The door of an elevator in the European Parliament opens, in Brussels, and Pablo Echenique enters the cabin, where Marine Le Pen is. It is 2015 and Le Pen has been an MEP for 11 years and leads the far-right National Front, today National Regroupment. When Echenique leaves the elevator, they make her see who she has met, and there she humorously fantasizes about the idea of having run over her with her wheelchair: “I weigh 200 kilos with the chair, I can break her legs”. And, to get away with it, consider playing the “cripple who has lost control” card.. The anecdote of the then purple MEP was shared by himself to a small group of journalists years ago and contains many keys to understand the last spokesman for United We Can in the Congress of Deputies.

Echenique (Rosario, Argentina, 1978), who was removed from the Sumar lists, said goodbye to the Lower House this week with a last dart at Yolanda Díaz, when she boasted of having made “a lot of noise”, just what the leader of the confluence of the left does not want in its ranks. The theoretical physicist turned politician will ask to return to his post as a CSIC scientist in the coming days, after becoming a controversial political figure. In his four years as a deputy, three and a half – the entire XIV Legislature – as parliamentary spokesman, he has fired at discretion against PP and Vox, but also against his government partner, with whom, in parallel, he had different open negotiations. Some, crucial for the party and for the Executive.

And he has angered his own allies several times in the parliamentary group of Podemos, IU, Comunes, Galicia en Común and Alianza Verde. Some call him today “an arsonist”. A spokesman who has set “senseless” fires, irritating his allies. For the purples, Echenique has been the “lightning rod” for Pablo Iglesias, after Ione Belarra and Irene Montero; for the PSOE and for some of the members of the parliamentary group, it has contributed to trigger tension and tension in a Chamber that has broken its own records this 2023.

Even in his party they have come to joke about wresting control of his own Twitter, from which he has distributed taunts to Díaz this week, after the electoral result of 23-J. From Arturo Pérez Reverte to Willy Bárcenas, son of former PP treasurer Luís Bárcenas and singer of Taburete, going through statements such as that Isabel Díaz Ayuso “would be in jail” if “justice were independent”, her hooks on the social network have been highly commented and controversial. Among the other formations within United We Can, it was never understood that they shot so regularly from the social network, also against some media and journalists. They believe that many of these darts were completely sterile, and maintain that the gall only provides ammunition for their adversaries..

Let them tell you, boss, that you have achieved more feminist advances and LGTBI rights than ever in the history of this country while they fired fire at your own and strangers' discretion.

Well of course you can. It was possible, it can be done and it will be possible again 💜✊🏼 https://t.co/KyCj0BwIw1

— Pablo Echenique (@PabloEchenique) July 26, 2023

They also did not understand some of the messages that Patxi López left in her press conferences in Congress, in which she even disavowed the president of her parliamentary group, Jaume Asens. Díaz claims to silence any mention of internal differences, but also to avoid allusions to businessmen such as Juan Roig, president of Mercadona, target of criticism and attacks by Echenique and Belarra herself. His own words abound, they have made it difficult to reach consensus, and they reduced his ability to build bridges with other political spaces.. “He returns to his job, he has the right to recover his life,” a leader abounds. “A calmer one and with less focus on his person,” he insists.

His own, on the other hand, praise his intelligence, his “courage”, his militant profile, and that he has been able to divert the attacks on his top leaders, putting his body to achieve it.. Also his sense of humor, which he has displayed on and off camera, and his “cool head” to deal with conflicts.. They explain that, when the decibels have increased, on many occasions they have done so following a clear and premeditated strategy.. For days they have been full of praise on social networks, and praise their treatment of their closest team. Purple sources only admit that, being “so militant”, perhaps “he has not collaborated in the necessary self-criticism”. “He is a scientist, scientists cannot be in favor of a law and its opposite, they do not negotiate between truths,” says a purple politician who knows him well from short distances. “He has built that very blunt, very assertive, forceful character, who has expressed his political conclusions, as a scientific conclusion would express”, they emphasize.

It is yet to be decided, they say, if he will leave the Executive, the hard core in which he has played an important role for 7 years. For now, they defend that he has been able “for nobody to talk about his wheelchair”, that he has never made use of his situation to generate “pity” or win a debate. What it has not achieved in its four years is that the Presidency of the Lower House carried out the necessary work so that it could access the seat that corresponds to it, within its bench. A Heritage report, at the start of the legislature, blocked the proposed reform at the time, but raised the option of looking for other formulas. They never arrived, and the deputy has spent his entire legislature in the moat, speaking from a lectern set up for this sole purpose.. “If I had been in the PSOE, the work would have been done”, they abound.

