It was almost a premonition. Juanma Moreno blessed the candidacy of José Luis Sanz for Mayor of Seville with 600 days to go before May 28, 2023. The now councilor, who clearly won the elections, wanted “two complete cycles” of the pendular operation of the Andalusian capital: two Christmases, two Easter weeks and two fairs. He succeeded, despite the fact that Moreno and Sanz were old organic rivals for power in the Andalusian PP. And that blessing was washed down with a beer at one of the high tables in Plaza del Salvador, the usual meeting place for Sevillians to toast with the national blonde, that Cruzcampo that has such a bad reputation outside the city limits..

Almost two years after that toast, Sanz has the baton of command of the main city of Andalusia and one of the first pronouncements of the popular mayor consisted of guaranteeing that in the city's traditional bars it will be possible to continue drinking beer at the door, no need to have a table. He had promised it in the campaign and confirmed it in an interview on ABC in Seville. And he did the same with another commitment: there will be no limitations on vehicles to enter the historic center of the city and the Triana neighborhood, as the socialist government of Antonio Muñoz had projected..

It will be the second time that a PP mayor -Zoido did it before in 2011- knocks down a traffic reduction plan in the center of the city, which has one of the largest historical complexes in Europe, full of narrow streets that make difficult coexistence between the car and the pedestrian. Sanz argues that right now there are not enough public transport alternatives to enter the Seville area and that there is a lack of underground car parks around the center to cushion the arrival of vehicles.

The councilor is right on this point, since the only metro line in the city does not go into the center and the one that is under construction surrounds it. And also it will not be ready before 2030. Yes, there is a project for a tram that will reach the city center in 2024 and an expansion of the tram, but Sanz's decision will not be turned back in the near future. In fact, the more than a hundred cameras that the PSOE installed at the entrances to the historic center and Triana will probably serve to “increase security” in the Seville capital. It must be taken into account that this revocation does not imply a direct breach of the national Climate Change law, which obliges cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants to have a low emission zone (ZBE)..

President Juanma Moreno and José Luis Sanz, mayor of Tomares, have met to have a beer in El Salvador. Organic readings in the Andalusian PP right now in the center of Seville. pic.twitter.com/lbxCFftNyT

— Carlos Rocha (@Carlosrch) September 27, 2021

Seville already has one of these limitations on the island of La Cartuja, on the land where Expo 92 was held and which today houses a powerful technology park to which tens of thousands of workers travel every day. There, it is necessary for the car to meet emissions requirements, while the Respira Plan for the center and Triana (that was the name of the project) only limited the entry of cars if they were not residents of restricted areas or did not have a parking lot. It must be taken into account that there were exceptions for loading and unloading, for access to hotels and for parking the car in one of the few underground car parks in the area..

The beer controversy

History repeats itself more than a decade later. In 2011, Zoido put an end to Alfredo Sánchez Monteseirín's Plan Centro when the idea of restricting the entry of vehicles into city centers was a rarity in Spain.. And despite the fact that José Luis Sanz has rejected the fact that his mandate is going to be revisionist, there are several striking decisions in addition to the Plan Respira and the green light for beers from landmark venues such as Casa Vizcaíno, El Tremendo, or Casa Coronado. In these bars it is common to see customers crowding the door with a Cruzcampo and just a plate of olives.. And although this is not clearly legal, it cannot be said that there is a “persecution”, as has come to be heard..

It must be taken into account that there is an ordinance of the mandate of Juan Ignacio Zoido that links the capacity of the terraces to the number of tables and chairs authorized by the City Council. With this rule in hand, the Local Police could act against the crowd of people, but that only happened, they explained from the previous government team, when a neighbor called due to excessive noise or because the passage was blocked.. “No one has been persecuted,” point out socialist sources, who do admit that greater surveillance is carried out at Easter and there was one of those flagship bars that had to take measures. And that is where they locate this “false controversy” aired by the new mayor shortly after taking the baton.

Sanz's first steps in the Renaissance building in Plaza Nueva have opened other debates, some anticipated in the campaign and others new. The City Council will convene a consultation to decide what happens with the duration of the April Fair, extended by Juan Espadas in 2017 after a similar consultation. The question is between maintaining the current format, from Saturday to Saturday; return to the previous one, from Monday to Sunday; or a new model, with the local festival opening on Sunday and ending on Saturday. According to Sanz, hoteliers defend a shorter model than the current one and that is the reason that leads him to reopen the melon.

And the latest debate that Sanz has resurrected is about the urbanization of Tablada, a huge esplanade that is part of the floodplain in case of flooding of the Guadalquivir and that many saw as a natural expansion of a city with an almost filled municipal area.. Justice knocked down any possibility by considering it a protected area, but, like a pendulum, the matter has returned to the present day at the hands of the popular councilor, who proposes to combine the already established use (a peri-urban park) with the construction of 200 hectares.

The noise of the week around the PP and Vox, of the agreed pacts and the frustrated ones, has managed to put the accent on the tensions between the two parties and within them. The background that profiles such as Iván Espinosa de los Monteros have assumed has triggered rumors about a recomposition in the ranks of Vox, and the strategy of agreeing and rejecting at the same time has led to Genoa being accused of lack of definition. The attacks from the left, both against Vox and the PP, due to the agreements reached and the disappearance of the term gender violence, have engulfed the debates.

Beyond these angles, there is a series of ideological questions, of significant relevance, that fly over the daily noise. Vox is not just a Spanish party, but is linked to a right that is growing in northern Europe, which is based in the east and has a significant presence in the south. It is part of an international movement, within which there are appreciable differences between the different parties, but which shares a common nucleus with which they are challenging and, sometimes, destroying traditional liberal formations. It is natural that Vox tries to emphasize that nucleus that is ensuring triumphs outside our country.

Likewise, they are also obliged to position themselves ideologically in a different way if, as the surveys anticipate, there is a change of government. The departure of Sánchez would mean that all this flow of discontent with the president would disappear from the scene, with which Vox would lose part of its speech, at the same time that it would have to deal, whether inside or outside Moncloa, with a PP that surpasses it in vote.

