If the good God, as Flaubert said, or the devil, according to Mies van der Rohe’s variant, is in the details, in politics (intelligent) ambition consists of gestures. In public life, it is not enough to know how to build a (favorable) account of things. The messages must be declaimed and interpreted with a certain diction, the necessary vehemence – no more, no less – and a conviction that conveys verisimilitude and credibility. Fictions are our way of trying to order and understand what happens, but not just any story works. Juanma Moreno Bonilla has chosen the role of third soloist within the territorial orchestra of Génova, the great battle front of Alberto Núñez Feijóo against the investiture (at any cost) of Pedro Sánchez.
Like the rest of the conservative regional presidents, the Andalusian prócer has been singing his aria against the PSOE-Sumar-independence agreement for months. Like his peers, he is also preparing an appeal to the Constitutional Court against the amnesty and criticizes the repercussions (against democracy, equality and the separation of powers) of the alliance between Sánchez and the parliamentary minorities against the Constitution. The difference with other regional leaders of the PP consists in the tone chosen and in the terms of their rhetoric of resistance. Isabel Díaz Ayuso (Madrid) has defined the absolutism of the President of the Spanish Government as “dictatorship”. Carlos Mazón (Valencia) links the cessions of the PSOE and Sumar with the pro-independence delirium of the Catalan Countries. Many other regional presidents of the PP, from Extremadura to Murcia or Castilla y León, use a similar tuning (tremendista). They all recite the official argument of Genoa while the socialists and the sumables (now without Podemos) celebrate the goodness of the amnesty in a succession of endless catechesis.
Between these two Greek choirs that compete with each other, Moreno Bonilla, without leaving the script of the PP, plays to his tune. Although he insists on the democratic breakdown that the amnesty entails, he focuses his criticisms on a regional basis. It helps not to be conditioned by Vox – it has enjoyed an absolute majority for a year -, its moderation strategy – reproaches without anger, censures without insults – and the (obvious) will to mark differences with Madrid and Valencia, the two only baronies that, due to population weight, could dispute his influence within Genoa.
Why does Moreno Bonilla use a resounding and firm but less stormy register? The first reason is the (political) persona he has built over the last five years: a ruler located in the most liberal wing of the PP, allergic to confrontation and with a soft profile, susceptible to being voted in – as has already been evidenced in the regional elections – by the PSOE electorate. The president of the Board, taking advantage of the fact that the socialists and leftists left the Andalusian flag in the air in 2018, just when Sánchez won Moncloa with the vote of the sovereignists, has been defending territorial cohesion in place of the PSOE for five years and IU, subject to the interests of the state leaderships of their parties.
His tactic has consisted of absorbing Cs, seducing critical socialists and broadening his electoral base with an Andalusian resurgence. His speech against the investiture is what a classic social democrat would do. In fact, it is the same that the Andalusian PSOE had until 2018. Moreno knows perfectly well that he cannot replicate the historic demonstrations of 1977 in favor of self-government – even though he has not stopped organizing rallies that greatly disturb the socialists – and modulates his words so that they are not a simple copy of Génova’s messages, but a line of opposition of their own, open and transversal.
His arguments are not limited to the political deterioration and the aggression against the separation of powers that the amnesty will bring. They extend to the impact that the PSOE-Sumar-independence alliance will have for Andalusia in terms of funding and treatment. He insists a lot on the grievance, because social sensitivity to this issue is very high in the south of Spain. His melody within the PP orchestra, named by himself as the Andalusian way, is unique, but not original. San Telmo has plagiarized it from the documents of the third congress of Andalusia Per Sí (2019), one of the minorities (without parliamentary representation) that emerged after the extinction of the Andalusian Party (PA). This Andalusian way allows him to engage his majority in Andalusia and, in parallel, places him in a symbolic center with respect to the extremisms of Genoa.
