History, big and small, draws circles and writes paradoxes. These days in Madrid we are experiencing scenes that seem taken from the Catalan process. Great demonstrations. Yesterday, a gigantic peaceful demonstration in Cibeles. Highway closures. Aggressive concentrations near the PSOE headquarters on Ferraz Street for two weeks. The extreme right has installed a show-room in Ferraz whose inaugural ribbon was cut by Esperanza Aguirre.
Permanent mobilization. It is the slogan launched by José María Aznar. This dynamic will not stop until the European elections on June 9, 2024, in which there will be a verification of the relationship of forces. Throughout Europe the relationship of forces will be verified. They are going to be exciting elections. This dynamic of permanent harassment by the new government will tend to compact in the first months a very complex parliamentary majority, whose anatomy shows us three competing couples: ERC and Junts, PNV and Bildu, Sumar and Podemos.
The Great Moscow State Circus had five rings. The legislature that now begins will also have five: the socialist track (there will begin to be movements in the PSOE due to the possibility that this will be the last term of Pedro Sánchez), the Basque track, the Catalan track, the purple track and the great track of the right, with the beasts of Trumpism waiting for the North American presidential elections in November 2024 to arrive, five months after the European elections.
The Basque track is the first that will be tested at the polls. It will be before summer on a date not yet determined. PNV and EH Bildu today compete basically in the field of management. Nothing to do with the Basque politics of twenty years ago. The PNV has to fight against the rust generated by so many years in power and at this time the continuity of Iñigo Urkullu as a candidate for the presidency of the Basque Government may not be entirely certain.
The PNV could be thinking about a coup d'état. The decision corresponds, as always, to the Euskadi Buru Batzar. Old laws. The Lehendakari heads the government, but he does not have the last word in the party.
EH Bildu is not in a hurry, or appears not to be in a hurry. In an interview published yesterday in the newspaper Gara, Arnaldo Otegi asked for “prudence and demand” in the face of the new Spanish political situation. Yesterday Bildu gathered thousands of people in Bilbao in favor of the Basque nation.
Prudence. An attitude that stopped being fashionable in Catalonia a few years ago. The latest known polls place the PSC in a solid first position and the independence movement with difficulties in renewing the absolute majority in the Parliament. But there is still more than a year to go until the end of the legislature. Junts and ERC, sleepless competitors, are going to be demanding with Sánchez and it will be necessary to see to what extent they will take into account the prudence that Otegi advises. At the moment, the Catalan electorate seems to be rewarding the policy of conciliation.
Junts will be demanding and at the same time will return to management issues. The Foment del Treball employer association has offered Carles Puigdemont advice on economic and tax issues, as Manel Pérez explained last Monday in La Vanguardia. This is fundamental information to understand what the background movements are on the Catalan court.
On the purple track, two characters with a great passion for politics are settling a very personal battle: Yolanda Díaz and Pablo Iglesias. Díaz did not want to place herself under Iglesias' orders when he pointed her out, in March 2021, as a future candidate for Unidas Podemos. Díaz patiently forged his own project, which has ended up marginalizing Podemos, today reduced to five deputies.
Iglesias feels betrayed, believes that Díaz has acted in concert with the PSOE and certain media groups, and does not plan to give up. That is the core of a fight that began months ago, which had very serious costs for the left in the municipal and regional elections last May. The first cause of the disaster of 28-M, a perhaps decisive event for the political future of the country, was the fight between the embryo of Sumar and Podemos, a fight that is now repeated before the imminent formation of the new government. The PSOE has decided to recover the Equality portfolio, whatever it may be. Díaz wants to discipline Podemos. And Podemos wants to vindicate itself in the European elections in June. That brittle left pillar may be the true Achilles heel of the new government. Considering Podemos dead may have been a premature assessment.
The stability of the new government will depend on these three competing couples (PNV-Bildu, ERC-Junts, Sumar- Podemos). They are not closed couples, however. We will see exchanges. Junts and PNV will agree on economic and fiscal issues against the PSOE-Sumar labor axis. ERC will seek the complicity of the five Podemos deputies, and we will have to see how Bildu manages prudence and demands.
Very complicated. Yes. That parliamentary majority will tend to compact in the face of the right-wing offensive on all fronts, although we will also see approaches from Alberto Núñez Feijóo to the Junts-PNV axis. Until June, cohesion will prevail. Anyone who jumps too much can fall into the water on June 9, the date of the first revalidation.
