When Pedro Sánchez arrived at the Congress, Yolanda Díaz was waiting for him with a book. It looked like a gift, but Pedro has opened it and it said: “For Yolanda”. The same as in the last electoral measures announced by the president and approved without the consent of the vice-president; in those it says: “For Pedro.”

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It was A New Country on the Other Side of My Window (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2023), by Theodor Kalllifatides. From this window of the rostrum, Parliament does not pretend to be new. One comes here to read, to study. And most importantly: not to respond. That is usually the most important thing in these sessions: what is not said.

Minister Escrivá faced it with resignation, almost as if it were that of Balaguer. He had arrived first. He had sat down. He had put his papers in order. I knew I could move on pending work. It is enough to applaud the president or a colleague from time to time. The master in this was Suárez Illana, who, because he was at the Table, did not even have to applaud and Florencio Domínguez's bill about the victims of ETA was almost aired.

The novelty of these sessions is, therefore, in the silence and in the joke. The Wednesday newscasts, when they put on the Congress, they only put jokes. Because the silences do not fit well with the language of TV.

Two examples: a joke today has been the plagiarism of Gabriel Rufián to Vox. The one from ERC has said: “These are not measures of the extreme left, but of extreme necessity”. Iván Espinosa de los Monteros has fit in well, he has laughed and commented on it with his group, who was the one who invented the “this is not extreme right, but…”.

And an important silence: the Bildu deputies have received more attention than usual when they enter Parliament. They have put the showerhead to ask them about the presence of up to forty terrorists in their electoral alignment for 28-M. no peep

It has its political logic that Bildu does not answer, what were they going to say! What is surprising, despite the custom, is that a PSOE general secretary is silent about that same question. They have been told by Cuca Gamarra and Inés Arrimadas. Contrary to what usually happens, Sánchez has not read the replies. Because there was nothing to read, there was nothing to answer.

Without realizing it, his answer to both of them has started the same: “I understand your frustration”. Oskar Matute, Mertxe Aizpurua and Jon Iñarritu were smiling. They are, that is undeniable, a state party, as Pablo Iglesias says. With the same influence or more than what the PNV or CiU had been having.

So, the key moment has arrived. When Aitor Esteban asked, Sánchez did open the white folder where he kept the pages written and printed by his Moncloa cabinet. After keeping quiet about the presence of terrorists on the lists, he has sympathized with the PNV for the murder of Mikel Zabalza. Sánchez has cried out against the “dirty war” to the astonishment of the opposition, which did not reproach him for his position against the GAL, but for his silence on the Bildu lists.

And from the deafening silence, which the sports newspapers say, to the joke. It was the turn of the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop. Instead of answering a question as simple as “will the Government back down with the embezzlement reform after the Brussels directive?”, he has begun to teach Latin to those of the PP.

Pedantry is wrong, it takes away votes, but it doesn't hurt from time to time in this Chamber where the level of the parties has long since hit rock bottom. “Your Honor, you always the same. With arguments to man, to the people, to the ignorant…”. To us, as to the PP deputy, the “pink, rosae”, “rosam, roses”, “rosae, rosarum” came to mind.

Although hardly, we have not needed simultaneous translation, but yes dictionary for what was to come, which was better: “Stop discursive anacolutes and get to work!”. Saying “anacoluto” today in Carrera de San Jerónimo is like shooting the ceiling in the 1981 Congress.

With “anacoluto”, according to the RAE, it is said of the “inconsistency in the construction of the discourse”. The strange thing, being this word so good and so precise to explain the liquidity of our politicians, is that this legislature has not been used more.

The problem with polarization is that even jokes can cost the protagonist a nervous breakdown.. All this had happened in front of Escrivá, who continued with his papers, without flinching.. With applause as the only holiday.

Until it was his turn to respond to a PP deputy named Jaime de Olano, who accused him of making the Spanish Administration a “third world” thing.. Escrivá did not care about that, but his veins swelled when he heard his opponent say that more than 260,000 self-employed people run the risk of having to “repay aid.”

“It's a hoax! A hoax!” Minister Escrivá yelled unleashed. His effusiveness was rewarded by his own in the form of applause, but he did not want ovations, but rather to respond and be heard. For this reason, when the clapping of the socialist bench exploded, he shouted by way of interruption: “First example, first example!”. Then the same thing: “Second example! Second example!”

Yolanda Díaz is used to give us free data -public service-.

Yolanda Díaz usually gives us free data -public service-. Today was no less. But these data are often decontextualized. This morning’s data has been tremendously stajanovist. In Spain, there are more and more workers and all of them work a lot: “660 million hours worked”. Will he count as work the control session?

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