This text belongs to 'Penínsulas', the newsletter that Enric Juliana sends to the readers of 'La Vanguardia' every Tuesday. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
Poland is on the path to an important political change, if the opposition's victory in Sunday's legislative elections is officially certified today. And in Spain, the investiture of the President of the Government depends on the parliamentary vote of the 'Poles'; rather, from a part of them. Poland and Spain. We are talking about two countries of similar demographic weight, each located at a geographical end of the European Union. Poland is changing and in Spain there is a negotiation underway to decide the political future of the country, a negotiation that is not yet resolved. Everything indicates that there is traffic jam at the moment.
[Polacos was an expression widely used for years in various places in Spain to refer to Catalans, in an ironic or derogatory tone. It may have had its origin in compulsory military service, which brought together young people from all over the country and from different social conditions. I lived that experience at the end of the seventies in Almería. When we Catalan recruits spoke among ourselves in Catalan, the officers became enraged and there were soldiers who were stupefied, since they had never heard a conversation in Catalan and at school they had not been taught that languages other than Spanish are spoken in Spain. “They speak strangely, as if they were Polish.” There is another curious coincidence: phonetically the word Barça is pronounced very similar to Warsaw (Warsaw). 'Polònia' has been the title of a political humor program on Catalan public television with a huge audience for years].
Real Poles have voted for change. The official scrutiny, which was concluding last night, indicates a victory for the opposition, in the Spanish way. The party with the most votes, the ultranationalists of Law and Justice, have lost their absolute majority and cannot win it with the support of the Confederation, a far-right group with libertarian touches. The second most voted party, the Civic Coalition, of Donald Tusk, a liberal-European platform, could form a government with the centrists of the Third Way and the Left and Democrats platform, with a social democratic emphasis. The task of forming a government corresponds to the president of the republic, Andrzej Duda, who belongs to Law and Justice. We'll see how things develop in the coming weeks. The ultranationalists, who also control the Constitutional Court, will move heaven and earth to maintain power.
The polls have spoken and Europeanism has won in Poland. That is especially important news. A transcendental fact, I dare to write. He has won the vote of the big cities, led by the capital, Warsaw, the main stronghold of the Civic Coalition. The electoral districts in the west of the country, more favorable to Europeanism, have won. The young people have won, and they have voted en masse for the opposition parties. Citizen mobilization has won, since participation has increased ten points. And he seems to have become fed up after eight years of suffocating hegemony of Polish ultranationalism, which has exerted strong pressure through the public media and control of the courts. Law and Justice tried to win the elections by making them coincide with a referendum with four questions on immigration and relations with foreigners, especially designed to mobilize their voters. The referendum has failed by not reaching 50% participation.
He has lost the campaign that presented Tusk, a man from the European People's Party, as the 'incarnation of evil'. He has lost Polish nationalism exacerbated and mixed with Catholic fundamentalism. He has lost the European extreme right, which had its main guiding light in Poland. The Hungarian leader Víktor Orban has lost, who is left without his main ally in Eastern Europe. Vox loses. Georgia Meloni and the Brothers of Italy lose. And, above all, Manfred Weber, president of the European People's Party, loses, who in recent months has piloted a policy of rapprochement with the extreme right with a view to the creation of a new conservative bloc within the European Parliament, a strategy that has had the support of the Spanish Popular Party.
Weber's enveloping strategy - first Italy, then Sweden, then Finland, then Greece, then Spain... - led to the political isolation of the current German federal government and a complicated situation in France. In 'Penínsulas' we have talked about it several times. That strategy was broken in Spain on July 23 and now everything indicates that it has failed in Poland. Tusk has been contrary to that line. At all times he has spoken out against the pact with the extreme right. “Whoever flirts with the extreme right ends up thinking like them,” he declared a few months ago.
There is one fact that began to catch my attention days ago: the absence of messages of support for Tusk from the Spanish Popular Party on the eve of the elections. It is customary between twinned parties in the same European current to send messages of support. Alberto Núñez Feijóo encouraged, for example, the recent victory of Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Greece. Giorgia Meloni spoke at a Santiago Abascal rally in Valencia, ardently wishing for Vox to enter the future government of Spain. Social Democrats always support each other.
The PP reacted yesterday afternoon, when the vote count already indicated a more than probable victory for the Polish opposition. Borja Sémper expressed his satisfaction with the result, although the Civic Coalition is not the most voted force. A year ago, Tusk was much more generous with the Spanish PP. In April 2022, he sent a video to the Seville congress, offering his support to Alberto Núñez Feijóo. A few weeks before, however, the Polish leader had criticized the PP's pact with Vox in Castilla y León.
Tusk has another facet. Being president of the European Council, a position now occupied by the Belgian Charles Michel, he actively intervened in the Catalan crisis of October 2017. Tusk first asked Mariano Rajoy to cease the use of force in Catalonia and then asked Carles Puigdemont not to carry out a unilateral declaration of independence during his appearance before Parliament on October 10, a week after the King's speech. Puigdemont listened to him. He made a verbal threat and immediately afterwards said that that decision was frozen. (There is a famous photographic sequence that remembers that moment). Then things got complicated again in Catalonia.
Now, in Spain, the other 'Poles' have the floor.
Manfred Weber, president of the European People's Party, comes out badly from the Polish elections, given his strategy of approaching the extreme right, explicitly supported by Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The situation is paradoxical: Tusk's victory strengthens the EPP in the European Council and at the same time disempowers its current leading group. Weber cannot aspire today to preside over the next European Commission. Ursula von der Leyen could get re-election within a few months. Von der Leyen, however, just suffered a setback on her recent trip to Israel.
The president of the Commission expressed her firm support for the Government of Israel in the face of the Hamas attack and stressed the right of Israelis to defend themselves, without any mention of the population of Gaza and international humanitarian law. This foray into foreign policy caused immediate discomfort in various European capitals. And immediately after came the correction. The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, who maintains terrible relations with Von der Leyen, called a telematic meeting of the 27 on Saturday to establish a common position: support for Israel against terrorism with the demand for respect for international humanitarian law. It is the position defended these days by Spain, which the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, explained in the interview with La Vanguardia published last Sunday. In that same interview, Albares described the relations of the Spanish Government with the president of the European Commission as “excellent.”
When judging the position of a German democrat regarding aggression against Israel, history must always be taken into account. The most terrible of stories. Von der Leyen has been corrected, but her chances of re-election remain intact today... if she decides to defend her candidacy after the European elections in June 2024.