Both aspects make it necessary to point out, beyond specific people, lists and electoral fights, the country model that Vox offers, what its ideological keys are and what its political position will be in the near future.. Especially when, in Brussels and Berlin, the rise of those of Abascal is analyzed with concern.

The fears of Brussels

Vox is in the same line as Giorgia Meloni and the Polish right of Law and Justice; they are part of the same group and have a very similar vision of the future of the continent: more Europe and much less European Union. They advocate the sovereignty of nations and the defense of the nation state, which has a complicated fit within the current European framework.. AfD has proposed in Germany the breakup of the EU and the creation of a federation of States, and this is the limit position towards which the rest of the right tend. Vox is very hostile to the Brussels bureaucracy and the idea of national sovereignty is present.

Another aspect that arouses debate is his defense of protectionism. It is a position that they hold from a nuanced position, which links with the sign of the times. The Vox management team, which claims to subscribe to political liberalism and, therefore, to the separation of powers and institutional counterweights, is less kind to the economic liberalism deployed in the era of globalization.. They understand that all the big nations, such as France, the United Kingdom or the USA, are deploying protectionist policies that are useful in a context like the present.. They believe that this idea of liberalism, according to which the market was a kind of god that would manage to evangelize authoritarian states, has proven to be a failure.. It is time to change the pace: “When Kissinger and Nixon negotiate with Mao, they do not do so to democratize China, but to distance it from Russia. They were pursuing their interests, and that perspective is important today.. The proof is that the countries that have promoted economic liberalism the most, such as the US or the United Kingdom, are returning to protecting their interests,” they say from Vox.

They warn that this defense of protectionism, however, is perfectly compatible with other elements of economic liberalism: the functioning of the market, the absence of the State in the economy and the fiscal perspective (less taxes) clearly belong to that area.. “That is the perspective adopted by the current Polish and Italian governments and it is working for them”.

Another controversial aspect is its international position. The leader of the German CDU, Friedrich Merz, has recently stated that he will never agree with the extreme right, the AfD, because they are an anti-Semitic party.. Similarly, formations of this spectrum have been accused of sympathizing with Putin and being against NATO.. Vox is pro-NATO, pro-Israel and anti-Putin. They insist that the European group of which they are a part, the ECR, has Likud and American Republicans as partners, which clearly demonstrates their allegiance, that they are totally in favor of NATO and that no speech of theirs has been favorable to Putin, more to the contrary.

The fourth issue for which Vox is feared in Brussels is its position on immigration. In this case, the alarm is much less, given that migration policies are changing within the Union. The rapprochement between Macron and Meloni on immigration is a clear sign, as are the measures that northern European governments have been taking for some time..

In the Spanish case, however, there is a peculiarity. Vox always insists that they are opposed to illegal immigration, since “in addition to violating the law, it is a grievance for legal immigrants, implies additional and high spending on the public resources of the Welfare State and disturbs the possibility of decent employment conditions, by pushing wages down”. They also believe that this kind of immigration is a problem, because the majority of those who come through these channels are young men, the segment of the population “that has the greatest tendency to commit crimes.”.

They affirm, therefore, that they are in favor of controlled immigration, on demand and in accordance with economic criteria and the employability needs of the country.. However, and this is the Spanish particularity, they understand that the assimilation criteria must be important: they prefer Latin American immigration, since we share with them culture, history and many values, rather than the Maghrebi or African, whose customs and ways of life collide with ours. They also warn of the negative potential of this kind of immigration: “The experience of the Nordic countries puts us on alert, since it has generated a lot of insecurity, maladjustment and more danger for women”.

The last aspect that concerns Brussels is relevant, insofar as it is one of the central issues of contemporary politics. Vox places great emphasis on the 2030 Agenda as an essential part of a series of policies aimed at combating climate change. The green transformation is relevant, to the extent that the populist right-wing has found an electoral vein among those who oppose it. The growth of the German extreme right, the AfD, which is at 20% of voting intentions, cannot be understood without the insistence of the German government on accelerating the transformation: the cost that citizens are facing has generated a lot of discontent. Something similar happened with the Dutch farmers' party or, earlier, with the yellow vests. The controversy of Doñana and the irrigated lands also has to do with this type of discomfort. Vox opposes climate policies and the green transformation, and is committed to nuclear and hydrocarbons. This goes completely contrary to that marked by the Commission, for which the green transformation is crucial.

The Spanish disagreements

The popular ones are convinced that, given their position on the party map and their greater electoral strength, they will be able to deal with Vox (“tame it”) in the event that they are forced to govern with those of Abascal. They expect a coexistence that may suffer tensions, but that will be solvable thanks to the greater popular power. However, the projects of both in the national field, which may coincide in many aspects, vary notably in terms of intensity.. Vox, for example, has a pro-family vision, which is based on the rejection of it, which they understand has been promoted by postmodernists and Marxists.. They believe that it is a “space of freedom against the State and against its authoritarian drift”, as well as “a basic and minimal redoubt in which everyone can resist”. The defense of the family is common in the European right, and Vox does not separate one iota from it.

However, there is an added nuance, which refers to demographics. They advocate active birth policies, and not only for economic rationality, in order to have inhabitants who can support future pensions, but they perceive it as “a commitment to the continuity of Spanish culture, which can be weakened if there are more and more less nationals”.

Secondly, Vox understands that the unity of the nation is weakly defended by the popular, and an example has been Barcelona, “where the PP has promoted the Socialists to the mayor's office; we do not differentiate between the greater evil and the minor, and the PSC and ERC are part of the same”. They believe that Feijóo will assume nationalist postulates if they are useful to him to govern, “as he already did in Galicia”, and that means “gaining oxygen at the cost of disrupting the State”.

