Cognitive dissonance in Spanish politics. While in Madrid they are preparing for Pedro Sánchez to be sworn in by the independence movement, in Barcelona the perception is just the opposite: ERC and JxCAT already watch over weapons in the face of an electoral repetition that they foresee for January. In the PSC too, although they do not express it in such an open way, aware that their cousins from the PSOE are defending in the Spanish capital that the investiture is feasible.

In summary, from Catalonia it is recognized that it may be arithmetically possible, but it is considered politically unlikely that Sánchez could repeat his mandate and, therefore, the parties take the calculator and begin to speculate about how they will do in the new electoral call for the Cortes. There is a common diagnosis: electoral repetition. From this point on, the recipes differ, since each formation makes the analysis based on their interests. There is fundamental agreement that the person who will have the last word will be Carles Puigdemont. And it is underlined that the former president right now lacks political incentives to close an agreement that keeps Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa.

The most radical sectors of JxCAT, as well as those around Waterloo, consider that an electoral repetition would favor them, even if they themselves forced it by not renouncing either the referendum or the amnesty. They calculate that returning to the polls could place them as the first pro-independence force, ahead of ERC. Those of Puigdemont anticipate that, if there is an electoral repetition, their coherence will bring them votes and they could end up with a result of 9-5 deputies in favor of their formation and to the detriment of those of Oriol Junqueras. Still, this is all pure speculation.. JxCAT sacrificed the pacts in the councils so as not to harm the candidacy of Míriam Nogueras and in the end they lost 140,000 votes in the last general elections.

JxCAT sources argue it as follows: Puigdemont promised blocking in the campaign and has achieved blocking. Puigdemont is not sold because of a personal exit and the campaign of the radical independence movement in favor of abstention will continue in a general election in January. But the voters will be primed, they hope, especially with ERC. And they consider that a part of those who abstained could return to the polls with their party's ballot. To make matters worse, Puigdemont has European elections in May 2024 and he needs that victory to be re-elected and maintain his, now precarious, parliamentary immunity, something that he would not achieve by making Pedro Sánchez president.. As said, zero incentives.

ERC's vision

From ERC they see it completely differently. In the Office of Strategy and Communication of the Presidency directed by Sergi Sebrià, a department created in the image and likeness of the one that Iván Redondo once had in Moncloa, they foresee that an electoral repetition could result in the ERC repeating seats, the current seven in Congress, while JxCAT would drop to five. In any case, they predict that they would be ahead of Puigdemont's party, arguing that, once they lost 400,000 votes in the general elections, the Republicans have already found their ground.

As if that were not enough, the PSC also has its own point of view, which does not coincide with the previous two. Salvador Illa's party hopes that the independence movement will collapse if they call the elections again. According to its own calculations, the PSC considers that it will capture the useful vote in Catalonia to stop Vox and thus exceed the current 19 seats, an already excellent result.

In this sense, all the formations believe that they will do better if they vote again, although it is evident that ERC has more reservations, while in JxCAT they are more convinced. Perhaps because they need it so that the sectors of Clara Ponsatí, Josep Costa and the rest continue advocating abstention in their attempt to politically kill Puigdemont. If the former president wants to survive this ordeal that is launched at him from the leadership of the ANC, he is obliged to oppose with all his might an investiture by Sánchez.

The dream of the blockade

Lastly, a good part of JxCAT —discounting the pragmatic sector, but also Waterloo and the supporters of active abstention, which is estimated to add up to 300,000 potential voters— believes that the blockade could continue after a second election. They expect a situation similar to that of Belgium to occur in 2019, when that country was without a government for 650 days due to the lack of agreement.

Among the supporters of this indefinite blockade are Laura Borràs and her followers, such as Quim Torra and other intellectuals. They consider that it would destabilize Spain and allow the independence movement to try again a unilateral initiative like the one in 2017. A new window of opportunity for the independence movement. The problem is that, socially, there is a feeling that this moment will not return and somehow the Catalan public has already turned the page on what happened six years ago. The perception that “we will do it again” remains, however, installed in the discourse of the pro-independence political class. So the cognitive dissociation is not only between Madrid and Catalan politics, but also between Catalan voters and the parties that aspire to represent them.

Antonio Muñoz Molina has described it as the era of vileness, but, complementing this lucid definition of what is happening to us, which Ortega said at the moments of greatest uncertainty in Spanish politics during the interwar period, perhaps we should start also to talk about the era of stupidity. Stupid in the sense that the RAE gives it in its entry: 'foolishness, nonsense'. Or, what is the same, “nonsense and little knowledge”, in the words of Lebrija.