The thousand political lives of Echenique

If Montero has had a prominent political role in the Iglesias environment almost from the beginning, before Belarra gained organic weight, Echenique has lived several lives in politics. After a brief approach to Ciudadanos, dissatisfied with their economic recipes after the crisis that followed the bursting of the real estate bubble, he gave a first lurch and approaches Podemos. With Teresa Rodríguez and Anticapitalistas, he led the only opposition to Iglesias in the first Vistalegre (October and November 2014), in a candidacy that, ironically, was called Sumando Podemos. Who years later would be the whip of the secretary general, and would invent a system of primaries that underrepresented minorities (DesBorda) then defended a much more horizontal and less hierarchical Podemos, to crash against the overwhelming victory of Iglesias.

He was a deputy, spokesman in the Parliament of Aragon and secretary general in the region, despite the fact that the purple leader himself entered into battle to try to prevent it. It happened shortly after the second general elections they attended (June 2016), and when he had been in charge of the body for a few months that his predecessor, Sergio Pascual, used to place affinities with the theses of then number two, Íñigo Errejón, to control the match.

He survived one of the most abrasive charges in a political organization; He was replaced by Alberto Rodríguez, today one of Sumar's allies and at odds with Podemos, and became Secretary of the Program. And Iglesias rescued him to put him in charge of a difficult group to manage, especially since the departure of the historic secretary general. Two weeks after the start of the confinement due to the pandemic, a conciliatory Echenique called on all parties to unite against the pandemic. To the point that Salvador Illa, then Minister of Health and today leader of the PSC, replied to his words and coined them as “the Echenique Rule”.. That same year, he would also survive his sentence by the TSJ of Aragon to pay a fine of 11,040 euros for irregularly hiring an assistant, who performed his services as a freelancer.

In mid-2021, with the abrupt departure of Iglesias to run for the elections in the Community of Madrid, which resulted in his resignation from all his posts, the former second vice president designated Díaz by fingerprint as leader of the space. The Minister of Labor, according to different sources from the parliamentary group, considered taking over from Echenique as spokesperson, but she never came to fight for the reins of Unidas Podemos, which has been on the verge of imploding on more than one occasion in the last year. Díaz gave him a warning, without expressly citing him, in his first speech before the parliamentary group, already in charge of the space. His call to stop the noise fell on deaf ears.

There is no longer a trace of the most conciliatory Echenique, who, however, always kept darts for Íñigo Errejón. Like when he replied “he will have to live on something until May”, when Errejón left Podemos to launch his new party in the Community of Madrid, at the start of 2019, but did not resign his seat. Or when he stated that “they never imagined that Alberto Rodríguez would end Errejón and Baldoví”, when the former number three of Podemos joined Más País and Compromís in the Turia Agreement. Errejón has been his black beast since he abandoned his party to the braves. The mere fact that he was compared to Rodríguez, for which they were willing to sue the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, shows the magnitude of their anger with the Canarian politician.

In February, the CSIC scientist turned into one of the toughest politicians in the legislature, launched his book, Memoirs of a combat pilot. That he had his own imitator in the Leit Motiv program, and that he went to several television stations to laugh at himself. For the unconditional nothing will be the same without him. For many of his allies, he only remains in memory as an “arsonist”.

The conformation of the management teams in the departments over which it has powers in the Valencian Generalitat is taking a toll on Vox. Until this Friday, the ultra-conservatives have only appointed three of the 19 senior positions that correspond to them, including regional secretaries, general directors and undersecretaries in the First Vice-Presidency and Ministry of Culture, Justice and Agriculture, the areas agreed with the Popular Party of the new President, Carlos Mazon.

The plenary session of the Consell met this Friday for the third time since it took office ten days ago to appoint a new batch of general directors. None of Vox. The spokesperson for the new Government, the also Minister of Finance, Ruth Merino, was forced to answer questions about the apparent jam of members of the popular. “Everyone has their rhythm. It is waiting to choose the best people. It is not in any case due to confrontation or internal dispute. We are making proposals together to find the best,” he said, implying that even the rest of the government, including the PP ministers, was collaborating in the search for profiles.