The third issue of confrontation revolves around the woke ideology, “which the left introduced, but which the PP has accepted in many aspects, and has even gone ahead of it, as with Ayuso's trans law”. They insist that everything that Zapatero's PSOE legislated on democratic memory and gender violence was maintained by the PP, and that the same thing will probably happen now. Nor do they believe that the PP is going to pay any attention to the misrepresentation of the history of Spain that has been taking place in recent years, which is part of “an international movement: in Latin America it bears the name of indigenismo, and here that of historical memory “.

The final element of divergence “is the place that Spain should occupy in the world. For us, Spain is not a followerist and conformist nation, as the PP perceives it: we want a country that aspires to play an important role in Europe, Latin America and USA, and that it is a leader in some areas”.

The ideological elements, therefore, that separate Vox and PP are not minor. We will see how they combine if Sánchez leaves the Government and what role each one plays in the bloc of the Spanish right.

The implosion of the Titan a few meters from the remains of the Titanic has once again fueled theories about curses. In the PSOE they have theirs and it threatens to repeat itself. The times, protagonists and circumstances begin to be suspiciously similar to those of that October 2, 2016. In socialism there are currents less and less depth prepared to emerge after 23-J. The wayward barons have not stopped moving since the 28-M found that the PSOE was in danger of dying with Sánchez.

Emiliano García Page and Javier Lambán are in constant communication, although now it is time for silence. Deny any hint of rebellion. If they have learned anything, it is that Sánchez knows how to carry the martyr's cross well. From his crucifixion in that historic federal committee came the president he is today. The same ones who stood up to him on that occasion will do so after the general elections if the polls are confirmed. They do not want to wait for some option to accommodate. If Feijóo sweeps, the PSOE will move to force a manager immediately.

The father of the other manager, the Asturian Javier Fernández, is also active in this attempt to save the initials. He is not the only one who moves token from the north. Adriana Lastra also has her ambitions. There are doubts as to whether as a Trojan horse for her boss Adrián Barbón or by herself. Sánchez tried to attract her to his side by offering her a ministry in the throes of the legislature, but she neither forgives nor forgets.

The plan also includes the “old guard” which is the little awareness that Spanish socialism has left. Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra are increasingly active. A blessing for the ears of the hundreds of socialist voters who feel orphaned. González has already been casting possible leaders for post-Sanchism. Page has always denied that he wants to make the leap, but it is already known that in the name of Spain it is easy to go back on it. Sánchez does it without blinking, although he did stammer before Carlos Alsina, who in his question reflected the feelings of many: “Why have you lied to us Spaniards so much?”

In the leader casting, many variables must be considered. The main one that is capable of spending four years in opposition. There are those who see it as essential that she be a woman. Susana Díaz's time has passed, although she is more active than ever. There is a young man who brings together many sympathies from very different currents. He is discreet, but he is letting himself be loved. His relationship with González is good and also with Zapatero. That is already a merit. He is ready to fight.

There is even an established calendar that, by chance or by curse, places the extraordinary congress to start the succession right in the month of October. Some have their legs tremble because of the superstitions. Before, even the PSOE may have had to abstain again to let Feijóo govern. It has wanted the chance that it is another Galician.

If you have to pass that drink it will be very difficult to digest. In the PSOE, some advise not to swallow that poison again. The antidote may end up being Yolanda Díaz and socialism in Spain may be reduced to the minimum expression as it happened in France. Guerra already warned when he focused on “Mélenchon dressed by Christian Dior”. In case of emergency they always have Antonio Hernando. He already defended abstention once, although later he ended up in bed with Sánchez. If he had to do it again now, which would be the best thing for the Spaniards, it would be much better. You have had an excellent teacher of cynicism. The curse hangs over Ferraz.

One of the most important aspects of planning the management of a democratic government consists of how it will communicate with society and what will be the relationship model that it will maintain both with the media that, due to its editorial line, are considered related to its ideology and approaches. as with those distant from one and from the other. In this matter, it is especially noticeable when such a model is worked by amateurs or is designed by experts in the field.. The seven Spanish presidents who have succeeded each other, from Adolfo Suárez to Pedro Sánchez, have not considered that, in any case, the communication of the Cabinet and relations with the media were strategic matters.

It is not a coincidence —but rather a symptom— that the Government spokesperson has consisted more of a function that was entrusted to a head minister of a department unrelated to communication than a matter proper to a ministerial organic structure. In the executives of Pedro Sánchez this has been the pattern: Isabel Celaá (Minister of Education, spokesperson from 2018 to 2020), María Jesús Montero (Minister of Finance, spokesperson from 2020 to 2021) and, currently, Isabel Rodríguez (Minister Territorial Policy, spokesperson since July 2021).

It wasn't always like this. Felipe González created the Ministry of Government Spokesperson who entrusted Rosa Conde (1988-1993), sociologist (previously General Secretary of the Presidency and head of the CIS), who displayed skill and ability to communicate with the media, trying to maintain the correct balance. Later, José María Aznar appointed Pío Cabanillas (2000-2002) as spokesman minister, who had previously been responsible for public radio and television. He was efficient and would get on the phone. Other remembered spokespersons, either State Secretaries or Ministers, demonstrated adequate professional skills: from Rosa Posada (1980-1981) with Suárez, to Eduardo Sotillos with González (1982-1985), and in a singular way Josep Piqué (1998-2000). and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (1993-1996 and 2010-2011), the two deceased, who left the mark of their warm personality, ductility and a wide range of dialogue in the newsrooms.

The extreme politicization of government communication and Manichaeism in the treatment of the media has been a very pernicious double phenomenon in this legislature, even more so since the media sector plunged into a time of crisis in which there are few solvent and financially solvent newspapers. independent. In addition, the irruption of technology, and in particular of social networks, would have justified specific political attention in the way of transmitting the messages of the Government and in the way of understanding oneself, or not doing so, with the media most critical of the Cabinet.