In an increasingly complex and interrelated world, in which technological advances, the consequences of aging on global productivity, the role of bioethics, new ways of working, climate change or what is happening in Niger, Ukraine or Bogota affect the entire planet, the public agenda has been filled with trifles. of insignificance. As if politics were a game of rogues and only served to distract and fuel bizarre culture wars whose sole objective is to convert politics itself, almost always cradled in its own particular inbreeding, into an essential part of the entertainment industry..

Undoubtedly, due to the emergence of social networks and the loss of relevance of the traditional media, which today, on many occasions, dance to the tune set by the political class and are the first to encourage polarization and opportunism, but also because democracy itself —defended from mediocrity by the distance of the elites from public affairs— may be dying of success. Democracy, by becoming widespread and having become a bland raw material — without substance — that everyone considers inalienable, as if it were a blessing fallen from heaven, has lost its social prestige, which makes it more and more something irrelevant to many. In particular, for demagogue leaders, who have found an extraordinary breeding ground for their growth by exploiting emotions..

It is not, of course, an exclusively Spanish phenomenon. Trump's adventures with the US Justice ceased to have anything to do with politics in the ontological sense of the term a long time ago. That is, the one that has to do with the management of public affairs outside the private sphere.

A waste of time

Today their war is nothing more than a struggle between the system and an individual whose last thing they care about are the institutions, but who has managed to degrade the citizen conversation, which ultimately is the best definition of what democracy means, to unbearable levels. As happens when the issues to be debated ignore the most transcendental issues in favor of matters that either affect few individuals or are irrelevant by their very essence, but that occupy precious time and space that is often wasted..

Of course, it is not inconsequential who will be the next president of the United States, on the contrary. What is significant is that the Trump character —not the politician— has been able to strip political action of its content, which ultimately has led to a personal confrontation —or the system or I— devoid of ideology, which is the most important perimeter. or less coherent in which reason moves, which is the support of democracy.

The abuse in the use of isms to define political action in order to simplify language and increase its pejorative function goes in the same direction.. The consequence? The impoverishment of politics, which necessarily leads to the triumph of the vacuous.

In this sense, one of the most useful social experiments that can be carried out today is to verify whether the agreements reached by Vox and the PP in various regions, particularly those in which it has entered the Government, are the most relevant issues for the population of those territories. Specifically, if at the center of concerns are issues such as democratic memory, agriculture (which already represents 2.5% of GDP), the trans law, bullfighting or the defense of Spanish, as if it were a language persecuted and threatened with extinction.

What is unique is that it is precisely about spaces in which a certain left —entangled in political correctness— has in turn drilled as if it were looking for the holy grail, which ultimately reflects the triumph of a scheme of action -reaction that turns politics into a collective imagination devoid of substance.

material action

Precisely, the scenario in which what has been called the alternative right (alt-right), born in the US, but which has settled in Spain through Vox and, unfortunately, with increasing strength in one part of the PP, and whose strategy involves stripping politics of its material transformative capacity —wages, pensions, taxes, the distribution of income and wealth, housing or public health— to make it mutate as a instrument of mastery of the brain from emotions. This, in fact, is the greatest risk for conservatives, moving away from their fundamental axes.

The trick is to want to govern not to manage fundamental issues, since that wears out politically when having to deal with the electorate, but to influence social behavior, a space that has historically been the heritage of religion and identity movements.. Something that explains the recovery of ultra-conservative values —for example, the Reconquest or the colonial Empire—, which social progress had pushed aside, not because they were good or bad, but because they belonged to another era in which economic, technological or social circumstances they were very different.

That is why it is surprising that Vox, which is above all a reactionary movement, which is not the same as conservative, does not intend to control the urban planning departments, as happened before the real estate bubble in innumerable municipal pacts between different political forces, or the ministries of the Treasury, which are the irrigation through which public funds flow, but rather something more subtle, emotions, which lack electoral wear. They are not managers, they are officiants of a materially inane liturgy, but fertile and useful as an electoral project. And the only way to stop this degradation of the democratic system is to go back to talking about politics and its transformative action, not trifles or eccentricities..

The Andalusian Government delegate in Huelva, José Manuel Correa, explained that activating level 1 in the Bonares fire (Huelva) has been an essential measure “after finding some scattered areas” that could be affected by the flames.

In statements to journalists at the Advanced Command Post of the incident, Correa has confirmed that there is at least one house affected, as well as a warehouse, that the firefighters have been able to control the fire, without yet knowing the amount of affected area, because the land “It has a slightly strange morphology and we do not have the exact data”.