In addition to its three ministers (Vice President Vicente Barrera, Elisa Núñez and José Luis Aguirre), Santiago Abascal's party has appointed two of the three undersecretaries, María Eugenia Vives and Luis Manuel Martín Domínguez, and the regional secretary (figure equivalent to Secretary of State in the ministries) of Justice, the former deputy in Congress for Alicante, Eduardo Luis Ruiz Navarro.

However, despite the fact that the government agreement was signed almost a month and a half ago and he knows what his role would be in the Consell, the former bullfighter Barrera still has not named his number two in Culture. Below it also hang the General Directorate of Culture, Cultural Heritage and Sports, also vacant.. Aguirre is trying to find profiles in farmers' associations. In Justice there are unnamed positions that in the current summer context are very relevant, such as the regional secretary for Security and Emergencies or the general director of Forest Fire Prevention. The socialist José María Ángel is in office. The deputy director, Jorge Suárez, is likely to remain in the position after the change of government. The Valencian Community is on alert for possible fires.

The delay in the formation of teams is due to the difficulty in assembling match cadres without any management experience and to the fact that, in some cases, refusals have been received from people who have received the offer.

The traffic jam contrasts with the speed of some of the PP ministers, especially those who have accumulated more experience in the Administration. This is the case of the head of Health, Marciano Gómez, who has already named practically the entire team, or that of Education, José Antonio Rovira. The second vice president and councilor for Equality, Susana Camarero, has also made up the bulk of her department, with Asunción Quinzá as regional secretary for Equality and Diversity, and Emilio Argüeso, a former Citizen close to Fran Hervías who has been collaborating with him for several years. the PP in the recruitment of orange cadres, as autonomous secretary of the Social and Health System.

Some of the appointments of the popular come with controversy, such as that of the director general of Relations with the Cortes, the former regional deputy Jorge Bellver, who was splashed in the Azud case for having received gifts (luxury watches) from the key businessman in the plot, Jaime Febrer. Bellver appears in the summary and the investigator of the case asked the Cortes about his status as a taxpayer in the last legislature. However, he never came to request his imputation to the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community and has not summoned him for now to declare once he lost his jurisdiction by being left out of the regional lists. Bellver will report directly to the area of the Presidency of Carlos Mazón.

Juan Carlos I has gone sailing, this Saturday, aboard the Bribón that participates in the regattas that are held during the weekend in the Pontevedra municipality of Sanxenxo.

Thus, the emeritus king has arrived at the marina accompanied by the Infanta Elena, around 12:20 p.m., without stopping at the Real Club Náutico de Sanxenxo (RCNS) and without making statements to the media..

In this way, minutes after 1:00 p.m., the Bribón has cast off, which has begun the second day of navigation of the emeritus king through the Pontevedra estuary.. For her part, the Infanta Elena has left aboard the auxiliary boat Cristina.

This is the first day of the XXIV Carlos I Silgar Hotel Trophy regatta for 6m class boats, which is also the fifth scoring for the V Spanish League Circuit for this type of boat.

Throughout the morning, in the house of Pedro Campos, where the ex-monarch is staying, various people have visited him, among them, the mayor of Sanxenxo, Telmo Martín.

Thus, minutes after 12:00 p.m. the ex-monarch has left the property in Pedro Campos' car. In this way, once in the Náutico, he has directly entered the jetty where, since early in the morning, the different media and curious people have crowded to receive him with applause..

Spanish socialism succeeded in turning around the right-wing electoral mantra of “que te vote Txapote”. Now the challenge is more difficult. “Let Puigdemont vote for you” in the literal sense, since Pedro Sánchez needs the support of the seven JxCAT deputies in Congress if he wants to repeat his mandate. But this kind of slogan, an idea by the Murcian political analyst Ángel Montiel, will be a much more ambitious objective.. Sources close to Waterloo estimate that there is nothing they can offer from Moncloa to the former Catalan president and, therefore, they conclude that in January there will be a new electoral repetition.

The PSOE is not going to make an offer in the coming days, according to sources from the Socialists. It will come like this to September. They consider that the same pressure will work with Carles Puigdemont as with Alberto Núñez Feijóo: let the days go by and his weakness becomes evident. But the fact that this can work with Junts does not mean that the same will happen with Waterloo and its surroundings, since there are differences between the party and the group installed in Belgium.