Last Monday the Prime Minister lamented the treatment he receives from the “conservative media”. He confessed it to Carlos Alsina on Onda Cero, a station “not affected” to which Pedro Sánchez had not granted an interview for four years. The PSOE general secretary had moments of fluid relations with some of these media, but later, faithful to his excessive impulses, he gradually abandoned the most adverse media territory, making full use of those who offered him more comfortable treatment.. It has been a serious mistake.

Was there another way to handle this delicate matter? Of course, yes: enduring the pull of criticism without reprisals (there have been), distributing information with impartiality, respecting the users-citizens of all media, dialoguing when there were problems of veracity, arbitrary biases or material errors and, In short, establishing with those responsible for newspapers, radio stations and television stations rules of engagement consistent with a critical situation in the media sector threatened by financial insufficiency, a false democratization of information, by the plague of false news and alternative truths and invaded by social networks turned into pseudo-informative jungles and full of trolls and bots. However, communication and media discrimination have been part of the confrontation strategy.

The Government —although this is not the only one, because others also made the same mistake and some regional governments of the PP like the one in Madrid also do it— has surrendered to the dynamics of philias and phobias and the result is that the irremediably confronted political blocs have reproduced themselves in the media factions. Now the president seems willing to tread wastelands of sympathy for him and his policies. It is late, even though it seems like a rectification and is understood as a contrition. What's more: it is a not very graceful media tour, and until now vetoed, in which the president caricatures himself as a jocund guy when he has given reliable evidence of not being one at all. Pseudojournalistic occurrences go to the extreme of representing Sánchez as an interviewer for his own ministers.

The philias and phobias —in bulk, without discerning serious and well-founded criticism from gratuitous and arbitrary ones and without evaluating the scope of the praise to separate flattery and interest from merit— have caused injuries that should not have been inflicted, much more with a coalition government between the PSOE and a party to its left that has not ceased to harass media and professionals of different ideological persuasions (the radical right is not deprived of this brutal exercise of stigmatization either) without even trying on the part of the socialists put a stop to the lawlessness. This issue is not fixed. And the experience has been very harmful for Pedro Sánchez, but also for the media, victims, conscious or unconscious, of a destructive relationship with this character and his environment..

In 1935, a group of Valencians founded Cervezas El Turia in the Cruz Cubierta neighborhood. The Civil War and the postwar period paralyzed the project until, in 1947, the factory began to produce and market a Valencian beer. In the following decades it became a mark of the local imagination, with the Torres de Serranos as an emblem. The support of the capital of the Catalan brand Damm, owned by Demetrio Carceller Segura, was essential for this impulse.

The creator of this business saga, which currently constitutes one of the great fortunes of Spain, was Minister of Industry and Commerce in the second Franco government, between 1940 and 1945.. Carceller Segura accompanied the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Serrano Suñer, to Berlin to negotiate the sale of Spanish tungsten to the Nazi army. With him he became one of the richest men in the country. His dismissal, like that of other Germanophile Falangist positions, coincided with a cosmetic purge before the imminent allied victory.

Every three months, a council of former employees of Cervezas El Turia meets for lunch at the Granada bar, located in the San Marcelino neighborhood. The legendary rocker Emilio Solo (Benimàmet, 1953) started working as a delivery man in 1973. His father, Enrique Palomares, inaugurated a staff at the end of the 1940s that numbered around 500 employees at its peak.. “The company's first master brewer was Máximo Schnabel, a Swiss chemist who prepared the Märzenbier-style recipe”, says the musician: “According to my father, this man came to Valencia with his family and lived in a house, equipped with Bavarian style, inside the factory. When the truckload of barley arrived, he would go up to the container, chew it and, after spitting it out, decide whether it went to the warehouse or was discarded.”.

This local brewery was a relevant economic engine for the Valencian economy in the 50s and 60s. It was in this last decade when we found the antecedent of music marketing policies to attract young customers.. A concert poster for Raimon, Els 4Z and Los Supersons, the first group of a young Luis Manuel Ferri, before he was Nino Bravo, at the Alcira in 1964, shows Stark Turia's sponsorship of the Valencian Modern Music Festivals.

With the oil crisis, in the second half of the seventies, the accounts began to suffer. The first employment regulations arrived. “There was a capital increase that the Valencian business community did not cover, Damm bought its part from its Valencian partners and sent a CEO from Barcelona,” recalls Solo, then union delegate of the General Union of Workers. At the same time, he says that “they expanded their facilities in Catalonia and made a strong investment there”. They “continued to have benefits”, although they acknowledge the margin was not the same as in previous years. They never showed the accounts to the union economists. Since the early eighties, the employer's move was to close the Valencia factory and compensate the employees for the dismissals.”.

The closure of the factory was consummated in 1996. In 2013, the Catalan brewery recovered the Torres de Serranos logo in a new Turia, manufactured in Murcia, with distribution headquarters in Ribarroja, and which, through a commercial identity strategy of recovering Valencian symbols, has been introduced in various regional festivals and premises of the Valencian Community.

For 15 years, Spain has experienced an open war between beer companies for sponsoring festivals and concerts. According to the data from the report published last Monday by Cerveceros de España and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, our country is the second largest producer in the European Union, behind Germany, as well as the second most consuming, only surpassed by Czech Republic, according to data from the World Health Organization. The vast majority of beer consumed is nationally produced: Mahou-San Miguel, which last week acquired the Mad Cool festival in Madrid, is the first producer with 12.81 million hectoliters, followed by Grupo Damm with 11.34 million..

The music journalist Nando Cruz (Barcelona, 1968) has recently written Macrofestivales: the black hole of music. A meticulous study where he analyzes the practices of the sector. “The battle between Mahou-San Miguel and Damm began in Catalonia some fifteen years ago. Not only at festivals, but also at major festivals and concert halls”, analyzes. The Madrid brewery “ended up retiring due to Damm's unbeatable force in the territory”. Beer consumption at festivals multiplies the national daily average by seven, explains Cruz, so “it is a favorable enclave for these companies since they not only position their brand, but also sell their product and prevent all their competition from doing so”. Not only that. “The marketing departments are clear that after the bars, musical events are the right space to invest”, he concludes.

