At first it was Geography. In a message to the Navy on the occasion of its annual party, the Prime Minister drew an Italian Mare Nostrum that included the Balearic Islands. “You carry out a crucial function for the nation and guarantee security from the Balearic Islands to the Turkish Straits,” the text said.
More than half of the Mediterranean, Italian living space. A postcard from the thirties. Let’s not exaggerate. A literary license, a nationalist pill to congratulate June 10, the date on which the Navy remembers the feat of Captain Luigi Rizzo, commander of an agile boat equipped with torpedoes that in 1918 managed to sink the cruiser Sant Esteve de the Austro-Hungarian Navy – Hungarian ship – in the Òtranto channel.
Always Geography. A few days earlier, on June 1, an extraordinary summit of the European Union had been held in the Moldavian castle of Bulboaca, as a sign of support for Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. Volodymyr Zelensky was the main protagonist of the meeting, and it competed with the news of the week: the call for early general elections in Spain. On this point, Prime Minister Meloni expressed her support to Moldova, without mentioning the name of the Spanish party. Institutional precaution.
This interest was translated into a fifteen-minute speech at the meeting that Vox held on July 13 in the city of Valencia, to celebrate the entry into the Government of the Generalitat Valenciana. The alloy of the conventional right and the extreme right. Meloni’s project for European politics. The selective strategy of Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party: agree with parties of the so-called patriotic right as long as they are loyal to the Atlantic Alliance.
Santiago Abascal wanted Meloni to go to Valencia to celebrate the success. A year earlier, the leader of the Brothers of Italy went to Marbella to support Vox in Andalusia. His speech, very harsh, was much commented on. After a few months, she herself admitted that it had not been her best oratorical piece. In Marbella, in June 2022, Meloni was leader of the opposition party. In July 2023, Prime Minister. He didn’t go to Valencia, but he sent a video of support to his friend Santi. A fifteen-minute video with a lot of ideological charge.
There are no written rules in the European Union on the participation of national rulers in the electoral campaigns of other countries. The usual practice is usually short support videos, without entering the local battle.
In the Valencia video, Meloni harshly criticized environmentalists and accused them of practicing a pantheism hostile to the human being. “They defend nature, but they are outnumbered by men,” he said. The Weber experiment, the alliance of the EPP with the patriotic right, had just suffered a serious scare in the first vote on the Nature Recovery law in the European Parliament. Some popular deputies broke the discipline of voting in favor of environmentalism. Meloni was very angry. “The result of July 23 may mean a change of course in European politics. It is very important that Vox enters the Government of Spain”, he proclaimed in Valencia. A fund bet. Pedro Sánchez’s cabinet took note of it, but opted for prudence. silence
Two days before the end of the electoral campaign, Alberto Núñez Feijóo presented Meloni with an offer to join the European People’s Party in an interview with the newspaper El Mundo, reproduced in full by the Corriere della Sera (both newspapers are owned by the Italian publishing group Cairo ).
More things have happened between Italy and Spain in the last thirty days. At the beginning of July, the existence of talks for a large business operation after the elections in Spain transpires. It is published by El Confidencia l. The Italian Government would be willing to divest Endesa, for thirteen years in the hands of the electricity company Enel, a company controlled by the Italian Treasury. Exploratory talks with Repsol, with the alleged mediation of businessman Borja Prado, yesterday president of Endesa, today president of Mediaset España. The negotiations were formally denied by both parties. Yesterday, once the result of the elections was known, the operation was “roundly denied” by the CEO of Enel, Flavio Cattaneo, a confidant of Prime Minister Meloni.
July 7 Pier Silvio Berlusconi, executive vice president of the Mediaset group, owner of Telecinco in Spain, announces that he would be willing to buy the SER radio station if the Prisa group put it up for sale. After the death of the father, the Berlusconi must decide whether to continue to protect the Forza Italia party, an ally of Meloni and affiliated to the EPP.
Exploratory maneuvers are constant in the business world, but it is not usual for operations of strategic scope to be announced two weeks before a legislative election in a neighboring country. Politics, energy, media. Someone decided to play hard in Rome. It is impossible to imagine a dynamic of Spanish interests similar to Italy.