For his part, the president of the Huelva Provincial Council, David Toscano, has traveled to the area of the fire to make himself available to the affected municipalities —Bonares and Lucena del Puerto— and the Junta de Andalucía, through a delegate from the Government in Huelva, José Manuel Correa.

At the Advanced Command Post installed on the outskirts of Bonares, Toscano has been able to follow first-hand the operations carried out by the members of the Huelva Provincial Fire and Rescue Consortium, which participates in the device with twelve personnel, a car direction, a command car, five fire trucks, a mother pump and another normal pump. The work of the Consortium is focusing on notifying all the people who are in the houses scattered in the area surrounding the fire, attending to their needs, as well as those tasks entrusted to them from the device.

There are about 70 people evicted in total between the municipalities of Bonares and Lucena del Puerto, all of them sheltered in municipal sports facilities. The fire started after three in the afternoon in the Huerta del Hambre area, near the A-486 highway, and two outbreaks have been detected in an area with a significant mass of trees.

In the fight against the fire, 17 aerial means, including helicopters and planes, and more than 150 people on the ground with six heavy fire-fighting vehicles and two units of heavy machinery are taking part this afternoon.. The aerial resources have withdrawn with the arrival of night, and now only the ground personnel work on the fire. The extinction work is being hampered by the easterly wind that blows in the area, between 20 and 25 kilometers per hour, with gusts of up to 35 kilometers per hour, in addition to temperatures that reach 39 degrees, according to the informs. The Advanced Command Post has been installed in the Bonares fairgrounds, from where the actions will be coordinated. This is the second fire declared this Saturday in the province of Huelva, although the first, near the town of Cortelazor la Real, has already been stabilized.

Infoca does not doubt that the fire was intentional

The device against forest fires in Andalusia (Infoca) has no doubt that the fire that has affected a place in Bonares (Huelva) since this afternoon has been intentional, having started in two sources at the same time.

As explained to the journalists by the director of Infoca in the province of Huelva, Alejandro López, the fire started in two sources “and has gone into jumps of fire spread by the wind, a wind from the Levant that is a drying wind in this province and that it comes with low humidity and with the speed it has had, it can favor the spread”.

The right-handed Peruvian Andrés Roca Rey has been injured by the second bull of the bullfight that is being held this Saturday in El Puerto de Santa María, which has gored his left calf, which is currently being checked at the square infirmary.

Roca, who finished the task even wounded and even walked around the ear that he cut off after a brave and dedicated task, suffered several scares throughout it, but it was at the end, in an attempt to execute a pass from behind, where the animal made prey, lifted it up with a python and, once on the ground, did it again for a few long and agonizing seconds.

But the Peruvian, visibly injured, recovered the vertical and, hardly looking at himself, hit him with several final manoletinas and a lunge that earned him to cut the aforementioned ear, which he walked before going on his own foot to the infirmary.

At the moment the real scope of the goring is unknown, but if he cannot go out to account for the second of his lot, the celebration will be in a one-on-one between El Juli, who has already cut off an ear, and Daniel Crespo, with cattle by Nunez del Cuvillo.

The Infoca Plan has stabilized the forest fire declared at noon on Saturday in the Huerta del Hambre de Bonares area (Huelva), which has motivated the deactivation of level 1 of the Emergency Plan and the evicted people can return to their homes .

This was announced in statements to the media at the Advanced Command Post (PMA) by the Minister of the Presidency, Antonio Sanz, after attending the technical evaluation meeting this morning, who also specified that this implies that all people affected by evictions and leaving their homes be allowed to return to their homes.

The fire started in Bonares on land near the A-486 highway, with fifty notices from individuals who saw the flames and the column of smoke from 2:50 p.m. and notified 112.

The Civil Guard considers that the two detainees in Benavente (Zamora) and Cullera (Valencia) were involved in the “largest known jihadist structure in Spain” in the field of recruiting young people and minors through dissemination on social networks of Dáesh content that they themselves translated into Spanish.

Detainees, Salim HS. and Hugo CM, were placed this Friday at the disposal of the judge of the National Court on duty, María Tardón, who ordered their entry into provisional prison at the request of the Prosecutor's Office for alleged crimes of integration into a terrorist organization, active indoctrination and recruiting of young people and minors.

The operation has been carried out jointly between the Information Service of the Civil Guard and the Moroccan Direction Générale de la Surveillance du Territoire (DGST), under the direction of the Central Investigating Court 6, the Central Investigating Court 3 (acting as Guard ) and the Prosecutor's Office of the National Court, the Civil Guard reported this Saturday in a press release.

