This text belongs to ‘Político’, the newsletter that Lola García sends every Thursday to the readers of La Vanguardia. If you want to receive it in your mailbox, sign up here.
That Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo do not profess sympathy for each other is evident. This is not an appearance of confrontation sought for political purposes. They don’t connect. Even with Pablo Casado, the socialist leader harbored a little more personal affinity, although the ideological distance was abysmal. But they are not asked to appreciate themselves either. Just apply institutional respect, which should be above any other circumstance. The way in which the interview that both leaders will have tomorrow, Friday, has been managed shows that politics is also governed by personal relationships, like any area of ??life, and that without a minimum consideration for the other it is very difficult to move forward.
The problem worsens when the lack of personal affinity turns into contempt for what each of the two politicians represents. When a President of the Government calls an opposition leader, he should attend without any type of excuse or circumstantial calculation. At the same time, a chief executive must cultivate a considerate relationship with those who constitute his alternative, even if he shares almost nothing with him. Democratic quality is also measured in courtesy towards the rival. Political disqualification cannot go to the extreme of denying greetings or dialogue. And deference is not only due to the president, but also to whoever leads the candidate.
The figure of the head of the opposition is not included as such in Spain, although he is usually given a certain protocol rank. In Catalonia it does exist by law and whoever holds it is treated as an “honorable sir.” It was an idea of ??Pasqual Maragall when he was president of the Generalitat, with Artur Mas in the opposition. Although the relations between the two, already in the Barcelona City Council, were very strained, the former socialist president promoted the creation of this new figure, even above the contrary position of ERC, then his partners in the Catalan tripartite.
Being head of the opposition in Catalonia allows one to have more material resources, such as having one’s own office, but the law also expressly includes, although it may seem like a truism, the right to “be consulted” by the president on important matters. It is clear that the heads of the Government only call their opponents when it suits them, but it is unprecedented for them to decline, since, whether there are agreements or not, the meeting usually implies a leading role that suits those who are not yet in power. Why does Sánchez want to see Feijóo? Why has he put off so much?
The socialist leader has agreed with almost the entire parliamentary group, including Carles Puigdemont, under a search warrant from the Spanish justice system, and with Bildu, which four days ago tried to include ETA members who had already served their sentences on its lists. Both agreements are the axis of the campaign against the PP, which wants to reach the European elections with its electorate highly mobilized against Sánchez. The Popular Party will present these June elections as a plebiscite on the pacts of the President of the Government. Sánchez, who has had to make “necessity a virtue” and establish himself as the standard bearer of dialogue with the independence movement and the nationalist left, proposes a meeting with Feijóo to dilute those agreements in the idea that he dialogues absolutely with everyone , except with Vox.
Sánchez laments that he always went there when Mariano Rajoy called him. And that he was at his side in the Catalan crisis of 2017, while the PP has only dedicated hyperbolic disqualifications to him. Feijóo, for his part, complains about the treatment that Sánchez gives him, since the president questioned him in the Senate with that refrain about whether his thing was “insolvency or bad faith”, through the maneuver of not responding to his intervention in the investiture and delegate that work to deputy Óscar Puente. Feijóo was slow to say yes to the meeting, but refusing would have meant crossing a red line towards the delegitimization of the presidency, an attitude inappropriate for a party that calls itself a state party and is in a position to govern.
It is possible that no agreements will emerge from the meeting. Most likely two monologues. One will ask for the renewal of the Judiciary and the other will reproach him for the amnesty and support for Bildu in Pamplona. But it is necessary for the meeting to occur. Otherwise, the message is sent that political differences are so insurmountable that it is not even worth contrasting them. The conclusion would be devastating: a substantial part of society has nothing to talk to the other. The other is dispensed with, as if it were superfluous. In this case, not only the content is important, but the ritual is equally or more important. After all, who most and who least has to deal every day with people with whom they agree on almost nothing, and without so much fuss
From the ponsetias with Torra to the supercomputer with Aragonès: