In two days the Basque Country will vote. In less than a month Catalonia will do it. They are not two simply autonomous elections, as the law says. They are much more. They are, in this order, all of this: 1) a measurement of the health of the Spanish nation, the only one accepted by the Constitution, but discussed in both territories; 2) a test of the real power of an independence movement that is more demanding than ever; 3) a trap for the PSOE, whose post-electoral pacts are conditioned by Pedro Sánchez’s need to maintain his majority, and 4) a challenge for the PP, whose result will say whether he is in a position to assume the general governorship.
The latest events and the messages from the polls do not announce a comfortable future for the State. To begin with, the sovereigntist parties dominate the scene. They disagree with each other, but their national project brings together an evident majority, especially in the Basque Country, where EH Bildu and PNV can sweep away and leave the state hegemons at a minimum, a redundancy in the case of the PP. Nationalisms, far from losing presence, gain representation in institutions. They also have help of inestimable value: mastery of the story. No party occupies more space in the media than EH Bildu and no leader appears in more photos and chronicles than Puigdemont. I never tire of repeating that nationalism offers more of a country’s project and garners social support. Another day we will talk about Catalonia. Today is Euskadi for calendar reasons.
The latest thing is that Pello Otxandiano refused to classify ETA as terrorist, and in the rest of Spain it sounded like sacrilege, but in the Basque Country a debate was televised and the other candidates barely reproached him for it. “For electoral convenience,” as published. Electoral convenience… This chronicler is left wondering if half a century of murders is understood as a merit that is rewarded at the polls. If this is the case, and it seems so, the central government must improve the easy slogans that ministers repeat like parrots (Bildu is a coward) and create a message that excites a society that continues in the detachment that José Montilla once detected in Catalonia. . If so many people agree to hand over power to the ideological heirs of ETA, we are facing a resounding failure of the State and its administrators.
That is why Feijóo’s demand for Sánchez to break the agreements with Bildu is debatable. From a state perspective, the PSOE’s responsibilities are twofold, much deeper. The first, that if a majority of Basques want Bildu, expelling them from the institutional framework would aggravate separatism. It is not about giving away power, as was done in Pamplona, ??but about seducing and integrating, no matter how difficult and slow it may be. The second is in the pacts: agreeing on a government with Bildu is not the same as agreeing with the PNV. Once again, Sánchez is faced with the dilemma of doing what is best for him to remain in Moncloa or doing what is best for Spain, even if it puts his government at risk. The book that a large part of society is now demanding is titled Country Survival Manual.