Within the framework of the work of early detection of potential terrorist threats to National Security, the Civil Guard Information Service began in 2022 the investigation into two people who, although they were located in different provinces, were acting in concert and coordination. in the virtual environment to capture and indoctrinate other users of social networks in the postulates of jihadist terrorism. Both elaborated and publicly disseminated terrorist content that allowed them to identify and select those users most prone to radicalization..

Subsequently, they became part of a private group, administered by the two detainees, in which dozens of users have been identified throughout Spain, with more than ten provinces affected to date.. With this objective, they used a “multiplatform” strategy, based on a combined use of the main social networks used in that age range..

In this way, the dozens of users present in the private group managed by both have been recipients of audiovisual content, as well as messages and slogans suitable for attracting and radicalizing new followers of the terrorist cause.. Those investigated carried out their own editing and the translation of original content in other languages of the media field of the Dáesh terrorist organization into Spanish, which indicates a clear intention to target the young Spanish-speaking community, facilitating access to terrorist content for those that, in its original version, its full compression would be difficult.

The action on the potential victims that have been able to be identified has been designed with the participation of specialist personnel in care and intervention with minor victims in a context of vulnerability.. For the success of the operation, carried out since mid-2022 by the Civil Guard Information Service, the collaboration of the Moroccan DGST has been essential, which highlights the importance of international cooperation between anti-terrorist services in order to carry out in the face of this threat and in anticipating the move to action by terrorists. The arrests have occurred in the framework of previous proceedings that remain secret and that began in November 2022 in the Central Court of Instruction 6 of the National Court through a report from the Civil Guard on communications intervention..

The night of 23-J became a party for some and a bit long for others. Despite the fact that most polls endorsed a comfortable majority of investiture between PP and Vox, Pedro Sánchez rose from his ashes and improved his brand enough to now fight for governance if he achieves the approval of Junts. The vote of the undecided was one of the great obsessions during the campaign of the four great political forces that, however, also affected their particular niche of voters, profiles that usually repeat the voting pattern based on their age, sex, occupation or economic situation. The guts of the last CIS that José Félix Tezanos carried out in the last days of the campaign confirm, for example, that the PSOE is the preferred force among retirees and pensioners; that male support for Vox doubles that of females, or that Sumar finds its majority voting niche among students.

The PP was the force with the most votes on election night, although the 137 deputies that Feijóo finally obtained were insufficient to tie up Moncloa hand in hand with Vox. The aforementioned study, which is based on field work of 27,000 interviews carried out between July 13 and 22 —the day of reflection— and which deals with the direct intention to vote, reveals that the PP maintained the majority percentages of ballots in the niche of leadership and managerial positions (38.5%), followed closely by unpaid domestic workers (34.2%).

The professional sectors that planned to vote for the PP on 23-J do not come into conflict with the other great party of the right-wing bloc. Vox's majority niche is that of the military and police: 35% of those interviewed in this area bet on Santiago Abascal's party, above PP (29.2%) and PSOE (11.6%). Ultra-conservative training also has a great impact among workers in the primary sector, such as farmers and ranchers.. Almost 25% of those surveyed belonging to this sector also opted mainly for Vox, slightly surpassing the PP mark (23.8%). Socialists have a moderate incidence among these professionals (15.5%), while in the case of Sumar it barely reaches 9%..

The rural vote was one of the great battles of the electoral campaign. And the dispute was especially accentuated between PP and Vox. Feijóo turned the defense of emptied Spain into an obsession in the weeks leading up to the elections, with multiple visits to the provinces that distributed fewer seats to the Congress of Deputies and in which Abascal had gained a powerful niche of voters in previous appointments. with the ballot box. The objective was to appeal to the useful vote to wrest the flag of the field from Vox and, incidentally, the 'third seat' in key squares.

With more than nine million votes at stake, both PSOE and PP fought during the campaign for the vote of the older population, with the revaluation of pensions as a thrown weapon between Sánchez and Feijóo. But this battle, at least according to the data provided by the latest CIS, is still being won by the socialists. The highest percentage of intention to vote among retirees and pensioners was taken by the PSOE (36.6%), almost 10 points above the PP (27.1%). These data confirm that the bipartisanship continues to be the main option of the older population when the polls open, while the forces with more recent implantation, such as Sumar and Vox, fit better among the younger electorate.

In the case of Yolanda Díaz, the distribution of ballots by occupation is more heterogeneous. The vote for Sumar is concentrated especially among professionals, scientists and intellectuals (19.4%); mid-level technical profiles (18.3%) and students (16%). In the case of the PP, that percentage drops to 18%, followed by Sumar (15.2%) and Vox (11%)..

