When “el cielo viste su gasa de April”, as Machado said, five images of Spain make up his landscape. First image, the economic bonanza that the ingenious Félix Bolaños describes in its favor: the central government does not like those who despise the fact that the Spanish economy is growing more than the European one or that more jobs are being created than ever before. Comment: perhaps the “Estat d’obres” that Fernández de la Mora and other Francoist ideologues drew to justify the lack of democracy in the last dictatorship is back.
Second image, the opposite scenario, drawn by Núñez Feijoo: we have the worst political class of the last 45 years, including the PP. It is the worst definition since Abascal described the Sánchez Government as “the worst of the last 80 years”. It is clear that the examination of the national reality depends on the ideology: for the right, the disaster; to the left, paradise. The doubt left by the two leaders is whether for them the political class of Francoism was better than the current one.
Third image, the judicial one. Every day this country is a little more in the hands of the judges. The amnesty, therefore, the Catalan concord, the masks and the corruptions now expanded with Rubiales depend on them. I am not surprised by the interest of the major parties in controlling the Council of the Judiciary.
Fourth image, the election. The Basque Country is already in the campaign. Catalonia prepares with colorful signings. The Spanish doubt has a dramatic part: bringing the referendum in the Esquerra program and hearing Puigdemont return to the point where he left it before running away, is progress in cordiality, or is the headline of a Madrid newspaper true : return the process?
And fifth image, the comic. Three weeks ago I took on a very widespread idea here: “Sánchez made a Government distinguished by its aggressiveness. It seems that he does not come to govern, but to provoke”. There is also a widespread interpretation that the great provocateur is Óscar Puente, who occupies the portfolio that Ábalos occupied, whose contract Mr. Sánchez did not want to renew, for who knows what reasons not strictly at work. There are those who believe that Puente won the portfolio the day he ardently defended his socialist ideology and condemned the conservative to hell. Sánchez liked it so much that he gave him the equipment he had taken from Ábalos: car, secretary and other displays of command in the square.
The president is very likely to be comfortable with his transport minister, just as he is very likely to be comfortable with María Jesús Montero, or with Félix Bolaños: they are passionately loyal, wickedly intelligent and fiercely talkative when they say the things that the second authority of the State cannot say. They combine the double function of an umbrella and professionals of the escomesa. They provoke and stop the blows with undoubted mastery. And they entrust this mastery to the rest of the team.
On Monday, Mr. Puente discovered a new job in front of Carlos Alsina: that of an insulter. It is not a minority, because the minister had to create a team of officials to keep track of the offenses he has to suffer and they have already counted a hundred assaults, with an unusually divided opinion between a Pedro Sánchez censured for being handsome and a Minister of Transport flogged for ugly Mr. Oscar’s word. In view of what is still missing from the legislature, there is the possibility that Puente will be put in the hands of a cosmetic surgeon. If he does not, he will have to increase the number of accountants of insults and offenses, because the number of insulters can exceed a thousand.
Poor minister and poor Government of the nation! There you have them: so harmless, so innocent, so victims of grievances and insults, when they do nothing else but scurry for the good of the country, and we pay them no tribute. Do not be discouraged, ministers. This is just the beginning. Now come three electoral processes, which are not distinguished by their courtesy. And there we have the parliamentary investigation commissions. They are not created to uncover evidence of corruption. They are created to discover that only the adversary is corrupt. They are created to fish for a vote. They are created as part of the squid technique. They are created to establish whether Isabel or Begoña is prettier. And they are created, as always, to establish political truth. In other words, the truth that is proclaimed by the number of votes of deputies or senators. The least important, not to say the most contemptible, is the authentic truth, which is usually the judicial truth.