Puigdemont has shown that he controls JxCAT remotely. He did it when he appointed Míriam Nogueras as a candidate for Congress. The bridges of the training with ERC do not reach Waterloo. Only the Republican Secretary General, Marta Rovira, maintains some sporadic contact. Sources of this formation confess that communication with the environment of the expresident is on the dead end. The relationship only belongs to the president of Junts, Laura Borràs, and its general secretary, Jordi Turull. Neither of them will be relevant in the final decision on the investiture. And after the Foreign vote, the former president has made it more than clear on his Twitter account: “The final count has caused a change in the seats of the relevant Parliament in the investiture equation,” recalls the leader of Junts. “The President of the Government can only be elected if he has the positive vote of a very broad coalition, including the 7 votes of Junts per Catalunya”. Only “yes” is valid and it will be “no”.

The unity of the independence movement is more than questioned, since the most ambitious thing that ERC proposes is to modify the regional financing, while JxCAT aspires to be granted an amnesty and a referendum on the self-determination of Catalonia.

The PSOE has limited itself to sending messages to the Waterloo and JxCAT environment. The most relevant, according to sources close to the party, has been that of the former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. He has made it very clear that “there will be neither an amnesty nor a referendum.” Socialism hopes that expectations will be lowered and that an agreement can be reached. For them or because ERC manages to drag them to their more pragmatic positions.

But that does not seem possible with the escaped Catalan expresident. First, because there are no bridges with him. That is evident with ERC. Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras do not speak to each other, as the former acknowledged in an interview with RAC-1. “I haven't talked to Junqueras for a long time. months, maybe a year. With Marta Rovira, the last message was in October 2021,” he declared.. So it is not so easy to influence Puigdemont who also likes photos of his visits so that his role is recognized. And this negotiation requires discretion, as recognized by all parties..

sumar's laboratory

Sumar's ideas laboratory is preparing a proposal. For that, Yolanda Díaz designated Jaume Asens as interlocutor with Puigdemont. Sumar sources acknowledge that turning to Asens was a personal decision by Díaz, without consulting Moncloa or the PSOE. The proposal that Asens will transfer, of which the details are unknown, will not have the endorsement of Ferraz either. The irony is that he was the man who bypassed Puigdemont's then lawyer, Jaume Alonso Cuevillas, and recommended the former president flee to Belgium in October 2017.. Alonso Cuevillas found out that his client had crossed the border when the press called him. Now Asens has to transfer to Puigdemont himself a solution so that he can return. A surprising turn of events.

The whole situation in Sumar with the Catalan issue is, to say the least, contradictory. Asens raises rejection among the bases of the Commons for being an independentist. In the last primaries, when they named him a candidate, he had a 40% abstention rate as a sign of protest. Another irony is that Sumar's spokesman, Ernest Urtasun, is an MEP, like Puigdemont. But the relationship between the two is tense, bordering on non-existent, according to sources in the European Parliament. So it has been preferred to play it safe.

In any case, Sumar's proposal will not reach Waterloo until the end of August or the beginning of September. “There will be a job that will take weeks, perhaps months,” warned the leader of the Commons in Parliament, Jèssica Albiach.

Back to the polls

With these pieces on the board, it is most likely to repeat the general elections next January. Carles Puigdemont does not have incentives to yield. JxCAT yes, because the party is financially exhausted, and a new campaign is not what the formation needs the most. But Puigdemont has already vetoed the agreements with the PSC in the councils, although their mayors preferred it to the final result: an ERC strengthened by post-electoral pacts with Catalan socialism. The temptation for the former president to appear again at the polls is irresistible. And having the focus of the international press and appearing to the world as the man who forces new elections in the fourth largest European economy, even more.

In addition, Puigdemont has now come up with all the defenders of abstention —Clara Ponsati, the former vice-president of the Parliament Josep Costa, the leadership of the ANC—, who aspire to stand in the next Catalan elections precisely to politically bury both the former president and his rushes. And claiming to be purer than the tenant of Waterloo himself. It does not seem like the best time to reach agreements with Madrid from the point of view of the JxCAT MEP

The deputy secretary for Regional and Local Coordination of the PP, Pedro Rollán, has reminded the PSOE of its abstention in the investiture of Mariano Rajoy when it obtained 137 seats, the same that, in the absence of the final data of the general scrutiny, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has reaped after the recount of the CERA vote, and has not ruled out that the conservatives speak with Junts “within the Constitution”.

