The last time I saw Segador, the talking bull in Madrid's Plaza Mayor, was in April 2017. Our conversations had been sparse since our first meeting, a hot June day at the La Torre del Oro bar, when, Shortly after drinking a cup of gazpacho with cumin, I had the impression that a stuffed head was speaking to me. Seven years later, I wander around the Plaza Mayor and dare to enter the premises. Reaper is still there, surrounded by bullfighting images. Almost everything remains the same: the straight professionalism of the waiters and the greenish light radiating from the head of a jet bull at the bottom of the Zarathustra Cave. I drink the gazpacho and I think I'm going into a trance.
Are you here? What does it bring you?
The nostalgia.
Any penance?
It's twenty years and one day.
Explain yourself better.
It has now been twenty years and one day since I arrived in Madrid to dedicate myself to political reporting. April 13, 2004, one month after the attacks of March 11. I found a traumatized city and enormous political tension. A tension that has returned. 2004 lives in 2024.
You must know that I have not missed you. He disappointed me. Why has he returned?
I've already told you. Twenty years have passed since my arrival in Madrid. I have not resisted the temptation to come see him, because these days I remember the time that has passed. Conversations with you helped me organize my ideas...
Do not lie. You came for the first time on a hot day in June, June 2005, if I remember correctly. He was amazed, I talked to him and then he believed he could create a character. A talking bull. A character similar to that talking head with which some smart people from Barcelona tricked Don Quixote. A way to get attention, until he got scared when the jokes started about the journalist talking to a bull. You stopped coming out of fear. Fear of what they will say.
Let's say I wanted to avoid being gored. It is not good to become a caricature. In 2017, the situation was getting very tense.
You won't tell me that things are much better now.
Maybe I've gained self-confidence. Twenty years and one day.
What does he want?
Listen to the voice of Zarathustra.
I am not an oracle. I'm just giving clues.
I know. I think we are approaching a crossroads. The drums of war announce important changes of course.
The European Union is going to change its priorities. La Vanguardia has recently written about it. You haven't come to see me for seven years, but I still pay attention to your newspaper. More defense spending and fewer ecological demands. A less cool European policy is coming. Germany is rearming and the Eastern countries, together, have a lot of weight. The center of gravity is now there. The underlying question is not much of a mystery: will the current Spanish Government be functional to the new military spending demands?
The left-wing coalition was functional to the European pact for recovery and resilience, drawn up in the midst of the epidemic. The Spanish left, allied with the Portuguese left, brought stability to southern Europe. Unidas Podemos did not keep anyone from losing sleep in Berlin. Let's remember how the labor reform was agreed.
That's why Pablo Casado fell. Casado and some other people in Madrid, including some veteran journalists, became convinced that the economy would plummet as a result of the epidemic, taking the 'social-communist' government with it. They did not count on Brussels.
The question is whether the current left-wing government and its fragile parliamentary support can adapt to new European demands. The negotiation of the general State budgets for 2025 will be key.
I see it complicated. The current parliamentary majority goes from Indra to the Garibaldi Tavern. It is a very difficult arc to keep standing in the current circumstances. An arc that goes from the pragmatic managers of the companies owned by the State, most of them close to the PSC, to the four deputies of Podemos. If that block breaks, there are no budgets.
That would be Junts' opportunity to redeem itself from accusations of complicity with Russia, which have taken its toll on the European Parliament.
Don't run so much. The Catalan elections must be held first. And in Catalonia I still see chocolate as thick. The convergent gene, as you call it, is still alive and presents three electoral lists: Junts, the extreme right Aliança Catalana, which was there, latent, and the Alhora group, which would become a regenerationism for disappointed young people. The convergent gene is more resistant than the Chinese Kuomitang. It is reactivated in any way every time the socialists can win.
Your Basque forecast?
It remains to be seen if PNV and PSOE continue to gain a majority. We have to see what the parliamentary majority that gave Sánchez's investiture looks like after the electoral sequence of April, May and June. It remains to be seen if in October, Junts has incentives to discreetly reach an agreement with the Popular Party at the end of the legislature. And we have to see what happens with Sumar and Podemos in the European elections.
The left pillar of the government coalition may be the true weak point of the legislature. I've been saying it for months.
They have gotten into a destructive spiral that is difficult to fix. Too much accumulation of tricks per square meter. Too many fantasies, as the wind of history changed. Yolanda Díaz came to believe that she could be Pedro Sánchez's replacement in the medium term. Pay attention to Izquierda Unida in the coming weeks.
This week I have paid attention to Felipe González. Round table in Lisbon with Mariano Rajoy and the former Portuguese socialist prime minister António Costa, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the April Revolution. Evidently they did not speak of revolution, but of concertation. González feels vindicated in Portugal: the PS lets the center-right govern so that it does not make a pact with the extreme right. There will be pressure for the current Portuguese policy of national coordination to end up being applied in Spain. They will face José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who predicts a four-year term, “no matter what happens in Catalonia.”
Don't go so fast. Since you like maps, I suggest you now pay attention to the Strait of Hormuz, the exit door for hydrocarbons from the Persian Gulf. Iran has begun its retaliation by hijacking an Israeli ship in Hormuz. If the Houthis finish blocking Bab-el-Mandeb and the Iranians put Hormuz under tension, the great Europe-East sea route could be greatly damaged. We may soon be in a general war situation in the Middle East. A terrible war if no one manages to stop the escalation. Everything we've talked about can fade away.
The decline of Adolfo Suárez began in the Strait of Hormuz in 1980. The Iranians harassed Western oil tankers, prices rose again, there was an economic relapse and all of Suárez's enemies, who were already many, conspired to put an end to him. . We could say that without the Hormuz crisis there would not have been the 23-F coup. I see signs in the sky.
Don't freak out and come see me again.
Forgive me?
I amnesty him.
