Stability is not a political good that can be measured only with quantifiable data. Stability is a feeling that arises from the state of mind or the strategy of the ruler. A month ago, Mr. Sánchez caused unusual instability by withdrawing to consider his resignation, hurt by news about his wife. Thirty days later, the head of the opposition warned that Begoña Gómez would be called to the investigative commission and her husband warned: “If you think they are going to break me, be ready.” He had returned to stability. Why did you go from resignation to showing maximum strength? Some psychologist, rather than a political scientist, would have to attempt an explanation.
In that hectic period from April 24 to May 24, things have happened. It was 20 years since Felipe and Letizia’s marriage. They were held without a hint of crisis and the heiress obtained a high degree of acceptance. In the Government, the coalition suffers, because Sumar needs to prove his personality in the face of the absorbing dominance of the PSOE and because Sánchez’s team is incapable of agreeing on the laws with its partners. Relations with the opposition move between hatred and demagoguery, with a PSOE and a Vox that feed themselves to wear down the PP. And foreign policy, shocking with Palestine – a question of dignity for the left, a tribute to Hamas terrorism according to the right – and with the singular conflict with Milei.
I want to say something about this last episode. The Milei-Sánchez clash is more than a diplomatic crisis. Certainly, it contains the opportunistic ingredient of showing Sánchez as the savior of democracy in the face of the ultraliberal populism and façade that invades us. It coincides with his strategy of showing the entire right as the enemy of progress. And he offers the Spanish president another legitimate opportunity to defend his wife.
But all this is just the surface. What was seen in Madrid at the Vox convention and what we will see in the European electoral process is a small sample of the confrontation between two models. The novelty is that one of them proposes the review of the welfare state that emerged after the Second World War. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the clash was between capitalism and Marxism. Now another conflict is emerging: the traditional capitalism that absorbed social democracy has a significant opponent, the autocratic face of neoliberalism, so exclusive that it suggests fascist roots that sprout again, for now without nights of broken glass. Milei, incredibly, can be its great ideologue; the histrionic ideologue of him.
Therefore, his personal insults could be a passing episode. The serious thing is how Milei qualifies the adversaries, an expression of verbal violence, a preview of physical violence. The very serious thing is to see how they applaud him with phrases as hurtful as this: “Social justice is aberrant.” And the alarming thing is to see how those who applaud this atrocity win elections and rise in voting intention surveys. That is, therefore, the new and disturbing revolution that is brewing before our innocent contemplation.