In statements to the press in Collado Villalba (Madrid), Rollán praised the electoral results obtained by the popular, who have managed to increase their representation in Congress by 48 deputies. And it is that, in the absence of the official data on the completion of the count, everything points to the fact that the general scrutiny will deprive the PSOE of a seat for Madrid in favor of the PP, with which the popular ones would finally have 137 tally sheets compared to the 121 with which that the socialists would stay.

These new PP seats, the vice-secretary pointed out, have been “absolutely cross-cutting”. “The PP has grown 19 seats to its right, 10 in the center and 19 seats in the spectrum on the left,” he added..

In this context, the popular leader added that the parliamentary arithmetic resulting from the result puts Pedro Sánchez in a “very difficult” position.

Bildu “for nothing”

For all this, the popular understands that it is their formation that must aspire to an investiture and form the future Government of Spain. This is where they have explicitly asked him about a possible negotiation with Junts, to which he has replied that the PP is willing to talk “with each and every one of the political formations, as long as they are within the framework of the Spanish Constitution”.

They have also asked him about possible negotiations for an investiture with another force such as EH Bildu, to which Rollán has been blunt. “The PP, I already say it in advance, is not going to support Bildu at all,” he remarked.

The Popular Party has ensured that Alberto Núñez Feijóo could aspire to 172 votes in favor of his investiture as Prime Minister, if the progress of the foreign vote count is confirmed, which would give the popular one more seat for Madrid, according to sources from the game.

Precisely the PSOE has given up a key seat in Madrid this Friday, as confirmed by socialist sources, despite the fact that the official count will not be known until this Saturday.

The same sources have stressed that the PP also maintains an absolute majority in the Senate and recall that the acting president, Pedro Sánchez, could only add more than Feijóo if he obtains the 'yes' of ERC, PNV, EH Bildu, BNG and Junts “without exception”.

“Pedro Sánchez wants to unite all the nationalist and pro-independence parties to help him become president despite being 16 seats behind Feijóo and having 330,000 fewer votes,” they stressed.. Thus, the popular ones have recalled that Felipe González did not try to form a government in 1996, despite remaining fewer votes behind José María Aznar than Sánchez de Feijóo.

“The Bildu u opposition. Independence or change. Only Sánchez would respond to this dilemma in the indecent way in which he is contemplating it,” the PP pointed out.. Thus, the formation has indicated that they have won the elections and that it is Feijóo who is responsible for forming the Government in accordance with “the 45 years of democratic tradition” of Spain.

When Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced that he was signing Elías Bendodo for his team, the man from Malaga endorsed a way of explaining his satisfaction that he has later repeated on numerous occasions. “I enjoy the path more than the goal”. Thus, the popular leader wanted to show that his departure from Andalusia after reaching an absolute historic majority in the old socialist stronghold was not traumatic. That his objective was to do with Feijóo the same thing he had done with his friend Juanma Moreno, but in the Moncloa palace.

This objective has been frustrated after an unexpected mobilization of the left and the overturning of the polls that almost took the alliance between PP and Vox for granted.. “This week it will be decided whether Feijóo will be president alone or accompanied,” Bendodo said in an interview in Diario de Sevilla in the middle of the campaign. Seen with perspective, the astute Andalusian politician was optimistic, since the popular candidate has a very difficult time reaching the goal with the arithmetic that came out of the general elections on July 23. The first setback on that path of success for Bendodo, someone who has never been in opposition since he began his political career as a councilor in the Malaga City Council.

Bendodo, a lawyer by training, went from the Malaga town hall to the Provincial Council, where he was president for two terms. Then he made the leap to regional politics, although he was for years the spokesman for the regional leadership of the Andalusian PP since Moreno took control of the party. The popular ones got the worst result in their history in Andalusia, but they governed thanks to an agreement with Ciudadanos and the external support of Vox in Parliament.

The man from Malaga became the Minister of the Presidency and spokesman for that first non-socialist government in Andalusia and was key in the consolidation of the Executive. Moreno trusted him again to direct the 2022 regional campaign and that's when he received his doctorate in winning elections. It is not strange that Feijóo, who arrived in Genoa with the endorsement of the Andalusian PP after the traumatic crisis caused by the departure of Pablo Casado, wanted to take Bendodo to Genoa for the challenge that was coming: winning the generals scheduled for the end of 2023.

