“The homeland of a Christian does not belong to this world.” Unamuno, without a doubt the Spanish intellectual most obsessed with spiritual transcendence, an eternal dissident in the (useless) protest against the mortality that accompanies the human condition, could not even imagine that among the politicians of the last half century, who often confuse the self-government with sovereignty and the place of birth with destiny, a belief exactly opposite to yours would end up becoming generalized, regardless of your ideology: the homeland, above all, is my village.
The political balance of 45 years of autonomous State has pitted, almost from the beginning, the sovereigntists with the defenders of state recentralization for a kingdom that, as Alejo Carpentier would say, is unequivocally of this world. Materialistic. Both sides agree, however, on one thing: their deep disappointment with self-government, although for different reasons; To the former it does not seem to be enough; To the latter it is excessive.
In Andalusia, which gained first-level autonomy in the early 1980s with all the cultural and environmental conditions against it, the legacy of this historical period, increasingly distant, in addition to a fracture in social terms that remains unsealed , has caused immense disappointment. Institutional autonomy exists, but it is far from being a popular issue. The white and green flags turned yellow.
Southern nationalism is socially and politically residual. Among the Andalusian deputies and senators elected in Cortes – 61 in the Lower House and 32 in the Upper House – obedience to the party, whatever it may be, outweighs origin and identity. The statutory impulse – the second autonomous charter, reformed in 2007, was not voted affirmatively by even a third of the voters – is underground and regionalism is limited to folkloric expressions.
And yet, among the politicians of Southern Spain, the story about the birth of autonomy has become for five years now a perpetual guerrilla war, increasingly bitter. The situation is analogous to that of a violent religious schism: two opposing sides that claim their own orthodoxy, call those who are supposed to be their brothers in faith as heretics, and profess their respective dogmas in a monopoly regime.
The polarization between the autonomous priests is maximum. This last 4D, Flag Day, when the 1977 demonstrations in favor of self-government are remembered, some have denied holy communion to others. More than a heresy – everyone proclaims to defend Andalusianism – it is an authoritarian split. The left-wing parties (PSOE and Sumar), aligned with the interests of their state organizations, claim an instrumental autonomous memory, where they are the only protagonists of the story.
The right, on the other hand, which during the last five years has turned the PP into the common home of a new Andalusianism where conservatives, liberals (rather rare) and some historical Andalusians coexist without conflict, has opened the story inherited from the PSOE to, without deny any of the historical patriarchs, socially broaden their political profile.
Moreno Bonilla, who as soon as he arrived at the Quirinale took refuge in the tutelary figure of the former UCD minister Manuel Clavero Arévalo, has been photographed with everyone. He has decorated politicians such as Rafael Escuredo, the first president of the PSOE. He has presented a biography about Plácido Fernández Viagas, in charge of pre-autonomy. And he has established a bridge with second generation (retired) Andalusianism, represented by Alejandro Rojas Marcos.
Moreno Bonilla uses the remains of this sentimental Andalusianism to strengthen his electoral hegemony, which began as fragile to transform into the absolute majority in the last regional and local elections. The PSOE and the Sumar franchise –Por Andalucía– do not accept this competition: they do not tolerate anyone challenging them for a leading role (preterite) artificially fed for decades thanks to the interested control of regional budgets.
The schismatic crisis reflects well the polarization of southern politics: a PP clearly on the offensive, gaining space, which has adopted the historical discourse of the Andalusian PSOE on the equality of Spanish territories, and which directs its Andalusian fervor against the parliamentary majority of the investiture, and the left trapped in the contradiction of defending in Andalusia pacts that are going to modify the existing autonomous status quo.
The right, in reality, has done nothing more than take up the flag that the left, with Susana Díaz first and then in the Juan Espadas era, left abandoned in 2018, when the socialists lost the San Telmo Palace and the break occurred. (sectarian) between the primitive leaders of Podemos and the PCE. Religion (Andalusia) is the least important thing in this war between Sunnis and Shiites. What matters to them is the authorship of the Gospel and the Vatican.
The enthronement of Pedro Sánchez, to whom Susana Díaz, after her failure in the federal PSOE primaries, had to surrender to delay her execution, precipitated a reversal of positions between the different political actors. The socialists narrowed their autonomist discourse as Sánchez linked himself to sovereignism and the PP, once Cs was swallowed up, accelerated the autonomist conversion that had begun with Javier Arenas.
Since then, each party has created its own saints list – the right takes photographs with all the blessed, but claims Clavero Arévalo above all; the left clings to the ephemeral figure of Escuredo – they commemorate his faith on a different day – the PSOE, 28F; the right, the 4D, the date claimed by the PA– and they rewrite regional history in a biased memory exercise.
The left does not recognize the right's participation in the process – its predecessors were present in the 1977 demonstrations, but they left when the autonomy referendum was called – and this, in turn, highlights the distance that separates the discourse of the socialists historical figures of the current leaders of the PSOE, soldiers of Ferraz's interests.
The schism is unsolvable because it is a (political) question of life and death. The socialists, forced to defend Sánchez's agreements with the independence movement, know that they are navigating in socially hostile waters and that, for the duration of the new legislature in Madrid, the situation will progressively worsen. They fear becoming like the UCD of 1980.
Each transfer that Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz accept to prevent their parliamentary majority from falling apart – based on territorial demands – will cause Andalusia to sink much further into absolute irrelevance. And on the contrary: the political decisions of the Moncloa in favor of the sovereignists in Catalonia and Euskadi will feed the hegemony of the Andalusian PP, which has become the only defender of an autonomous State without asymmetries.
