Hope, which is that desire for survival that all men have, especially when they approach the threshold of death, is inextricably linked to panic. It is, however, not at all easy to find out if terror is the origin of the first or the opposite is true: if we aspire not to suffer pain because we know that we are sinking. In this dilemma is the PSOE in Andalusia, which the political battle for investiture (still uncertain and open) is tearing apart at the worst moment in its history.
Five years after having lost the Quirinale of San Telmo, with a decreasing provincial and local presence, concentrated in the phalansteries of the councils of Seville and Jaén, and a social predicament in clear decline, the return of the patriarchs of the Suresnes generation –González and Guerra– has been perceived by a good part of its bases and militants as an open wound that has no possible healing.
The trance contains elements of generational divergence – patriarchs who, without being saints, do not want their heirs to auction off their political legacy in the market – but its depth is, above all, moral. A sentimental matter. An intimate pain. And, in the event of a repeat election, an assumption that cannot be ruled out, it could be catastrophic.
Nine years ago, when in the heat of the unrest of 15M, Podemos emerged as an alternative path to the left of the PSOE, inaugurating the era of a new policy that, by resorting to the infallible concepts of Ortega y Gasset, has become old. hastily, a generational failure was already perceived within Andalusian socialism.
A domestic analogy helps to understand it: the Vietcong, an ironic name by which the most vehement, tireless and devoted militants within the PSOE of Seville are known, the parents and grandparents, always voted for the socialists. It snowed or rained. His children and grandchildren, on the other hand, began to sympathize with the purple party of the first Vistalegre.
It was a perfectly natural fact that did not cause conflict in socialist homes: young people wanted to get ahead – by the sinister – of their elders, whose attitude oscillated between condescension and nostalgia. “We were like that too,” many historians thought in the tacit confidence that it would be time that would impose an inevitable aggiornamento.
The present is different. What the investiture shows, with a disconcerting severity for a party that in Andalusia has historically been a family business, done the old way, is the deep split between those, like González and Guerra, who claim a tradition that began with them and those who , coming from exactly the same time, they refuse to accept the verse of the youthful Neruda: “We, those of then, are no longer the same.”
In reality, neither of the two sides are identical to their past. González and Guerra, who this week were seen together again at the Ateneo de Madrid, gathering around them again those who successively were first brothers and then enemies, are far from the genetic sectarianism that is still perceived in the behavior of many veterans.
In Seville, González encountered a group of “comrades from Bellavista” – his neighborhood – at the doors of the old Court building, where he received the Torre del Oro Award, who reproached him for attending events chaired by PP politicians. González responded that it is the citizens who elect the president of the Board and the mayor of Seville, not him.
The meeting exuded melancholy. González saw his old comrades – back then they were all called that – emerge from his past to reproach him for his present. And he, in turn, responded with an evocation: what I say about the amnesty is the official doctrine of the organization.
In the background there was an absolute divergence between two forms of leadership: the historical one, based on the hegemony of the difficult times of clandestinity and the Transition, and the contemporary one, characterized by reverential submission to the boss and unbridled realpolitik. Both sectors want a sovereign who corresponds to their desires and whims.
In Andalusia the division between some and others inaugurates a political journey without a compass. Because, whatever happens with the investiture, the southern PSOE, which remains the largest in Spain, is not only no longer the most influential – this role now corresponds to the PSC – but it has been left without its own project. Submission to Ferraz is total. And, in a sense, suicidal.
The lack of direction is perceived in the fact that, given Moreno Bonilla’s position against an agreement with the independentists, which at the moment is lukewarm, but may increase in intensity before the end of the year depending on how events develop, what The only thing that has occurred to the regional socialist leadership is to open a parliamentary debate on the degree of development of the 2007 Statute, approved by the PSOE and voted in a referendum by a third of the census: 1.9 million out of a total of 6, 1 million Andalusians.
Excusatio non petita, accusationio manifesta, the classics said. The socialists of the South do not know how to deal with the political tidal wave of the investiture. Andalusia took to the streets en masse in 1977 to demand first-class self-government. If history rhymes again, as Mark Twain predicted – the Andalusians are already demanding Moreno Bonilla take people out on the streets on 4D –, the Andalusian PSOE could end up like the UCD: “Andalusian, this is not your amnesty.”
