Time ends up proving the classics right. In this case, to Calderón de la Barca: “Whoever gives benefits to an ungrateful person, what he sows in niceties he reaps in grievances.” The agreement of the (alleged) progressive government signed this week between the PSOE and Sumar, hours before the Consell of the Republic was in favor of blocking the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, gives the impression of having been conceived as a self-help ceremony. When things are uncertain, it is necessary to organize public professions of faith, once the sacrifices have been exhausted, given the (certain) risk that the parish will become discouraged and the gods will be deaf.
Subject to the capricious finger of the former president of the Generalitat, the most visited fugitive that past centuries have seen and those to come will undoubtedly see, the leaders of the two political organizations that share the government (in office) needed to color the negotiations with candid social messages ( without a certain outcome) that are basically dealing with the territorial question based on the interpretation of it by the Catalan independence movement, which is the one who has the votes that the socialist candidate and the vice president need.
Little or almost nothing is still known about the exact terms of a possible agreement, beyond the changing orbital phase of the amnesty, the referendum (call it a consultation) and the historical debt that Junts estimates at 450,000 million. The PSOE does not dare to say what it thinks. And Sumar, who proposes an amnesty inspired by German jurisprudence, has endorsed the victimhood of the independence movement, without calibrating the political impact that an asymmetric investiture agreement will have on the rest of the territories of Spain, most of which are now governed by PP and Vox. .
On the sidelines of the Senate's multiple soliloquies ceremony last week, in which Ferraz left the head of the PSOE in the South, Juan Espadas, in complete solitude, the unrest in the regional chancelleries continues to grow. Especially in Andalusia, completely absent from the new progressive agenda that the socialists and Sumar presented this Tuesday.
There is no express reference to the great autonomy of the South. Sánchez and Díaz, on the other hand, do cite Valencia as one of the communities that are the worst financed. That whoever aspires to continue governing – as long as Puigdemont does not decide otherwise – does not mention the most populated region of the country, and the third in economic terms, cannot be understood as coincidental. Since the creation of the State of Autonomies, Andalusia has been a political counterweight to the insistent demands of Northern nationalism.
This role has not changed, although it is now less intense and whoever defends this flag lately, after the socialists abandoned it, just like a soldier who obeys superior orders, is the PP. It is not the only disturbing silence. The promise of PSOE and Sumar to reform the regional financing system, unfulfilled by themselves during the last five years, transfers a question of a strict institutional nature to the party sphere.
The new agenda of the hypothetical progressive government, which lacks a stable parliamentary majority without the participation of Junts, ERC, BNG, Bildu and the PNV, does not clarify which are the other autonomies that are poorly financed – apart from Valencia – nor does it establish no objective criteria to guide a politically complex reform that Moncloa has never wanted to undertake voluntarily. Why not before? Why now?
And above all: Is Andalusia underfinanced in the opinion of PSOE and Sumar? This is the first question raised by the text of the agreement between both political forces, which has received the first criticism not from the right, but from the left: Adelante Andalucía, the minority party of Teresa Rodríguez, considers the absence of references to the South of Spain both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of financing.
PSOE and Sumar only mention their desire (very generic) to improve the railway connection between Bobadilla and Algeciras, eternally postponed by successive central governments despite being vital for the busiest port in Spain. They completely ignore train connections in Granada, Almería or Huelva, while, with their idea of prohibiting intermediate flights from peripheral regions, they potentially affect airports such as Seville and Malaga and would prevent expanding connections to Jerez and Almería. A contradiction in terms of territorial deconcentration that forces travelers from the South to pass through Madrid at a time of chronic collapse on high-speed lines.
Andalusia seems to be left out of the political priorities of PSOE and Sumar. It is therefore worth asking what purpose the 27 Andalusian deputies of these two political forces are for – of the 61 representatives elected from the eight southern provinces – who sit in the Congress of Deputies. The right, which has made the 'in fieri' agreement between the left and the Basque and Catalan independentists one of the priorities of its opposition political strategy, will not take long to display the flag of aggrieved autonomism.
It is likely that within a month they will organize a tide that will leave the offices and institutional atriums and try to take to the streets. 4D, the day on which the historic demonstrations in defense of Andalusian self-government are commemorated, is approaching. By then there will either be a government hostile to Andalusia – according to the Quirinale of San Telmo's perspective – or we will be on the eve of a second electoral repetition. It all depends on Puigdemont.
