François de La Rochefoucauld, owner of a ruthless knowledge about true human nature, said that one of the multiple modalities of affectation –that private defect that needs to be manifested in public– consists in denying the greater one and preaching that one is not at all presumptuous. , but humble, even if it is with the greatest vehemence possible. The description of the great French moralist defines, with magical accuracy, the intimate character of Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, who wants everyone to call him Juanma – here we are not going to give him that pleasure – and says he will never forget his roots in Alhaurín El Grande (Málaga) –although he was born in Barcelona–, but more and more frequently he stars in Napoleonic-style rituals that dilute the credibility of the story he has chosen to embody.
During his first term (cohabitation with Cs) it happened the day he quarreled in public, and at an open microphone, with his director of Communication for talking to some journalists while he was giving a press conference: “When the president of The Board must remain silent. The use of the third person was an express manifestation of the end of the spell. He would later reoffend at his second coronation before the baroque façade of the Palacio de San Telmo, where he organized a Versailles court show to take the oath of office.
It is evident that power puffs up and absolute majorities levitate politicians. The Chairman of the Board knows this and has prohibited his team from using this adjective. Instead they use the term “sufficient”. Pure tactical modesty, in any case, because the head of the PP in Andalusia rides on a contradiction: he simulates a humilitas that, although it seems taken from a text of San Ambrosio de Milan, is not always equivalent to the virtue of modesty.
It is known that behind any village mayor, even the most remote village, there is always a potential statesman. "I'm a genius, but only I know," Bukowski wryly wrote. To make such an enormous talent known to those close to you, it is necessary to preach it
outside and walk it outside the terroir. That is why you have to go (with a paid entourage) to the centers of power, where the laurels and attributes of the true heroes are displayed.
This is what Moreno Bonilla has done these days in Brussels, which is the Mecca that is closest to the regional and sovereignist politicians. The President of the Board has traveled to the official capital of the EU four times in the last four years. On all occasions with a discreet institutional profile and without achieving great political achievements. There he has been attended by his colleagues from the European PP or, failing him, by professional protocol officials.
Nothing unusual: the tours of the regional viceroys to the stages of the great European theater, whose hierarchs are as courteous as they are immanent, have a clear propaganda objective conceived not as a function of the destination, but of the place of origin. They are pilgrimages, just like the medieval ones, in which the news of the trip counts much more, given that the importance of the older pilgrim in the strolled square rarely goes beyond the testimonial, than the fruits obtained.
For the designers of the autofiction that surrounds Moreno Bonilla, these expeditions to Brussels are the confirmation that “Andalusia now counts in Europe”. There is no evidence for or against this thesis, but it does not matter: the first requirement to wear a costume is to accept that the habit may not make the monk entirely, but –undoubtedly– it contributes. “The President of the Junta is going to be permanently in Brussels raising his voice in defense of the interests of Andalusia”, announces San Telmo, who follows in this sense the manual of the Catalan independence movement: acting in matters of foreign policy –a competence exclusive to the State – as if the great autonomy of the South enjoyed political sovereignty.
Moreno, who spoke before the European Committee of the Regions, a body without legislative influence, defended in Brussels "co-governance", that strange concept introduced by Moncloa on the occasion of the management of the coronavirus pandemic, but which has no legal basis constitutional. The Magna Carta speaks only of "cooperation" between the autonomies and the State, but does not grant the condition of sovereign subject to the regions. All the issues on Moreno Bonilla's European agenda – the problem with the fishing grounds suffered by fishermen, the energy issue, the drought or the claim to reschedule European Next Generation funds – depend on the central Executive. They are not their own skills.
The effects of this fourth embassy to Brussels are therefore limited to the purely photogenic, although the Quirinale transmits through the dissemination channels at its disposal – the official media and the regional press – the thesis that the president of the Board he has become a continental leader, something like the new Medici of southern Tuscany.
The fable of the Andalusian Quattrocento, in which the PP has been installed for a long time, does not correspond neither with the objective facts –statistics deny such a dream on a daily basis– nor with many of the decisions adopted by Moreno Bonilla, such as legislating in favor of the irrigators that have left the wetlands of Doñana Park (Huelva) without water, an initiative that contradicts the messages of sustainability preached by the Chairman of the Board.
It is not the only inconsistency: before the European forums, the leader of the Andalusian PP has defended the imminent "energy sovereignty" of Andalusia thanks to renewables, ignoring that it was his political party (during the Rajoy stage) who established a sun tax . A professional politician, like any good actor, is capable of getting out of all these troubles by taking advantage of the exquisite education of the European interlocutors or giving himself grass.
Moreno Bonilla has done both, explaining that in the European Committee of the Regions "it has had a great impact that in Andalusia we have found a path, which is difficult to find in Europe, to overcome left and right-wing populism". Immodesty accompanied by adolescent candor: "The most important intangible of this trip is that the President of the European Parliament knows who Juanma is." Again, the third person.
In Andalusia not everyone shares this opinion. The opposition, from Vox to the PSOE, have criticized Moreno Bonilla's European tours, conceived for his exclusive personal benefit. Sometimes too much public exposure helps shape your caricature better than your own political opponents would. Who shows too much, gets naked. The Chairman of the Board portrays himself as a simple, familiar man, raised in a town, highly educated and smiling. Inside him, however, there seems to be a sire without Fouché.