National Board of Directors after the victory of #23J.

Prepared to give a stable government to our country. pic.twitter.com/KSZanEylHz

— Elias Bendodo (@eliasbendodo) July 24, 2023

Already as general coordinator of the PP, de facto number 3 of the party, with an office on the noble floor of Genoa 13, the man from Malaga had the municipal and regional elections on May 28 as a test. And he scored another success by recovering municipal power for his party that had not been seen since the 2011 elections. That file led Feijóo to make the logical decision to appoint him as head of the decisive campaign. It is true, popular sources point out, that he shared responsibility with the other two people trusted by the Galician at the top of the party, the parliamentary spokesperson Cuca Gamarra and the deputy secretary general for Organization, Miguel Tellado, one of the men who went to Madrid with Feijóo from the dome.

The poll problem

In the Andalusian PP they say that Bendodo took charge of the most “statistical” part of the campaign, which included the polls that ended up missing the shot and confusing the popular. The purely organizational section, these sources explain, corresponded to the other two members of that triumvirate. “The polls confused us all,” points out a popular leader questioned about the possible responsibility of the man from Malaga in the PP's setback, which has left him 6 seats away from building a majority with his partners from Vox and UPN.

The PP's relations with Santiago Abascal's party were also fertile ground for the man from Malaga. One of his main tasks during Juanma Moreno's first term was to keep Vox in Andalusia at bay, with the help of Feijóo's other Andalusian signing, Juan Bravo, who negotiated three budgets with the populist formation. It must be remembered that the institutional irruption of Vox occurred in Andalusia in the regional elections of 2018 and that the Andalusian leaders of the PP are the best versed in negotiating with the ultra party.

During part of the 23-J campaign, the PP's main message focused on imitating that “Andalusia effect”. With this effect, the popular ones were referring to the capture of the socialist vote that saw a PP with a moderate image as the best formula to become a retaining wall for Vox. This is what happened in June 2022 for Juanma Moreno to achieve a historic absolute majority after a campaign in which the PSOE stirred up fear of Vox to try to mobilize his own and achieved just the opposite..

This time, the Socialists did the same, but the municipal and regional pacts of PP and Vox were too recent and the strategy ended up working.. At least that is what the Andalusian baron defended in plenary this Thursday in the regional Parliament. “Each bullshit from Vox was half a point in the polls for the PSOE,” said a PP leader in Parliament, where Bendodo, by the way, has just left his seat to go to Congress. Settled in Madrid since last year, he will continue running in those races that he uses to strengthen ties while waiting to see what happens with the investiture and if he has an opportunity to reach the finish line or continue walking.

In 2022, the Valencian music industry had a net turnover of 34.7 million euros, being the fourth autonomous region after Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia. Before the pandemic, in 2019, the figures were close to 59 million, numbers that are expected to be recovered in the current year, with activity at full capacity and without the logical distortions of last year..

The Valencian Federation of the Music Industry (FEVIM), which brings together from the large promoters of macro-festivals to small concert halls, and the Valencian Institute of Culture of the Generalitat launched, in 2022, the Yearbook of Valencian Music, a study that analyzes the state of the question and offers a roadmap to face the future. Since 2015, the structuring of the sector was one of the political commitments of the previous government, with two guidelines: the budget increase and the promotion of initiatives that would help to consolidate it, such as the Carles Santos Valencian Music Awards, the Valencian Cultural Circuit, the Sonora Circuit or the Valencian Music Office. In short, the creative and musical industries were strengthened, considering culture as one more economic engine of the Valencian Community. In his first demonstrations, during the transfer of portfolios, he declared his commitment “to prioritize freedom and equal treatment, respect for all cultures and plurality”. But the inexperience in public management and certain doctrinal elements against the co-official languages and the Valencian diversity, included in the electoral program of his party, such as the “defense of our own traditions, customs and institutions against the false Catalan Countries”, warn about a possible slowdown in economic growth that only the pandemic dynamited between 2020 and 2021. The Valencian Community is the first bilingual autonomy where Vox will manage culture and the latest cases of censorship in some municipalities have raised alarms.

