Pedro Sánchez seems to have taken note of Sumar. Much more than that: the President of the Government has taken note of the enormous demobilization of the left-wing electorate that all the polls detect, as inflation grows in people’s pockets, uncertainty stains the European horizon and the infected noise seized the public debate.
After the swerve over Western Sahara (March) and after the NATO festival at the Prado Museum (June), Sánchez once again veers to the left in the Congress of Deputies.
In a long speech, very well written and not so well pronounced – the president thrives on parliamentary rejoinders, but fails to interpret the dramatic pieces with conviction – the head of the Executive went to Congress today to announce the adoption of a of national-popular war.
Free monthly pass on commuter trains throughout Spain from September to the end of the year, to encourage the use of public transport and reduce spending on gasoline. Special tax on bank profits, due to the rise in interest rates. Tax on energy companies for windfall profits from the chilling price increase.
Measures that two months ago would have made the Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, dizzy, have been announced today with tremendous conviction by the Prime Minister.
Measures riveted with the following expression: “We are not going to allow a few to benefit from the sacrifice of many.” free trains; special tax on electricity, gas and oil companies; special tax on banks. A serious battle for the social equity of scholarships for students, in the face of the Madrid experiment to favor the upper middle class.
This is the bonus that Sánchez has delivered to the controversial Spanish society, while accusing the opposition of being “catastrophist”. The gratuity of the trains will not be denigrated by many. Taxes on energy companies and banking will cause a huge media stir. Sánchez is also looking for that stir to tune in with the annoyed and disillusioned voter.
The more they attack him for these measures, accusing him of being a leftist and of having succumbed to the demands of United We Can, the better for him. With this plan, Sánchez intends to recover the popular breath that today the polls deny him. I want to see you there, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. There you are, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
In a speech absolutely focused on the present, the president has tried to introduce meaning and epicness to the material exposure of Spanish society to the war in Ukraine. The war unleashed by Russia last February energizes Poles and Lithuanians, whose former states and kingdoms came to dominate parts of the phenomenal plain that stretches from Lviv to Kharkiv.
The Ukraine drama tells them about their past and their future, if one day Russia decides to invade them again. For much the same reasons, the ongoing war matters a lot to Latvians and Estonians. It mobilizes Finns and Swedes. It confirms the old Atlanticism of the Norwegians. It does not leave any Eastern European country indifferent, whatever its historical relations with Moscow.
It moves, worries and alters the lives of the Germans, who believed they had signed a perpetual peace treaty with Russia with the construction of two gigantic gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. It matters to the French, since one of the great signs of identity of the Fifth Republic is its own voice in any matter related to foreign policy. Emmanuel Macron won re-election well thanks to the war.
The war excites the British, historical enemies of Russia, who have always seen in Poland a good lever to stop Germany: the war in Ukraine also has to do with British movements in Eastern Europe since the end of the Soviet Union . British officers have trained the Ukrainian army for years to a good level of efficiency on the battlefield.
The war causes underground tensions in Italy, as Russia and China have invested time and money to exert influence on the long peninsula that occupies a central position in the Mediterranean, with a historic look to the East that began with Venetian merchants. Only Spain and Portugal, separated from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees, are emotionally alien to the war in the East.
Polls say that Spaniards support the Ukrainian cause. It is true. It is the rational response of a country that still feels attached to democracy after having lived through a dictatorship of almost forty years. Vladimir Putin’s Russia garners very little sympathy in Spain. Russia tried to poke its nose into the Catalan issue, but it has invested little money to move opinion in Spain, if we compare it with France or Italy. Spain is essentially Western. Spain clearly belongs to the area of ??influence of the United States, as has just become perfectly clear recently.
The pandemic had an epic: the massive support for doctors and health workers and the majority trust in science. Both references succeeded. That epic even generated an alternative political-cultural response when social discipline – the object of desire of all the leftists that have been in the world – began to be suffocating for many people. An epic alternative that said: give me freedom to go have a beer.
Sánchez now tries to give meaning and epic to Spanish stoicism in the face of the consequences of the war. Is not easy. Appeals to Europeanism are not enough. Free train tickets and a huge fight with the banks and the electricity companies. Ignacio Sánchez Galán, president of Iberdrola, can make Pedro Sánchez Castejón once again loved by the left-wing public after the round night at the Prado museum.
Uncertain will be the winter.