Music is a strategic axis for the business growth of breweries, which have sometimes even paid to rename festivals. The Benicàssim International Festival was a pioneer, in 2001, in including Heineken in the official name of the event. Between 2003 and 2009, Damm placed his mark on Primavera Sound, which in 2010 was renamed San Miguel Primavera Sound for three years.. “A 30-liter barrel of industrial beer can cost between 60 and 90 euros. If a festival has an exclusive and sponsorship contract with a brewery, it can get discounts of around 40-50%, which means that it will be paying a little more than one euro per liter”, Cruz indicates in his book.

So far in 2023, it is difficult to find a price lower than 6 euros for a 33-cl glass at a national macro-festival, while waiters charge around 8 euros gross per hour worked. What is a manual win win for the festival business and the beer industry seems not to be so much for its workers and the consumer.

The electoral advance has led the Government to reconsider the extension of the measures of the anti-crisis decree that expire at the end of this month. The intention to lift structural aid, as demanded by Brussels to adapt to the future recovery of fiscal rules in the next budgets, clashes with electoralism and the pressure on the left and right of the Socialists due to the increase in the cost of the life. Mainly, in relation to the price of food, for which reason the economic vice president, Nadia Calviño, has already dropped that the suppression or reduction of VAT on certain basic products would be maintained. From their environment they avoid confirming the extension of this action before closing the final text of the decree, but they do convey the intention of maintaining it “until the prices are adequate”.

This same week, the President of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, acknowledged in an interview that the price of the shopping basket continued to be high and highlighted the tax cuts as the measures that were in his power to tackle inflation. Waiting to close the fringes of the decree for the next six months, on which the purple wing of the Government has redoubled the pressure to avoid the suppression of aid and even add some new ones, the Government seems willing to back down. Ignore the “appeals” of the European Commission with which they had already committed themselves and, in addition to suppressing the VAT reduction, withdraw the aid of 20 cents for fuel from carriers and professionals. In fact, on January 1, the general bonus for all drivers was already withdrawn.

The priority is the general elections and anticipating cuts would not be the best cover letter. Moncloa sources acknowledge, regarding the withdrawal of the VAT reduction for certain foods, that it would negatively affect the price of the shopping basket. From the Ministry of Agriculture they have also been recognizing that the drought could stop the downward trend of the price in the shopping basket “by the law of supply and demand”. Drought is detrimental to the former, as is beginning to be reflected in rainfed crops. Sánchez thus delays the commitments by way of a pulse with Brussels, which had asked to begin to “disconnect”, according to the terminology of the economic ministries of Moncloa, the structural measures adopted after the pandemic.

The return of the fiscal rules is scheduled for 2025, but the Community Executive has sued the member countries to adjust their accounts for next year. The Spanish Government, through a negotiation led by the first vice president, Nadia Calviño, promised to comply with the 3% deficit for the next financial year and hence the intention, before 28-M, to gradually raise some of general tax cuts and direct aid.

The calculations of the Government, between fiscal commitments and electoralism, keep the drafting of the decree open. So much so that it is not even ruled out that instead of being approved next Tuesday in the Council of Ministers, it can go to an extraordinary one to speed up the deadline until next Thursday or Friday. The measures must be published in the BOE on July 1. In addition, the introduction of other pending issues from different departments is being studied to guarantee their approval before the elections, through a kind of omnibus decree.. The decree that is approved must be validated in the Permanent Deputation of Congress in a short space of time due to the proximity of the general ones.

In the economic departments of the Executive branch, they assume that the impact on the surplus will depend mainly on the measures to extend the social shield and others recently approved, such as those related to the fight against fires and drought.. The 4.8% public deficit with which last year closed, two tenths below the 5% that the Executive sent to Brussels, has allowed the Government, however, to have some 3,000 million surplus.

From Economy the thesis of “applying the measures that are most effective at all times” is maintained. The rest of the aid from the last anti-crisis decree that was in the eaves were, together with the VAT reduction on food and fuel discounts for professionals, discounts on urban and interurban public transport, which depends on the autonomous communities, the cap of the price of the butane bottle or aid to the electro-intensive industry. Among the actions planned until the end of the year, the continuation of the gratuity transport season tickets under the jurisdiction of the State —Cercanías and Media Distancia— or the VAT reduction on the electricity bill stand out..

Pressure from other candidates

While the Government exploits in its speech the good progress of the economy despite the international turmoil —Spain grew by 0.6% up to March, more than expected, recovering pre-pandemic GDP—, both Sumar and the PP are alert with not to confuse macroeconomic data with the situation of domestic economies. The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, contradicted Moncloa's triumphalism this week, warning that “we must not confuse macroeconomic data with people's lives”.

The space candidate to the left of the PSOE emphasized that “there is social unrest”. A marking with a view to the extension of the anti-crisis decree because “the cost of living is the main problem the country has”, as he denounced, to argue that “there is more citizen disaffection than in 2015”. The leader of the popular has abandoned his speech on the ghost of the recession months ago, but he does speak of stagnation and has adopted positions similar to those of Díaz when influencing family economies.

During an act of the think tank Reformismo 21, held last Thursday, the PP candidate focused on the concern of households about the rise in food or mortgages and stressed that “Spain is the OECD country where there has been the most fallen the power of families”. That was the most repeated concept, looking more at the micro than at the macro, anticipating an economic electoral program “designed for families” and “the competitiveness of families”. The elimination of tax rebates or the cut in aid in the anti-crisis decree would be a throwing weapon in the campaign for which the Government is reconsidering the content of the anti-crisis decree, which will be approved by the Council of Ministers next week.

Ada Colau has saved the commons. Catalunya en Comú Podem has a future as a party thanks to the sacrifice made, which has allowed Jaume Collboni to be mayor of Barcelona against all odds. But, at the same time, his pact with Yolanda Díaz, joining Sumar, buries Collauism, which goes down in history. In practice, the old ICV of Joan Herrera returns. With similar approaches and even with people from that time. The 15-M in its Barcelona version is amortized as the mini-crisis around the Sumar program and a possible referendum in Catalonia have shown.

