Socialist and president like Sánchez, but with the powers of a monarch, François Mitterrand was also a politician in love. However, Pedro Sánchez has written that he wants to leave everything for one woman. The female devotion of the French was more plural. His amorous thought is summed up in a confidence to a friend, which appears in Franz-Olivier Giesbert’s biography: “You can’t have them all, but you have to try”.
It seems that Mitterrand was more concerned with the geography of women’s bodies than with French geopolitics. According to the biographer, while he was at war, his girlfriend left him. To ward off this failure, he would have become a sleepless conqueror. At his funeral, Danielle Mitterrand had to accept the presence of Anne Pingeot and daughter Mazarine, who officialized polygamy (today called polyamory). However, the president was not satisfied with two stable partners: in addition to many quick affairs and stellar moments with actresses and celebrities, Mitterrand maintained a long relationship with a third lover, a Swede. They say he was extremely compliant with all three.
When he died, Françoise Giroud wrote in L’Express: “If he had wanted to, he would have been able to seduce a stone: sober gesture, eyes shining with mischief, a calm voice, words carpeted with a shawl”. Who could speak with words soft as a shawl! Naturally, he was compared to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, who, as the servant Leporello sings in a famous aria, conquered “1,003 women! Peasants, bourgeois or marquises… Blondes, brunettes or with white wigs… Sweet or haughty… Thin in summer, chubby in winter”. It is convenient to specify that the seductive deria of Mitterrand did not imply a lack of respect for the female condition. A collaborator, André Rousselet, upset to see that a young sports instructor was visiting Danielle Mitterrand with suspicious frequency, explained it to her. The president replied: “You can’t ask a woman for more than you give her!”.
You see, I have decided to take these days of presidential reflection with irony. But I don’t want to end the article with a joke. One of the oldest texts I remember writing in this newspaper was called “Hate Sowers”. He was talking about poisonous journalism. Everything that has happened in the last 25 years is tainted by that horrible seed. The terrible crisis of 11-M, the adventure of the Statute, the selfish management of the crash of 2008, the rise and fall of Podemos, the euphoria of the process, his tears from prison, the sentence, the pardon Having exhausted the consensus of the transition, Spain resumed the spiral of conflict that was linked to the brutal slaughters of the war on both sides; and with prison, exile and the endless repression of 40 years. Everyone knows that, without the umbrella of Europe, our Pell de Brau would now be as desolate as Gaza.
Tension is not pleasant. That is why, in the midst of the crossfire, many well-intentioned sermons are made. Moralism is easy to write. However, as doctors do, before deciding on treatment it is best to agree on the diagnosis. To stop the spiral of hatred we would need to agree: Who threw the first stone? This is the knot. For some, including myself, it was Aznar. For others, it was Zapatero. Until we agree on the diagnosis, Spain will continue to flirt with tragedy. Alas, if one day the European umbrella gets damaged!
