The great calamities happen before our eyes, but they are invisible to us because we are too close to things to understand them in their absolute integrity. This is, said in a condensed way, what has happened to the president of the Junta de Andalucía in the Doñana affair, which has become the first major stumbling block in the almost triumphant five years that he has been occupying the San Telmo Palace.
This week, after its adviser and spokesman, Ramón Fernández Pacheco, met with the European authorities, advancing an appointment that seemed to be in no hurry and suddenly became urgent, the fight between Moncloa and the Junta was seen for sentencing. .
The (political) war between Pedro Sánchez and Moreno Bonilla has just begun, but the first assault – the feasibility of the controversial law that seeks to legalize the irregular occupation of irrigated land in the Natural Park surroundings – has resulted in an apparent victory of the President of the Government, although the future of Doñana is as dry as a week before.
Brussels, like the spectators of the Roman circus, gave its thumbs down and the Board had to swallow its diktat, amplified from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, which a few days before had dedicated thick epithets – “harasser” and “gentleman” – to the President of the Board that he had not used with any other regional representative, especially the Catalan one.
San Telmo – and in this he is right – complains about the treatment received from the ministry, but his electoral adventure in Huelva County, the region where the irregular cultivation of strawberries threatens Doñana, has been shipwrecked, no matter how long the Quirinale want to keep their legislative packet afloat until at least 28M. The one who has sunk it has not been Moncloa, but Brussels. Sánchez, however, can score the goal of having doubled the hand of Moreno Bonilla and, consequently, of Feijóo. With that it's worth it.
More than the merit of the Government, which until now has done neither much nor little to comply with European environmental legislation, the outcome of this battle is due to the demerits of the Junta, which astonishingly misjudged the impact of its legislative initiative, relying on that the tide would only last a few weeks and the criticism would fade over time.
The miscalculation has been colossal. The president of the Board, who last weekend, while the penultimate trumpet of the Apocalypse in Brussels sounded, was already demonstrating, with a spleen that expressed his impotence, willing to amend his own law, has been left at the foot of horses. Almost five years after seizing San Telmo from the PSOE, Moreno Bonilla encountered the principle of universal gravitation for the first time. What goes up, also goes down.
Its absolute majority and the absence of opposition – the Socialists abstained a year ago before an identical parliamentary initiative, which was withdrawn due to the electoral advance – do not allow it to exercise all-encompassing power. Above territorial hegemonies are European laws. And skipping them has image, economic and political consequences.
San Telmo has been calling criticism of his project hoaxes for days, as the storm and pressures have grown. It is a sterile and infantile reaction. Brussels does not understand arguments. Analyze facts and act accordingly. It does not lend itself, as usually happens in Spain, to negotiating a law. Demand that it be complied with and, if it is not done, impose sanctions.
The media propaganda battalion, in this case defensive, of the president of the Board does not have the capacity to shoot much beyond Despeñaperros. Sánchez's decision to make Doñana casus belli – camouflaging his inaction in relation to the drought – and the high sensitivity of Europe in environmental matters led the contest towards an insurmountable wall.
The Board lacks reason and cannot explain its position apart from electoral interests. Moncloa, on the other hand, moved by the same desire (electoral), can hide his great tolerance with Doñana's agony by pretending to be his savior. It is an exact law: if in politics you have to explain your position a lot, the problem is not the adversary's. It's yours.
The electoral revenue of this dispute will be measured on 28M. The PP can take over the council and even the Huelva City Council, both institutions in the hands of the PSOE. But, even in this case, it will also need considerable progress in inland Andalusia, where the transfer of votes in favor of San Telmo does not have the same intensity as in June, so that the reading of the elections is not interpreted as a (partial) amendment ) to the Quirinale.
Moreno Bonilla has lost much more than the political pulse in the Doñana affair. He has delivered, astonishingly, with a parliamentary majority guaranteeing him office until 2026, and with no regional adversaries to overshadow him, what Walter Benjamin called the aura. The mystery that, until the beginning of the 20th century, before the mechanical reproduction of images, characterized art. The sacred singularity of the unrepeatable and the unattainable. The dream of eternity. The old difference between poetry and prose. Now it's deadly.
