The best way out for Spain of the political situation generated by the last general elections is – in my opinion – for the PP to favor the investiture of Sánchez by abstaining in the second vote. But this is just one specific, albeit important, episode of a change in the general orientation of the PP, which requires a long view and which must be defined by three attitudes:
1. Clarification of its relationship with Vox, materialized in a total rejection of any pact with this party due to its condition as a radical populist that distances the PP from its vocation of centrality.
2. Avoidance of constitutional blocking maneuvers, such as his irrational and sustained opposition to the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary.
3. Establishment of a negotiating proposal to face the Catalan problem, which in reality is not such, but rather the Spanish problem of the territorial structure of the State, a condition of Spanish politics for more than a century. The importance of this fact is such that, for example, it has determined the last electoral result: the PSC has given victory to the PSOE, having become the refuge party for a large part of the Catalan right, orphaned since the end of CiU as a result of the process. Therefore, it deserves a separate paragraph.
Today the PP has little more than a token presence in Catalonia, due to the absence of a clear integrating project, which starts from the frank acceptance of a determining fact: the secessionist will of a significant sector of Catalan society.
With no other intention than to provide an index of the issues to be addressed and agreed upon, I reiterate a scheme repeated a thousand times to which this project could adhere, within the framework of a federal State with a Senate endowed –as a true territorial chamber– with broad decision-making powers:
1. Recognition of Catalonia as a historical and cultural nation.
2. Exclusive “identity” powers of the Generalitat in language, education and culture, within the framework of the Constitution and with faithful compliance with court rulings.
3. Financing: a) Setting a ceiling on the contribution to the solidarity fund (either indicating a percentage, or due to the strict application of the principle of ordinality) and b) Creation of a shared tax agency.
4. Consult Catalan citizens about their acceptance or rejection of this proposal. I add for those who are scandalized on both sides of the river that, to negotiate, the first thing to take into account -according to Josep Tarradellas- is what the other party will never give up: Catalan identity, for some, and the unity of Spain , for others. A transaction always hurts everyone, because there are reciprocal concessions of something viscerally felt as their own, but it is fruitful.
The realistic implementation of a project designed with a long view demands to be executed with a short step. Thus, I think that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has rushed by demanding a "responsible dialogue" from Pedro Sánchez for the "stability of Spain", because the country "does not deserve an ungovernable situation or a blockade".
It is true, but Feijóo has to start by doing what Sánchez will never be willing to do, despite the fact that the PP is the party with the most votes: facilitate the investiture of the adversary through his own abstention. If the PP abstains for the sake of governability in Spain, its credibility, as well as the moral authority of its leader, will increase and facilitate its subsequent political action.
Facts and not words. It is the hour of the moderates and their leadership is vacant. It will be occupied by that politician who thinks what he is going to say before saying it, who then says what he thinks and who tries to do what he says. That is, the one who has credibility, or what is the same: moral authority.
And finally, a good mood is required, something more than keeping the forms, although these have also been abandoned. It takes sharpness, irony and a point of humor. And we must flee, for this reason, from the personalization of politics, among other reasons because our current leaders do not give so much. Thus, for example, "repealing sanchismo" is a sovereign nonsense, since the current drift of the PSOE is only an episode of temporary radicalization, recurring in the honorable and more than hundred-year-old history of this axial party, which does not hide or diminish its repeated essential contribution to the government of Spain and to the realization of the ideals of peace, freedom and justice.
