The text belongs to the newsletter ‘The Director’s Bulletin’, which is sent every Friday morning. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
Good morning,
Last night another election campaign began. Don’t be alarmed. If nothing abnormal happens, we will not be called to the polls again either this year or the next. It is true that the electoral result in Catalonia has been very close and new elections could be called in October and, at the Spanish level, with Pedro Sánchez in the middle, there could be an advance of the general elections. All this is true, but it is not worth considering the worst. Imagine, that, a year and a half without elections.
To be the last of this long electoral cycle, these 9-J elections are perhaps the most important. Although Brussels and Strasbourg are seen as a bureaucratic world that seems very far away, increasingly all the decisions made there have a greater impact on the lives of European citizens.
It is worth remembering again that the great novelty of these elections is that the historical balance on which European unity has been built between Christian Democrats and Socialists, with the specific support of the Liberals, is in danger. It is taken for granted that the two large extreme right groups – European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) with the Italian Giorgia Meloni as a reference and Identity and Democracy, with the French Marine Le Pen – are going to get many votes and can influence European governance. to his side. The EPP Christian Democrats can seek a majority with one or two of these groups.
In the last major electoral debate that was held yesterday Thursday in Brussels, it was evident how the Christian Democrat candidate, Ursula von der Layen, showed her willingness to collaborate with some of these formations, and in this sense, she expressly praised Meloni. It is important to highlight the influence of Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank and former head of the Italian government, on Meloni’s actions. Draghi has helped moderate some of Meloni’s European policy positions and is his greatest supporter in Brussels.
Our correspondent in that city, Beatriz Navarro, offered this past Sunday an interesting portico of these European elections, presenting all the protagonists of the extreme right, and our editor-in-chief of Internacional, Ramon Aymerich, gave the keys to why this rise of right.
This week has been marked by the problems of Spanish diplomacy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has had to multiply on the Argentine and Israeli fronts. What was significant was the announcement by the Spanish Government to recognize the Palestinian state in an operation negotiated at the same time with Ireland and Norway. The news caused enormous anger in Israel and very nuanced criticism from Washington of the Spanish decision. In this sense, it is highly recommended to follow the intervention of the United States ambassador to Spain, Julissa Reynoso, who spoke very clearly about this controversy in a new edition of the Vanguardia Forums.
Israel withdrew its ambassador in Madrid due to the Spanish Government’s declaration towards Palestine and, the day before, it was the Moncloa that announced the withdrawal of its ambassador in Buenos Aires due to the words of Javier Milei.
What is clear is that, beyond the sincere will of the Government to resolve the problem of the Middle East with the creation of the two states, and the logical discomfort that the words of the Argentine lion aroused, both circumstances occur at the beginning of the European election campaign. Sánchez is doing very well by bringing together the PP, Vox and the international far-right, with Milei as the protagonist, and presenting himself to the Spanish as an alternative to stop this wave. They are diplomatic conflicts that can be taken advantage of at the electoral level, but we will see the effects they have over time.
Morocco and Algeria are two other examples in which Albares will have to multiply in the coming days so that new conflicts do not occur.
Internally, I cannot miss this newsletter to show our satisfaction for having already exceeded 150,000 subscribers between the digital and paper editions as we reported this past Sunday at the premiere of our Vanguardistas campaign. And encourage them to participate in our contest to choose the best covers in the history of our newspaper, decade by decade. It is a very illustrative exercise of the history of La Vanguardia and our country.
Happy Friday.