Social classes and ages

There are also no surprises in the distribution of votes by social class. The two great forces of the block on the left concentrated the bulk of the intention to vote for the workers and the lower-poor class, while the PP remains strong in the highest strata. It is important to underline at this point how the vote for Vox transcends social class and has similar records among the upper economic spheres (10.9%) and the lower classes (10.3%).

Just the opposite happens to those of Abascal when the distribution of votes based on age is addressed. The greatest success for Vox is among the youngest sector of the population (18 to 24 years old), where they achieve the support of 16.7% of voters and remain less than one point behind the PP (17.5%). This is how the commitment of the ultra-conservative formation to social networks consumed by that generation Z, such as TikTok, is understood.. From that age, their support gradually falls, and in the older generations they are the option with the least votes among the four major parties, with 5.7% among voters between 65 and 74 years of age and 3.6% among those over 75.

The most voted among the young population are the socialists (27.1%), and it is striking that in this sector they have substantially better data than in the three immediately older cohorts (25 to 34 years, 35 to 44 years and 45 to 54 years ). It is early and there is no qualitative analysis, but it is not by chance that Sánchez was involved during the campaign in media consumed by this generation. The best example is the La pija y la quinqui podcast, which was broadcast on the Sunday before the elections, but also the embrace of the Perro Sanxe meme. Starting this week, T-shirts and badges with the slogan and its female version, inaugurated by the president's wife, Begoña Gómez, at the closing of the socialist campaign in Getafe, are being sold on the PSOE website.

Despite this good data among the youth sector, the best numbers for the PSOE are at the top of the population pyramid, where they get more than two thirds of the vote. It must be borne in mind that the Tezanos CIS usually has a sample that overestimates the left, according to public opinion experts, which explains why the PSOE surpasses the PP in voting intentions and voting by mail, which is what it measures this poll.

Sumar manages to be the first force among voters between 25 and 34 years old, the cohort between generation Z and the youngest millennials. In this section, the PSOE prevails by half a point (22.5% compared to 22% of the Socialists) and the Minister of Labor is the second favorite as president only behind Sánchez and ahead of Feijóo. The good data from Vox among the youngest relegates Yolanda Díaz's men to the fourth force in that section, but then they maintain good numbers in the following cohorts, always above 10% except in the oldest section (5.8% among those over 75).

In these elections, according to this CIS study, the trends on gender bias have been maintained, although with nuances. In the PP, there is almost a balance between women and men with a slight advantage for them (25.4% compared to 24% of them). The PSOE manages to prevail among men over the PP by six tenths, but the distance at which female voters are placed is very striking, with 31.2%. The gap between the female and male vote among the Socialists is 6.6 percentage points, which gives clues to the success of the brand of the fist and the rose among women.

This good data prevents Sumar from being able to end this gap, which was very accentuated in United We Can, despite the fact that it was one of the keys for the left-wing coalition to exceed the data of the space that preceded it.. Sumar continues to be a party with better numbers among men (14%) than among women (12.9%), despite the fact that its candidate was a woman. In any case, the most accentuated gender gap continues to be that of Vox, since it achieves 13.2% of men and only 5.9% of women.

• Orange alert on these beaches in Spain: Aemet warns of coastal phenomena
• Mario Picazo warns: we have ideal atmospheric dynamic conditions for a hurricane to occur in Spain

The month of July has ended with highs of 40°C in the south of the peninsula, while the month of August will be a month with little rain and that it will reach temperatures higher than normal for this time of year, as explained by the State Agency for Meteorology (Aemet).

Starting this first weekend of August, an African air mass is expected that will cause a new heat wave.

⚠️ Update of our special notice for #OlaDeCalor.
Temperatures start to rise today. Next week it will be possible to exceed 40 °C in areas of the north of the peninsula and 42 to 44 °C in the center and south. In some parts of the country the thermometers will reach 44 ° C.

According to the notice, the areas least affected by this episode will be the western Cantabrian and Mediterranean coasts..

Days of intense heat are expected

Starting this Saturday, August 5 and 6, an African continental air mass will arrive that will favor an increase in temperatures. For this Saturday a general ascent is expected in practically the entire Peninsula reaching 38 ° C. While on Sunday a fresh north wind is expected to help lower temperatures in this part of the country. In the south, the thermometer is expected to rise to 40°C in Andalusia, the Balearic Islands and Extremadura.

As of Monday, the mercury will reach 44 ° C in various parts of the country where Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura will be the most affected places.

During this episode, nights above 25°C are expected in the southern half, central zone and Mediterranean area. The meteorological agency predicted a particularly hot period from July to September, in which the usual temperatures for this time of year will be exceeded.