In the cinema, escapades often end badly. This is the case in At the End of the Escape (À bout de souffle), by Godard, with Belmondo and Seberg, and in The Escape (Il sorpasso), by Risi, with Gassman and Trintignant; that one, pretentious and overrated, this one, extraordinary, but both united by a sad ending. It will be different –perhaps– the end of Pedro Sánchez's break. And I say escapade without pejorative intent, because the race led by Pedro Sánchez was brave and escaping after his ousting by the old guard of the PSOE, when he started alone with great determination and courage.
This is Sánchez's great asset: possessing a courage that his competitors have lacked: one, a superb man with a certain cultural varnish (only varnish); others, irrelevant; and the rest, opaque. Total, that Sánchez still has cards so that his escape ends well, he repeats a coalition government with the same partners, and, after his second term, accesses a high international position, since he does not detract from some predecessors. An impeccable cursus honorum.
Now, the question to be asked is this: how will Spain – the nation and its State – be at the end of Sánchez's escape? It is impossible to get the prediction right, but three features of his legacy can be anticipated: 1) Success of some of his social policies. 2) Very serious institutional degradation causing a no less serious erosion of the system of representative democracy. 3) Conversion of the Socialist Party into a populist party, which acclaims its leader and tends to concentrate all the powers of the State in the executive. The 1978 regime will then be at the end of its scrapping, a process that has already begun a long time ago.
In any case, it is unnecessary to cry over the milk spilled for so many years, since before Sánchez came to power. Because it would be unfair to attribute only to him and the PSOE all the responsibility. I have devoted many articles to criticizing what I judge to be Sánchez's errors due to his alliances, assignments and pacts; Said remains and I do not retract.
But another question must also be asked: where have the Spanish liberal-conservatives been during all these years, if there are any, committed to freedom and justice, respectful of the truth (I am thinking of the Atocha attacks), exact law-abiding (I am thinking of the General Council of the Judiciary) and intelligent connoisseurs of the Catalan reality (I am thinking of the collection of signatures in 2006)?
I do not ask this question out of a petty pretense of impartiality and equidistance. My criticism of the two great Spanish parties is based on the conviction that their selfishness and vile partisan interests have been, and are, the determining causes of the deterioration of our institutions, the erosion of our democracy and, what is even worse , of the growing deterioration of the idea of Spain as a nation and of the strength, historically weak, of its State.
At the beginning of the transition, the fear that we all felt made us behave with a certain amount of sanity and we reached pacts – those of Moncloa and the constitutional one – which put our country's ship free to our own astonishment and general admiration. But, when the fear disappeared, we fell back into the usual Cainite confrontations and, in the end, we are back to where we used to be.
"We will never compromise," a voice cried out some time ago. The die was cast. A century ago, the miserable and criminal radicalization of politicians led this country to disaster. Now a similar radicalization is manifested in some parties that do not detract from those of then in intellectual poverty, moral misery and political folly. The outcome will not be the same because at this point in history it cannot be, but an unpredictable rupture will not be avoided. What I do know is that, on this path, we will abort in what is now Spain all hope of coexistence in peace and justice. Who will be to blame for the failure of Spain as a political project? Between all of us we killed her and she died alone.