Yes, Colau has delivered Barcelona to the PSC. But it has saved a good part of the party cadres who lived from having positions of trust in the consistory. Collboni keeps them. And Catalunya en Comú Podem saves the furniture in this sense, the monetary, the organizational, the electoral rights.

Another thing is Colauism, which has been fundamental in the culture war in the Catalan capital. This move was subtly different from ICV. One of the things that differentiated them was that there was open talk of an agreed referendum in Catalonia. ICV included it in the program, but then did not mention it. Jaume Asens, Ada Colau and other members of the party mentioned it non-stop, although they did not later present any legal initiative in this regard. But claiming the right to self-determination fit perfectly with left-wing politicians, more comfortable in street activism than stepping on palace carpets.

Now, with Yolanda Díaz, few jokes. It returns to the ICV scheme. The referendum may be on the program, but it is not talked about. Pablo Iglesias did it often. Yolanda Diaz, no; as already made clear this week. That's why he lowers it, even in the program. It has become a formula of the style “ratify an agreement that arises from the dialogue table to solve the question of the fit of Catalonia in Spain”. In practice, vote for a new Statute. Something that does not excite the masses in Catalonia. Ada Colau embraced Yolanda Díaz to survive politically. But Yolanda Díaz does not sympathize at all with the independence movement and although she does not talk about it, it is very noticeable.

The only independentista in the group was Asens, now ousted from the lists by Yolanda Díaz. Colau will leave the City Council sooner rather than later, according to sources from the commons. And the activism that Colauism liked so much does not seem to be maintained in its old style by profiles like Jèssica Albiach or Aina Vidal. The latter comes from the V of ICV, what in its day was called Esquerra Verda, the Catalan ecologists. In other words, projects such as the expansion of the airport will always run into people of their political profile.. But it won't go any further. If on the Catalan right the speech up to the municipal ones was “Convergència returns”, it could be said that on the left it would be something similar until the general ones at least: “ICV returns”.

Surviving away from Barcelona

The biggest challenge for Colauism will now be to survive far from Barcelona. The hard core of Gala Pin, Gerardo Pisarello and Eloi Badia —who, depending on how the polls go, could not come out— are going to Congress. But the activism in the Carrera de San Jerónimo has not quite worked, as the CUP has verified firsthand, which it is very difficult to repeat in the Lower House.

Of those who remain in Barcelona, Jordi Martí Grau is Colau's favorite heir. But Jordi Martí came from Mes, the party founded by Ernest Maragall. I was not a first-time collauist. He joined as number two in 2015 because the management of the consistory is very complex and Jordi Martí treasured all the knowledge and experience of the PSC, his original party. The election by the former mayor shows the extent to which Colauism is no longer recognized when looking in the mirror.

disputed inheritance

If Colau has not yet opted for Jordi Martí, his protégé, it is because the first-time colauistas are opposed. Councilors like Janet Sanz or Lucía Martín have risen up against this maneuver. So with the inheritance in dispute and the focus on Collboni and Xavier Trias, it makes it difficult for Collauism to return to its essence: activism and the impact on the media. Internal tensions have a complex solution. And it does not help the essence: the party survives, the movement is dying.

The PP's decision to hand over the presidency of the Cortes de Aragón to Vox has completely changed the rules of the game outlined so far. To concoct the governance of the community and other administrations such as the Teruel Provincial Council, the popular ones had a clear roadmap: agree with regionalism, Teruel Existe and the Aragonese Party (PAR), and put aside any agreement with the formation ultraconservative. A script different from other regions and with its own scheme: an Executive in the minority and talking to everyone. The great unknown is what happens in Teruel, in the face of a possible domino effect.

This would happen as long as a PP minority government is guaranteed in Aragon with Jorge Azcón as president. The 28 popular deputies could facilitate this, as long as Teruel Exists, PAR and Vox abstained, or one of the two regionalisms gave a favorable vote.. This was Azcón's initial idea, but it is the formation led by Santiago Abascal who is pressing the popular ones in the region, as it does in practically all the territories. Hence the toll that the PP candidate has had to pay, giving the presidency of the Cortes to the ultra-conservative party. PP sources confirm that it is a “high price” and that it should be “enough” for them to abstain from the investiture and not further twist the political change.

The formation of Santiago Abascal, on the other hand, wants to govern where there is a majority of the right and it does not hurt to claim everything possible to make this happen. The political spokesman for Vox, Jorge Buxadé, pointed it out this Friday in the Cortes of Aragon: everything goes through a pact that allows “evict the governments of the left” where there is an “arithmetic sum” to achieve it. This is the case of the community, but of course it is not the idea carried by the PP candidate.

The first step in this ordeal of Vox has been the demand for the presidency of the Cortes de Aragón, with Marta Fernández at the helm. The PP only thought of giving up a vice presidency to achieve an abstention in the investiture session of Jorge Azcón. Nothing could be further from the truth. The gesture of the popular has been to cede the presidency of Parliament and not have any verbal or written agreement so that their vote is favorable in the investiture.

With these wickers doubts arise in the two parties that had already advanced their vote to give the presidency of Aragon to the PP. Neither Tomás Guitarte, from Teruel Existe, nor Alberto Izquierdo, from PAR, want Vox to be in any equation with the PP. If this is so, they would change the meaning of their vote. Even so, due to the arithmetic outcome of the polls, the popular always have the option of getting the yes of the ultra-conservative formation with a coalition government. But it is not what the popular want. Consulted sources assure that Azcón is not Mazón and that in Aragón the plans are different because that is the electoral result.

However, this has its consequences in the territory. The constitution of the Teruel Provincial Council is still up in the air —and with no scheduled date— and everything is open. Initially, the presidency would be obtained by the PP with Joaquín Juste and with the approval of Teruel Exists. But this last-minute maneuver by Vox with the presidency of the Cortes generates misgivings in the formation of Guitarte.

