Madrid dresses these autumn days in a gray uniform. When the blue of the sky loses, the capital appears with the leaden color of the State. Then it seems that the stone facades of Colmenar weigh more, as if everything were hierarchized around a city founded on power. Under this gray of mist and drizzle we have experienced the setting of the investiture debate, as well as the preparatory antechamber of silences and conspiracies, which were neutralized yesterday at noon by the democratic forcefulness of 179 votes.
Pedro Sánchez has won and is full president. Even with more margin than the other times. For this reason, since yesterday, the entire Castilian machinery of the State has been placed at its command with the full legitimacy that comes from publishing in the BOE and spending a budget without being in office. However, what happened these days of October and November has been engraved in the gray stone of the official buildings and nothing will erase it. At least for the moment.
The fierce clash between Sánchez and Feijóo that we experienced during the investiture will be repeated ad nauseam in the coming months. None will give in, because they look strong. The exchange of words has been very hard between both of them. Gray steel sheathed politely, but slashes that show that both of their lives depend on it. They wait for each other, and that means that the legislature has started under unusual tension. It also agitates it, which is subject to condition. It is not temporary, but linked to fulfilling the commitments to negotiate an amnesty law, an agreed referendum and a fiscal agreement for Catalonia. To them are added other minor ones, which are taken for granted, although they will take time. As will happen with Rodalies.
Under this sword of Damocles, also grey, of advancing these commitments in exchange for budgets, it will be necessary to negotiate in three ways. I say three, because Junts and ERC hate each other as much as Sánchez and Feijóo. We will see this with the amendments to the amnesty presented by Junts and the opposition to them proposed by ERC and the PSOE itself, which knows that the shielding of the amnesty before the Constitutional Court depends on not leaving the perimeter of its legal foundations.
This test will be the first test. Then more will come, increasingly pressed by electoral events. Something that will also weigh on the PP, which will not be able to trust the inertia of events and the lack of stability projected by the investiture majority. Insisting that the PSOE governs at the expense of the majority of the PP will have to prove it at the polls. Improving in the Basque Country and winning in the Europeans. Something that will not be achieved by riding the inertia of the street’s indignation because Vox will excite it better and better. The presence of Tucker Carlson predicts that Madrid will be a laboratory for the reactionary international that agitates liberal democracies. Therefore, Feijóo will have to do more than take advantage of the discomfort of this Madrid in gray that awaits vengeance. We don’t know why, but he waits. Like a breath in the necks of the protagonists of a debate in which Sánchez and Feijóo demonstrated, like everyone else in the chamber, that they had not read Machado. This is how it goes for us because we are no one capable of imploring: “Your truth? No the truth; and come with me to look for her.”
