España: el pacto y la furia is the last book by journalist Enric Juliana (Badalona, ??1957), assistant to the director of La Vanguardia and delegate of the newspaper in Madrid since 2004. A chronicle of twenty years of Spanish politics.
This fury thing seems hardly debatable nowadays. Instead, the pact is unlikely.
Indeed, there is more fury than agreement. Now, these last twenty years in Spain, important things have been agreed upon. In 2011, the amendment of article 135 of the Constitution to guarantee the payment of the debt; the procedure for the abdication of King Joan Carlos in 2014, and the application of Article 155 in Catalonia in 2017. There are more pacts. For more than four years Spain has been operating with a coalition Government and a complex parliamentary majority has supported the investiture. The PP maintains alliances with Vox in at least six autonomies. There will be more pacts. At the moment, in the middle of the fog, I glimpse a possible tactical convergence between Junts and the Popular Party.
Together and PP? That wasn’t in the script.
The amnesty supposes everyone inside. An unprecedented normalization of Spanish politics. All forces with social roots are present in Parliament today and will operate freely. Convergences that were possible in the past and that were broken may reappear. I think the word convergence is very appropriate. The PP and Junts do not have insurmountable differences in economic and social matters. what can happen To begin with, in the electoral phase that is now opening in Catalonia, a strong role of Carles Puigdemont would not suit the Popular Party at all. Later, PP and Junts could discreetly agree how to put an end to the Spanish legislature in order to bring about new elections. A few months ago, in Brussels, Puigdemont told Manfred Weber [president of the European PP] that he was not married to the socialists and that at a certain moment he could agree on a motion of no confidence with the PP to call elections. During the recent Galician campaign, “high sources” from the PP explained to a group of journalists that they might be willing to grant a pardon to Puigdemont, with conditions. They were sending signals through the fog: “We could also come to an agreement”. I am convinced that there are open lines of communication between Junts and the PP, which should not surprise us, since amnesty means everyone inside.
So, the fury in this country has a lot to do with it.
One of the things I have learned these twenty years in Madrid is that dramatization is a very Spanish attack tactic. Wherever there is drama, people tend to inhibit themselves. Paralyzing fear. There is drama imposed from above and explosions of anger from below. People are moving away from politics and you don’t know where the unrest will come from. Perhaps the Catalan elections will tell us something about this. Let’s look at Portugal, a country much less furious than Spain. We have just seen an explosion of Portuguese anger. Portugal’s macroeconomic numbers are as good as Spain’s, but, as is the case here, many people do not have enough money to pay rent or food.
The left is going through difficult times.
I would say that the left has not fared so badly in the Iberian Peninsula. Since the death of Franco, the party that has governed Spain for the longest years is the PSOE, first alone, now in coalition. The current Government formula in Spain is unique in Europe: socialists plus a left with old ties to the Communist Party. Yolanda Díaz is heir to the Eurocommunism of the transition.
And further to the left is Podemos. The book focuses on Podemos.
Let’s say that I have not devoted myself to insulting them, as quite a few journalists have done in this country. Podem introduced an electric shock and one of its effects was to save the Socialist Party, which was headed for ruin. This download was intended to overcome the PSOE electorally, but it achieved the opposite effect. The Socialist Party was forced to wake up and there was Pedro Sánchez.
About Sánchez, in one passage we read: “He has never been a man of the left. Sánchez has a strong will to power. Sánchez is a radical pragmatist”.
Pedro Sánchez has never been the left wing of the PSOE. I think he understood the moment of 2014 and 2015, of strong opposition to the Spanish political system. The no is no to the investiture of Mariano Rajoy obeyed this vision: the young people had gone with Podemos and the PSOE had to get them back. He didn’t want to agree with Podemos, he wanted to avoid being overtaken. In 2019 he agreed because he had no other choice. A pragmatist.
Where is the land of pact and fury going?
Very soon the Government of Spain will have to decide what to do with the increasingly insistent requests to redouble military support to Ukraine and to go to greater spending on Defense in the face of long-term tensions with Russia and a possible return of Donald Trump in the White House. Sánchez’s stellar moment was the negotiation of European recovery pacts in the midst of a pandemic. Will it be possible to maintain the current parliamentary majority under the aegis of European rearmament? This is the question. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, the next Catalan elections will also have to answer this question. A change of ground is coming.
In this book we can re-read the dialogues with Segador, the talking bull.
This book has two levels, which complement each other: a chronicle of the last twenty years, year by year, plus a selection of articles to reinforce the interpretation of what has happened. It is my point of view and also my contribution to La Vanguardia, which has allowed me to work freely in a complex scenario. And, yes, there is also the Reaper bull. I haven’t talked to him in a while. Bulls must be respected. But I do not rule out that one day it will reappear. Segador will return.