If the new Valencian executive incorporates the battle of symbols and the linguistic conflict into the framework of the debate, as occurred during the Transition, trying to relate the normalization of Valencian, a transversal and fundamental axis in the cultural industry, with non-existent political positions both within the framework parliamentary and public opinion (Països Catalans), could not only disturb the framework of coexistence, but also the development of a growing cultural industry.

Rafa Jordán is director of the promoter Pro21Cultural. During the last decade, this music production company has contributed to the incorporation into the music industry of very popular groups that sing in Valencian (La Fúmiga and El Diluvi) or in both official languages (Maluks and Marala).. This and other medium and large companies, belonging to the Association of Musical Promoters of the Valencian Community, have formed a musical ecosystem that reflects the multi-stylish and multi-linguistic reality of Valencian society.. “The hunch is that we are heading towards a time of setback for all the transversal and integrating work carried out for ten years. A Valencian music industry has been created, endorsed and visible every year at the Carles Santos Valencian Music Awards, with winners and nominees in all languages. Groups of different styles and languages have participated in the music circuits launched by public institutions. After the events suffered in recent weeks, the fear of an involution in our cultural rights is real”.

These events have been the withdrawal of the name of Vicent Torrent from the Torrent Auditorium and from the magazines in Valencian from the Burriana library, the postponement of Cebarock in La Pobla de Vallbona and the non-inclusion of Smoking Souls in the concerts of the Elche City Council. “Hiring times and administration times are different, but they work in parallel. First, an agreement is reached and a date is reserved through a verbal agreement, which is what happened with Smoking Souls, which later materializes with the public contracts law, which is sometimes long and cumbersome. The Elche City Council clings to this subterfuge that there is no consolidated administrative process to claim that there is no agreement. They do not go ahead with their part, and no group that sings in Valencian appears on the final poster of the festival, as had happened in previous years.. That is why we think that it is a deliberate decision against an official language”, comments Jordán.

The concert promotion sector works with public administrations based on a competition requirement, in which several companies opt for the production of live shows.. “Now it seems that an arbitrary decision is emerging that does not respond to technical decisions but to political ones, and that is an involution. Music in Valencian came out of the trench years ago. During the last decade, it has gone through different styles and has normalized discourses, beyond the defense of the language.. There is urban music, pop, rap and a multitude of desires expressed in Valencian that are far from political commitment”, explains the promoter, “a normalization has been reached and it seems that the new administrations see an aggression in Valencian”.

“Feijóo only has one bullet”. Heard on the eve of July 23 from a PP leader of the same age. My interlocutor also applied the story, together with the entire active generation in the years of Aznar and Mariano Rajoy. Without the reconquest of the Moncloa, the turn of succession bets would open with the names of Moreno Bonilla and Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

There we are. If the current leader of the PP is closed the doors of the Government, the change of cycle hovers over the center-right. The bullet is still in the chamber awaiting events. Immediately, the votes of residents abroad, in case they could alter the relationship of forces between the two blocks. In the immediate future, the very remote possibility that the nationalist right (PNV and Junts) would subordinate the identity to the ideological.

Núñez Feijóo can and should keep trying because if he stops pedaling he will fall prematurely. It is logical that the winner of the elections thinks of claiming before the King his preferential right to obtain the parliamentary confidence to become the next president of the Government. It is not who Felipe VI —that is, with all due respect and in light of the provisions of article 99 of the Constitution—, to decide in advance that the numbers do not accompany the cause of the applicant.

Giving up prematurely would agree with those within his own party who believe, even if they do not say so publicly, that Feijóo has just enough charisma and more than three years to try again in four years if, as everything seems to indicate, Pedro Sánchez recomposes the “investment block” on which he planted the pedestal of his power.

It is true that national politics is still exposed to a labyrinth of variables capable of kicking a board as stable or unstable as suits Sánchez's traveling companions: Catalan and Basque independentistas, willing to form a front of common demands of dubious constitutionality.

But, without prejudice to the fact that this seed of uncertainty ends up complicating the life of a future PSOE-Sumar coalition government, in turn exposed to a risk of fragmentation in the government partner (Podemos is already threatening to emancipate), Feijóo's duty is to assume greater levels of leadership. If he fails to capitalize for his party on the relevance of his formidable territorial power, the absolute majority in the Senate and an advantage over his adversary in Congress (137 seats compared to 121), he is not a leader and would be anticipating the conditions for a premature succession battle in the PP.

