The time of the moderates

How many articles have I written with this title? I’ve lost count. My friend Luis Enrique Barberá, a notary from Calella and Barcelona, ??was right when he said of me: “I’m not surprised that Juanjo has clear ideas: he has few!”. Well, one of those few ideas is that, especially in times of change, only moderate governments are fertile, that is, those who adapt their ideas to reality and not reality to their ideas, those who abandon the dogmas and are not sectarian, those who open with prudence, those who bite their tongues, those who respect the opponent, those who do not incur the only sin there is, pride, next to which the other sins are simple administrative infractions.

This exordium comes despite the fact that, after the recent elections, the two major national parties (the PSOE and the PP) should have preferentially sought pacts with each other or abstention to avoid pacts as much as possible of one of them with the extremist parties, among which I include radicals of all kinds, both right-wing (Vox) and left-wing (the whole protein mosaic and the separatists). This attitude is consistent with what I have maintained throughout this legislature: to censure the coalition pact with Podemos and the legislature pacts with the separatists and other auxiliary troops, without ever denying the legitimacy of the government resulting from the aforementioned pacts.

For this reason, I have had enough of the continuous abbatial admonitions in defense of this legitimacy by numerous saints of the left and assimilated. I have always affirmed that it was a legitimate government, but not convenient for the general interests of Spain. Now, having said that, you have to be consistent, which is why I state from now on that, in my opinion, a coalition government between the PP and Vox will also be legitimate, but it will not be convenient for the general interest.

Review the major outstanding issues: the territorial (which is not healed), the debt and the deficit, education, productivity… Add the ones I forgot, and you will see that not only their solution but the simple correct approach requires a majority agreement of PSOE and PP. Hence, my insistence on the fact that it is the hour of the moderates, so that they agree on what they consider appropriate in consideration of the general interests of Spain. This does not mean excluding the rest of the political forces, but only preventing them from being decisive in reaching agreements that suit their particular interests, but which are harmful to the general interest.

Having arrived here, a question arises: What are the causes that something seemingly as simple as specific pacts between the two major parties on serious issues is unworkable in Spain? I point out three reasons:

1) The nature of political party leaders, who are the “organic leaders” of this Second Restoration. It is obvious that many of its decisions are taken in the exclusive interest of the organization, that is, of its members. For this they count on the complicity of many media (more serious in the public). Think, as a sample, of the different treatment of what just happened in Barcelona and Girona, which is exactly the same.

2) The self-awarded moral superiority of a certain left, which forgets that moderation is based on the absence of dogmas professed as absolute truths. Which supposes a secularism that goes beyond the religious fact, because not only intolerant clericalism is against secularism, but also the dominant radicaloid and secularized culture (Claudio Magris).

3) The entrenchment of a certain right that appropriates in its interest the name and symbols of Spain, which it considers as an estate on which it has been settled for many centuries.

It is not us old people who must correct this drift. It is obvious that sometimes we even lose our good manners with equanimity. That is why I appeal to young people, from the right and the left, to get us out of this impasse. Spain is a good country: it deserves to be governed successfully.

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