Both parties, PP and Teruel Existe, detail that the agreement is very close and they do not believe that there is anything that would cloud the negotiation. The PP, in this sense, points out that the talks for the Table of the Cortes of Aragon are a pact completely isolated from others that are being hatched. The number two of the formation, Ana Alós, has ruled out, this Friday, the existence of any type of programmatic agreement between PP and Vox. “Not a single paper has been signed, there has not been a single programmatic document that has been written, debated, or put on the table yet,” he pointed out..

“We remain convinced that we can govern alone,” they remark from the PP. Meanwhile, the deadlines for the investiture play in favor of Jorge Azcón. According to the regulations of the autonomous courts, the investiture session must take place two months after the constitution of parliament, and that moves the scenario to after the national elections of 23-J.

77 missing people of whom nothing is known. “Imagine a mother, who has already spent a year and does not know where her son is and who is waiting for a call to tell her where he is, that he is fine… It is a terrible impact and violence”. This is explained by Helena Maleno, founder of Caminando Fronteras, one of the five NGOs that has filed a complaint for the Justice to investigate and clarify what happened at the Melilla fence on June 24, 2022..

One year after the greatest tragedy that occurred on the border between Morocco and Spain, many unknowns remain open. The Prosecutor's Office quickly and quickly closed an investigation that exonerated the Spanish authorities of any responsibility, despite the fact that the Ombudsman had detected numerous irregularities in the investigation of the facts.

In search of the truth

The lack of response from the authorities has led the NGO Coordinadora de Barrios, Colectivo Ca-Minando Fronteras, Association of Foreigners in Network, Association for Human Rights of Spain and Associació Lab 38 to seek redress in the courts: “The complaint It is necessary because the experience we have is that there is great impunity for crimes committed in the border area.. You play with outsourcing, the omission of the duty of relief, transnationality… One of the most important things in the 24-J debate has been whether the patio was Spanish or Moroccan. The states play with the creation of a kind of space of non-law that is not legal, but that is accepted in fact, to maintain a terrible impunity”.

The Ministry of the Interior has always maintained that the deaths did not occur in Spanish territory. “There were no deaths in Spain,” Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska came to assure, despite the fact that various journalistic investigations, such as those carried out by the BBC and Lightohouse Reports, show that the Gendarmerie dragged the bodies of the victims from Spanish territory towards moroccan soil. It includes the words of civil guards who confess that the place that Grande-Marlaska called “no man's land” is a Spanish competition. Smir, a 26-year-old survivor from Sudan, affirms on camera that his colleagues “died on the Spanish side”.

“There are a lot of situations that are not clear. Did they let the Moroccan army into an area that is not Spain? The Civil Guard was protecting that area and at the same time, Moroccan soldiers were entering there. A de facto situation occurs that is not clear. It will have to be resolved in court where the events were committed and what criminal acts there could have been,” says Maleno..

The investigations carried out by the Prosecutor's Office and the Ombudsman, in addition to giving contradictory views, do not give any response to the victims. The institution directed by Ángel Gabilondo denounces in its report the inaction of the Civil Guard agents in the face of the avalanche and points out that the agents “threw stones” and “sprayed” the trapped people. “Some Spanish agents look for stones and throw them at the people who are at the top of the fence,” the resolution states, detailing that a civil guard “sprays them with gas so they don't keep trying to break down the door of the post.”.

In addition, the agents are accused of not assisting the injured: “An ambulance stopped at a certain distance from the Civil Guard vehicles is observed on the road (…) that does not intervene at any time”. For Helena Maleno, “That day there was an omission of the duty to help. It has been normalized that when a person jumps a fence they can die. It has been normalized based on impunity. At the borders we are skipping democratic standards. There is a very dangerous political game that places the violation of the human rights of certain groups at the center”.

The Prosecutor's Office closed the case last December, considering that there was no one responsible for the tragedy or evidence of a crime. “It cannot be concluded that the actions of the intervening agents increased the risk to the life and physical integrity of the migrants, so they cannot be charged with a crime of reckless homicide,” he states in his letter.. This same week, during a visit to Melilla, the State Attorney General has stated that he considers the complaint “an appropriate path”: “We are on the path that was expected to occur” and “no further assessment must be made in this regard “..

How many people died?

The number of deaths in the tragedy is another unresolved issue that the victims claim to know. “Officially, there is talk of 23 deceased people. Our organization was able to verify that day 37. And then there were three more people who died in hospitals from their injuries.. At least 40 known fatalities, plus 77 missing persons. There may be more, because the situation of impunity makes it very difficult to build the truth”.

The Kingdom of Morocco has maintained total opacity regarding the autopsies of the deceased, which has made it impossible to identify the victims and for their relatives to watch over them: “At the moment there is only one identified deceased in Morocco who has been buried and a relative came to bury him. Morocco has not provided the information on these autopsies,” explains Maleno.. The unknown remains, therefore, about the causes of death of these people.

The official information is that with the migrants trapped in an interior courtyard, the Moroccan gendarmes fired dozens of tear gas and caused chaos among the people who were trapped, who tried to escape by overcoming the fence that gave them access to Spanish soil.. From the other side, the Spanish soldiers also launched gas. According to the criteria of the Prosecutor's Office, these gases launched by the Civil Guard had no impact on the people detained between the two fences: “There is no record that the use of smoke canisters launched by the Spanish agents produced total invisibility or cases of suffocation among the people there congregated, since it was a completely open courtyard at the top and surrounded by metal fences, so that the entry and exit of air and other gases was completely fluid”.