Although everyone tells the fair as they did in it, the stories present Sánchez as a winner while the formidable leap in the electoral billing of the PP tends to be hidden, making him appear as the great loser of the general elections. But the stage is not closed, although two structural elements impossible to remove play against Feijóo. One is the parliamentary extraction of the figure of the head of government (the votes do not count, but the seats). And another is the best adaptation of the PSOE to the ideological and territorial plurality of Parliament, always at the risk of turning governability into a Trojan horse for the enemies of the system..

Apart from the two mentioned structural elements, there are the occasional ones. In other words, successes and failures during the campaign on both sides of the electoral barricade. A very varied casuistry of unequal treatment in the brain soup of fine analysts, who continue to argue about whether the “anti-Sanchismo” preached by the right was more efficient at the polls than the fear of Vox agitated by the left.

Fifty of the 120 Megasa workers, in Narón (A Coruña), have been in their homes since June 8 under an ERTE. And the 155,000 inhabitants of the Ferrolterra region, to which the town hall belongs, have followed with concern the news that comes from the Nuclear Security Center (CSN), since it was learned of the existence of a radioactive leak that has forced a stop the production of steel in the Galician steel company. The CSN calls for calm. “The event has not had any repercussions for the environment,” he said in his first statement, published a week after the leak.. More than a month has passed since then, the cleanup process still hasn't started.

Megasa Siderúrgica S. L. communicated that June 8 to the body in charge of ensuring nuclear safety the detection of the fusion of a radioactive source of Cesium-137 in an electric arc furnace, intended for the production of steel. “Immediately, the regulatory body carried out the pertinent checks through its automatic network of radiological monitoring stations, confirming that the event had no repercussions for the environment, since the radiation measurements outside the facility showed usual values,” says the council.

The incident was identified by the detection portals, when a radioactivity alarm was produced during the departure of a truck loaded with purification dust. Given this fact, the facility staff stopped the production of steel and the output of products from the facility, in order to activate the collaboration protocol on the radiological surveillance of metallic materials.. After informing the CSN, Megasa began the necessary steps for the radiological characterization of the plant and verify the degree of affectation.

Since then, the Galician steel company has stopped the production of steel and the smoke dust extraction system, while the contaminated materials are isolated and cordoned off inside the facility. At the request of the CSN, Megasa verified that no worker was affected and drew up a partial cleaning plan, already executed, and a comprehensive plan for the decontamination of the facilities, which was approved on July 17 by the plenary session of the Council, but still has not been fully executed. Last Tuesday night, production resumed in the test phase with valorization of results, with ten castings a day that are subjected to radiation analysis..

The regulator's decision allows the facility to begin managing radiologically contaminated material in compliance with safety measures. The reactivation of its industrial activity must be verified by the CSN once the pertinent tests have been carried out to ratify the absence of contamination in the production area, although the works council is optimistic about the possibility that this Monday the matter will be settled.. “The company and the Administration have acted with transparency and right now there is peace of mind, we are looking forward to a return to normality,” says Carlos Bascoy, president of the committee.

The Council maintains that the leak did not occur due to carelessness or malpractice. Sources close to the case acknowledge the difficulty of detecting this type of emitters because they normally arrive very well protected or encapsulated.. The usual thing is, therefore, that the case is revealed when the source is already melted and the radioactivity alarms go off. It is the detection arcs that make it possible to control the activity and that also in this case minimized the danger. But the time elapsed since the incident that led to the stoppage of the plant and the scarcity of official news -no specific data on the radiation index has been provided- cause misgivings in the works council and among residents of the area..

The CSN argues that there are no established radioactivity limits and that these vary from one area to another. It depends on how the terrain is composed.. If there is granite, for example, there is already natural radiation”, they point out from the Council, which urges calm and ensures that there is no risk to the population.

Cesium-137 is a radioactive isotope that is used mainly in industry and medicine, for example for the irradiation of gynecological tumors.. It is not found in nature, but is “manufactured”, for its different uses. The risk of exposure to humans depends on their quantity and activity, with a long half-life. The time it takes to reduce its activity in half amounts to 37 years.

For more than 20 years, the law has required the installation of radioactivity detection gantries at the entrances to the iron and steel industries, to prevent contaminated scrap from entering their smelting furnaces that could compromise the facilities. According to the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), exposure to large amounts of radioactive cesium is necessary for health effects to occur. If so, it can damage cells in the body or cause symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and bleeding.