Sanchismo defeated, but not repealed

We will have plenty of time to try to explain ourselves and explain what happened on July 23. Find out how and why all the surveys failed like sideshow shotguns; how calling a general election in the middle of summer led to the absence of at least a couple of million people from the polls who on any normal date would have voted; where did the voters who decided to support Sánchez come from in the face of the right-wing alternative; why all Sánchez's allies -except Otegi and Sánchez himself- lost votes at large and, nevertheless, seem happy with the result; how Feijóo managed to waste an advantage in two months -the one obtained on May 28- that seemed insurmountable… surely there is some explanation for all this but, at the time of writing these lines, I don't have it. Also, there are a couple of things I'm most concerned about right now..

The first is the need for us to ask ourselves why, for almost a decade now, every time we Spaniards are put in front of a ballot box, we insist on turning the governance of the country into a bloody hieroglyph, increasingly cloudy and convoluted.. What part of the concept “general interests” have we forgotten and refuse to recover?. Why we have made it mission impossible to give a sensible government to this country. And why lately we like to hurt ourselves so much.

I have never hidden my opinion about this president. He seems to me the most toxic character that Spanish politics has produced so far this century (and not precisely because of a shortage of them). But given that he continues four more years in power, it would have been preferable to give him a clear majority and prepare for what was to come.. Instead of that, we have preferred to create ourselves and create a host of paradoxical situations for him: he is the numerical loser of the elections, but, without a doubt, the political winner. He has achieved the miracle of improving his result in votes and seats when he seemed doomed, but he is left in an extremely weak position. He has sucked votes from his allies in massive numbers to swell his party's tally, but he depends on them more than ever..

Given the cold numbers, it is not debatable that Feijóo, who inherited a party that was failing and on the brink of schism, has managed in little more than a year to rebuild a powerful network of territorial power, rise 13 points compared to the previous election and win the largest parliamentary group in the Chamber. But make no mistake: this vote had a single point on the agenda, which was to remove or not remove Sánchez from power. Repeal sanchismo, as Feijóo himself formulated in an expression that always seemed dangerous and unfortunate to me. Well, such a thing has not happened: sanchismo has not been repealed on July 23. In fact, most likely it has obtained four more years of validity.

On the other hand, it is not that the PP has made great merits during this legislature to receive the majority support of society; For that, something more is needed than winning a television debate and trusting that the anti-Sanchista drive will bring power home. For the rest, his career in the opposition has been rather erratic, at times irresponsible (General Council of the Judiciary) and too often self-injurious.

Congress will meet on August 17 (with this composition of the Chamber, predicting who will preside over Congress and who will control the Board is an enigma). After rigorous consultations, the head of state will propose Feijóo as a candidate for the presidency of the Government. There will be an investiture session and Parliament will reject the King's candidate, which has already been the custom to start legislatures in Spain. The only possibility that the leader of the PP manages to obtain more votes in favor than against in this new Congress would come from an outburst of institutional responsibility from a left party that is unthinkable in the Spain of 2023.

Pedro Sánchez will be the second proposed candidate. In order for his investiture to prosper, in addition to the discounted support of the confederation of acronyms nicknamed Sumar, he will have to once again convince the entire cohort of nationalist parties -accredited lovers of the Spanish Constitution- that accompanied him in the previous legislature: ERC, Bildu, PNV, BNG… On this occasion, abstention will not be enough: he will need the affirmative vote of all of them, a strong commitment to the candidate's program and to his political leadership.. The prices to pay for those votes will skyrocket.

From there, whether Spain has a government or whether we fall back into the abyss of the blockade (“Hanging Parliament”, the British call it) and the repetition of the elections will depend solely on the will of one man: a fugitive from justice named Puigdemont who lives in Waterloo, Belgium, and stands out even more than Sánchez's usual allies for his love of Spain and the constitutional order..

I have no doubt that Sánchez will humiliate himself to the extent necessary to win that vote.. He has received the unexpected opportunity to retain power when he already saw it lost and he will not be willing to risk it again in a second round. It was quite audacious to precipitate the call and it went well, partly due to his audacity as the presumed loser and partly due to the astonishment of the foreseen winner. But it's not a matter of trying luck again.

So Puigdemont will get what he wants to get.. It is no small gift for a standard-bearer of anti-Spain to have in his hands the election or not of the president of the country you hate the most: he will administer the privilege with refined sadism, reveling in luck. I wonder what the acting President of the Government would do if, in the middle of negotiating the investiture, the fugitive was planted in Barcelona and gave a massive press conference to present his demands to the candidate.

Well, let's suppose that Sánchez overcomes all the obstacles and gets his second inauguration -which would be his third if we include the motion of no confidence that brought him to power-. He will have to govern with two thirds of the territorial power in the hands of the PP, with the Senate largely dominated by the opposition and, above all, with a drastic limitation, as of January 2024, of the unrestricted spending policies to which he is accustomed.. It will have to do some of the horrible things that it attributed to the government of the extreme right and the extreme right. And he will have to pay the bill for the support of his allies in Parliament on a daily basis, who will act as costaleros on some days and others as gendarmes.. The character does not lack self-confidence for that and much more; It will be necessary to see how far their fellow travelers can withstand the curves of the journey. (Why bother evaluating the sensible alternative that would be to rebuild the agreement in the space of constitutional centrality?. What cannot be cannot be and, furthermore, it is impossible).

In his day, Pablo Iglesias persuaded Sánchez that if he managed to compact a political bloc born from the alliance of the entire left with all the nationalisms, the resulting creature would be electorally unbeatable. The result of these elections proves that Iglesias' approach was solid. For the PP to govern against Frankenstein, it is not enough to be the most voted. It is necessary for the right to have many more votes and seats than the left and for the PP to lead the PSOE by far. Not a rickety 300,000-vote victory, but a much more conclusive one. He had it in his hand and wasted it, it is not known until when.

Pedro Sánchez has managed to take a decisive step in his narcissistic escalation: yesterday he finally acquired the status of leader of a political bloc with a vocation for perpetual power, and his partners publicly recognized him as such. The dream of Iglesias, made true by an intermediary. Congratulations to both.