At one point, the fence fell and caused an avalanche.. Dozens of people were crushed. The pile of bodies spread between the area managed by Morocco and the area that is the responsibility of the Civil Guard. But the Spanish agents allege that they withdrew from the place in response to the attacks they suffered from migrants in their attempt to reach European soil.. They left the responsibility of the intervention to the Moroccan gendarmes. As Helena Maleno explains: “The investigation has to clarify where the events occurred, what was the collaboration between the two states, who is responsible, what happened that day and then, how the people who died died. And the missing persons, who is looking for them, where they are, and the right they have to be searched. So many things for which we don't have an answer because there hasn't been enough research.”.

77 people that no one is looking for

The disappearance of 77 people in any other context would have generated a great social mobilization and pressure on the authorities to clarify where they are.. However, the only thing the families of those disappeared find is silence: “The impact of this violence continues on hundreds of families who are still searching for. They don't know if their family member is dead, if he's buried, they don't know where to look, nobody gives them answers. This is the terrible mourning of the families of the disappeared. Imagine a mother, who has already spent a year and does not know where her son is and who is waiting for a call to tell her where he is, that he is fine… It is a terrible impact and violence. That's why this lawsuit is so important.. We have to give an answer to those families.”.

The difference between this type of disappearance and others is found in what Maleno calls “institutional racism” and which translates into a different way of approaching deaths when the victims are African: “We have created two rights to life. The right to life of the white person and the right to life of other groups. If a small boat sinks, only one plane goes, if a fishing boat sinks, they spend days and days looking for the fishing boat with all means. It has been decided to sacrifice the lives of certain groups, by action or omission”. A situation that reminds him of the one experienced with the Tarajal crisis: “A relative of a victim told me: 'In the white country, where animals are so protected, if a dog jumps into the pool and drowns , someone would jump to pick him up, but my son had no right for anyone to jump into the sea'”.

The situation contrasts with other human avalanches in which there have been fatalities, and with the social sensitivity that existed with the victims at the time: “If this had been like what happened in the Madrid Arena, all the springs would have been put to investigate who They are the victims, what do we know about them, their name, their last name, where they came from, why they got to that fence, what happened the previous days. We must know all this from an impartial investigation that puts the rights of these victims at the center and that is not biased by international racism.”.

The situation of the survivors

For those who managed to escape without dying or “disappearing”, the situation has not been easy.. That same day, the Civil Guard deported 470 people at the border who were prevented from exercising their right to request asylum: “The people did not even have shoes. They had been shot in different areas, on the Algerian border, in the Beni Mellal area, in central Morocco.. with absolutely nothing. Some had arrived, they had been left on those buses lying around and they had been received directly at the hospitals. We found a person with a gunshot wound in one of the hospitals. We accompanied another of the boys who ended up dying in the hospital.. They were in brutal post-traumatic shock. Today, many of the 15-16 year olds are on the streets.. Without assistance, with injuries. If you see them, they have physical situations derived from the mistreatment of that day. Then there are people in jail. People from Sudan, who do not have families who can assist them and who are locked up with jail terms of up to three years”.

What the complaint seeks is to try to provide an answer to the hundreds of victims left by the massacre that occurred in Melilla on July 24, 2023: “If we think of other previous complaints, we do not have much hope. But we cannot stop putting it, for the memory of the victims and the right to truth, justice and reparation. We must continue fighting to break with impunity”.

In the pathological tendency of the left to chop up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (it defends some, but forgets others), we are witnessing here and now a noisy nominalist debate on violations of women's jurisdiction, we point out who dares against excesses of gay pride, we are scandalized if someone does not respect transsexuality and we proclaim a halt to progress with the advent of the ultra-right in the equations of power.

So saturated are the circuits of fights typical of satisfied societies, that there is hardly a space reserved on the events page for the umpteenth marine tragedy of the world's poor. If it is about the rich, change the story, even if it is by land. Concrete borders for the needy. Then the international mockery of the principle of freedom of movement, also for the poor, which is one of the 30 globally recognized human rights, becomes more scandalous..

On the moral condition of man, León Battista Alberti (15th century), one of the precursors of Humanism, said that human beings are what they want to be. Some act inspired by necessity, others on a whim.. It is not the same to die beaten on the fence of Melilla (one year ago today of the tragedy that shames Spain and Morocco) than doing tourism in the depths of the ocean.

Nor was it the same going to the rescue of 5 millionaires in a mini-submarine than 50 outcasts in an inflatable boat between the Sahara and the Canary Islands.. Impressive display of public media (robotic technology, ships, planes…) with preferential media attention focused on the rescue of five people. Instead, tons of political-administrative negligence and disinterest in information for the thirty-five who, almost at the same time, were swallowing the sea. Twelve hours passed since the boat was sighted, in danger of sinking, until a Moroccan patrol boat came without being able to save half of the zodiac's occupants..

The mini-submarine of tourists at $ 250,000 per head kept the world on edge, according to the chronicles. Not half a tear, listen, for the “catastrophic loss of pressure” in the cabin of the submersible. But the emotional comparison with the corpse of a five-year-old girl floating upside down is embarrassing because the rush to avoid it was subordinated to a stupid disparity of opinions on the jurisdiction of waters where fifty human beings were about to shipwreck (Spain washed its hands and left the task to Morocco).

In all cases (the Melilla fence, the implosion of the Titan or the sunken inflatable boat on the way to Gran Canaria) it is not even useful to pray because, as Battista Alberti said, “the gods cannot stop what men have set in motion”. The defense of human rights has been globalized in the declaration of intent, not the commitment to guarantee them and prevent their violation.

Someone other than the Ombudsman should be looking for those responsible for what happened on Wednesday near the Canary Islands. An occasion for Dolores Delgado to debut as a prosecutor of the Supreme Court, in case someone had incurred in an “omission of the duty of relief”. “Illegal” immigration, would Minister Marlaska say. Okay, but no less illegal than chartering a submersible without technical approval.

The soldiers of the famished legion are the ones who risk the only one they have at the gates of Europe or the US to have a better life. The poor of the globalized world become visible in those dramatic waiting rooms next to the borders that separate the honey from the flies, as I once heard Santiago Carrillo say. Never has a rhetorical figure seemed so cruel and at the same time so realistic.