The discussion is not new and the diagnosis is very close to turning half a century old. But knowing this for so long has not prevented the prophecy from being fulfilled with almost mathematical accuracy. At the beginning of the eighties, in an interview with Eugenio Scalfari, the director of the newspaper La Repubblica, the leader of Eurocommunism and father of the via terza, Enrico Berlinguer, stated that the crisis in Italy was not due to the existence of corruption among politicians, but to a “moral issue”: the parties that gave them positions and coverage had taken absolute control of public institutions.
“The parties no longer do politics,” explained Berlinguer, “they have become machines of power and clientelism. “They manage the interests of cliques that have no relationship with the common good.” It is impossible to better define the deep crisis of credibility that democracies go through when the (transcendent) distinction between the institutional sphere and the (Phoenician) space of the party is diluted. Corruption has always existed, but the only way to prevent it from contaminating all of public life is determined action by institutions.
In Spain this confusion between the institutional and the partisan is a centuries-old custom. It has existed, at least, since the Bourbon Restoration. It did not disappear during the Republic and was consolidated under Franco. The Holy Transition ended up prolonging evil to this day. The Spanish political system rests on the Crown and on two systemic parties (PSOE and PP) that administer, according to the convenience of each moment, the electoral majorities.
Of course, we have institutions, but they are sterile because their function is merely theatrical and they are directed by the parties. This model has been replicated, in turn, in the autonomies. In Andalusia, which won its self-government against all environmental factors, the popular mobilization of the late seventies would not take too long to be channeled in the direction that most interested the PSOE. The socialists patrimonialized the autonomy and its institutions from the first day and, throughout their almost forty years of hegemony in the South of Spain, they occupied with their leaders, in addition to the Junta, the rest of the public entities and organizations in charge of controlling their successive governments.
The carom that five years ago brought Moreno Bonilla to San Telmo, thanks to an alliance between the PP, Cs and Vox, unprecedented at the time, has not changed these habits. The president of the Board, freed from his former partners thanks to the majority in July 2022, has since been applying a strategy of (partisan) occupation of the regional institutions very similar to that of Pedro Sánchez. Moreno Bonilla does not make as much noise as the President of the Government – ??largely because the success of his strategy depends on it not being evident – ??but, in this legislature, he has made a clear shift in his containment tactics.
From the first day the PP avoids calling its parliamentary supremacy “absolute” – the arguments of San Telmo force it to be called “sufficient majority” – but it makes full and constant exercise of its prerogatives, increased after winning the city councils of all the capitals. of the province and six of the eight deputations in the municipal elections, exactly like the socialist governments they came to amend.
The last milestone will be the enthronement of one of the former councilors – the economist Manuel Alejandro Cardenete – as president of the Chamber of Accounts, the body responsible for supervising the budgets and all companies and public organizations, including local corporations and universities. . An enormous power that formally emanates from the parliamentary composition but that, through deeds, means placing someone who has been inside as the watchdog of the government’s decisions. At the orders of Saint Elmo
Cardenete is one more example of how the former councilors of the Board from Cs have gone on – without loss, with joy – to profess blind partisan obedience in favor of the PP, as long as there is a position and a salary involved. The list is extensive. The Minister of Economy, Rocío Blanco, from the orange lists, has been kept in her position. Juan Marín, vice president during the first government of Moreno Bonilla and head of the liberal party in Andalusia, presides (by a personal decision of the president) the Economic and Social Council (CES), a body in charge of institutional dialogue with social agents and that must inform in advance all draft laws.
The former Minister of Equality, Rocío Ruiz, also from the ranks of Cs, a teacher by profession and without experience in television, was appointed member of the Audiovisual Council (CAA), another of the public bodies of parliamentary extraction. In the board of directors of Canal Sur, the regional television, it has not been necessary to make changes because it was already under the political control of San Telmo since the last legislature, thanks to an agreement to share the seats with the PSOE, which took the opportunity to place politicians and related journalists in it.
The socialists have not been at all belligerent with the remodeling of the Advisory Council, which guarantees the former presidents of the Board – Susana Díaz and Moreno Bonilla when they are no longer president – ??an institutional position with a lifetime salary of 68,000 euros until they turn 75 years old. . The PP has also sought placement in second-level positions for Sergio Romero, Teresa Pardo and the former president of Parliament, Marta Bosquet.
They all came from Cs. The first occupies the direction of the Youth Institute (IAJ) in Cádiz. The second is a delegate in Malaga of the Ministry of Justice. And the third, a lawyer, enjoys the presidency of the Andalusian Institute for Agrarian Training and Research (IFAPA). Moreno Bonilla has not had the need to control the Office of the Ombudsman with a president he trusts because the current president of this organization, Jesús Maeztu, appointed at the time by the PSOE and at 81 years of age, is not known to have only report that is critical of San Telmo’s policies since it was appointed by Susana Díaz.
It is not surprising that the Andalusian PP has resisted against all odds to reform the Board it inherited from the PSOE. Its objective, after overcoming the interim period of the first legislature, is to articulate a regime of power that is durable and in which the institutions, formally independent, but de facto obedient, safeguard the political interests of the Quirinale.
