It fascinates me to search among the greguerías of Ramón Gómez de la Serna for phrases that are precise darts that have survived the passage of time. Listening these days to José María Aznar and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who link their complaints as if they were the duo Pimpinela, I found one that should be put on a magnet on their fridges. She is the one who says: "She had such a bad memory that she forgot that she had a bad memory and remembered everything." I am convinced that the fashionable couple of the Spanish right seem to have forgotten the pacts with the PNB, but they certainly have them very much in mind. Within a few hours of each other, Aznar described them as "bounty seekers who want a consultation in the Basque Country and a general freedom from terrorists". For his part, Ayuso has declared that there are racist behaviors in the PNB, which are present in its foundations.
If there is a party that does not deceive anyone, it is the formation chaired by Andoni Ortúzar. Aitor Esteban formulated it publicly in Congress: "The PNB is not a party with a vocation to govern in Spain, our political responsibility is in Euskadi". Aznar knows this perfectly, that, after Majestic's pact with CiU, he also sought the support of PNB. The PP won the elections in 1996, but was left with 156 seats, far from an absolute majority and needed the votes of the Catalan and Basque nationalists, who passed the plate. Pujol and Arzalluz had been attacked hard by the right during the campaign, but the next day they found all the thanks. It is Arzalluz's phrase: "We have taken more things from Aznar in 14 days than from the PSOE in 13 years". His loot was impressive: improvements in the quota, the transfer of special taxes (alcohol, tobacco and hydrocarbons) or the return of the nationalists' historical heritage.
But the PNB also approved the taxes for Mariano Rajoy in 2017, hoping to finish the legislature, when Ayuso was starting to walk the corridors of Genoa with aspirations. Gabriel García Márquez explained it very well: memory removes the bad memories and magnifies the good ones and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the past.
