What we could call “the game of the three Ps” is deeply rooted in Spanish culture and lately in world political culture. Màrius Carol recalls in his Stories of the scoundrel how at the end of the Franco regime the evils of the country were the journalists, the whores and the police. Recently, Anne Applebaum pointed to three other P's as symptoms of degradation: populism, polarization, and partocracy. Some of these realities appeared in the Spanish chronicle after Pedro Sánchez tried to nullify the echoes of his defeat by calling general elections. But two more negatives should be added: personalism and power.
That call for elections may be more intelligent and cunning than what the critical opinions say. Today, the vote is so divided that anything can happen. But that his mere intention is the main national debate, if not the only one, indicates the extent to which this country has entered a 50-day period of uncertainty. Uncertainty produces a state of nerves, and nerves lead to the perversions that accompany the normal struggle for power.
First perversion, personalism. Leaders override organizations, if not ideas. The PSOE is no longer the PSOE, blurred and supplanted by Pedro Sánchez, who made the great decision "in conscience", not after consulting his party. The PP has more identity, or at least appears to, but it is clear that the revived “Feijoo effect” has more pull than the party brand. Sumar, Yolanda Díaz's invention, depends more on the attractiveness of its founder than on her ideology or her weak organization. Only Vox is stronger than Abascal, according to the surveys.
Second characteristic of the moment, polarization. If it was already disturbing, the main political agents raise it to a level never seen before. Feijóo does it when he intends to repeal sanchismo. And Sánchez does it when he tries to expel the PP from the democratic sphere with his definition of the extreme right. Since this will be the script of the campaign, let us get ready for the maximum tension and the radical division of politics into two irreconcilable blocs. The damage to dialogue and consensus will be noticeable. And Sánchez, who accuses the right of being the Spanish version of Trump, is the most Trumpist, because he started the campaign with a fake: announcing that his opponents will accuse him of punching. It is clear that these 50 days we will not see debates about the country's needs, but rather the spread of grievances, the encouragement of fear, and the resurrection of the sad memory Doberman.
And third annotation, the power of the president. His speech before his parliamentary groups had paragraphs that seemed to have been written by Pablo Iglesias. Above all, the reference to the news media that, according to his criteria, pushes the demolition of the progressivism that he represents. In summary, three P's to define the political moment, although I'm afraid that the word that is waiting to come out is "muddy". No other has been discovered that is so useful for the fundamental need of the blocs in contention: to mobilize.
