This text belongs to ‘Política’, the bulletin that Lola García will send every Thursday to the readers of La Vanguardia.
Dear readers, dear readers,
We know each other from the articles that La Vanguardia publishes for me every Sunday, in which I try to break down the keys to the political moment. Also from some radio and television gatherings. I have dedicated almost my entire professional life to political information and I am so passionate about it that I also studied Political Science when it was not yet fashionable to be a political scientist. Here I will explain my impressions about my contacts with politicians, their intentions and motivations.
In the last 30 years I have met politicians of all stripes, good people and others not so much, sectarian and empathetic, with a willingness to serve and with their own interest as their banner. Almost all of them are hooked on the dedication to politics, it is an addictive activity. It goes beyond that cliché that whoever gets into politics is to make money. I suppose it must provide satisfaction, although it destroys any attempt at family life, while the media exposure and social networks is very cruel. I would like to see some statesmen of the past or political veterans who sentence from time to time dealing with the relentless and constant public judgment that circulates through our mobile phones.
Politics circulate concentrated in a few seconds of video or in a sentence, out of context. Although surprisingly in this campaign television has regained prominence. Who was going to say it! The old television, open. Pedro Sánchez wants to overcome the game in prime time. And to have an audience you have to let your hair down. I remember that on a trip to Latin America with Sánchez, the president confessed that “empathy is overrated.” He said it half seriously, half jokingly, when we journalists asked him for “a huddle”, that is, an informal chat, without microphones, to find out his opinions.
Sánchez is tired of the media and during the five years of his presidency he has believed that appearances in the Cortes and the service booklet of the Councils of Ministers were the best way to address society. But we live in an extremely media world. If you don’t communicate, you’re dead. Sánchez reloaded is already on your screens thanks to a program, El Hormiguero, to which it would never have occurred to him to go if it were not for an imperative need.
Pablo Motos made the worst mistake of an interviewer: going on the attack. Only when the character in front of you relaxes does he tell you interesting things. Any journalist knows it, but sometimes vanity can also get to us. He discussed it with Jordi Évole, who interviewed Sánchez last Sunday, and got more out of him about his personal life than any other incisive interviewer. It is not easy to get a naturally distrustful president like Sánchez to tell you something that goes beyond politics.
Évole explains to me that the essentials came out in the program, but that, as he always does in his program, some passages were cut to make it more agile. This time he eliminated a couple of questions about the president’s wife and daughters because he was extremely careful not to reveal even their ages. Any politician who reaches the top puts on a shell to withstand the pressure of public opinion.
One last thought from Évole: “The sad thing is that the interviews turn into a fight. An interview is not combat, it is a conversation. You’re not going to win or lose.” Neither the journalist nor the interviewee, he would add. We will see new television assaults in this campaign.
Feijóo longs for Václav Havel. We live in times of conflict. Politics was created to settle it, not to encourage it. The more diverse our society is, the more difficult it is to reconcile its differences. And what should be wealth becomes restlessness for many. That is why today the political offers that seek to standardize, to put an end to nuances, triumph. It is what Vox proposes, going back to the past, to the known, the safe, the only thing.
The axis of this electoral campaign is the strong irruption of Vox in the institutions and how the PP deals with voters that one day were its own, whom it cannot please, but cannot rebuff either. The PP is torn between pretending that Vox does not exist or treating that party as the wayward son to be welcomed with government agreements. There is talk of choosing between the Valencia model and the Extremadura model. Actually, the second one didn’t even last two days. Alberto Núñez Feijóo would prefer to pretend that Vox does not exist, but around him there is no talk of anything else.
I would like to tell you a bit about Feijóo’s visit to Barcelona this week:
There were about fifty followers and representatives of the employers. Catalan civil society tends to reposition itself with great agility when it glimpses a change in power. As seen on Monday, that turnaround is still timid in Catalonia. It contrasts with the environment that surrounds the leader, who is euphoric, they are seen in Moncloa. You can tell that they don’t have time for anyone, they peck at those who approach them like industrious bees in a garden… The militancy did not vibrate with the Galician leader as it did with the steely rallies of Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo four years ago. But she got a bad result and the polls, on the other hand, smile at Feijóo.
The leader of the PP promised to lower the personal income tax for income of less than 40,000 euros and create more jobs. Feijóo is blamed for not having a good economic team, although the party leadership is sure that, if they win, they will have a range of options. The pools point to the governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, as head of Economy and the former Andalusian councilor Juan Bravo as Minister of Finance.
There is also talk of a Catalan minister, for example of Industry and some place Javier Faus, in the style of Josep Piqué. But nothing is the same as before. In fact, the economy no longer moves votes. At least not when it’s going relatively well. These choices are about feelings. Feijóo summarized his economic recipe in himself, in his own person.
He said it in Barcelona: “The greatest economic reform is a mature way of governing, not a frivolous one.” The axis of the economic program of the PP is Feijóo and his aspect of a serious, predictable type and little given to occurrences, as Rajoy would say. A bland gentleman who scolds the left for scolding businessmen. A leader so that everything returns to its course.
Feijóo quoted a phrase by Vaclav Hável several times: “I have not been chosen to lie”. Writer and president of the Czech Republic, Hável was the leader of the democratic transition after the communist regime, respected for his defense of freedom and human rights after suffering years in prison. I have remembered that Jordi Pujol also used to talk a lot about Havel. So I am also going to leave here a quote from the Czech leader that I think is appropriate for these times: “A democracy devoid of values, reduced to a competition between political parties that have guaranteed solutions for everything, can be very undemocratic”.
