescue its most human side, where the zasca does not cheer, where the outburst is not the refuge value. Those who enjoy the annihilation of the other are the ones who will open bottles of champagne if Sánchez announces his resignation on Monday. They are those who cannot support the plurality of Spain or a more just society, those who reign in the society of organized lies. Those are all the ones who are about to win.
