One of the reasons why both the PP and the PSOE have great difficulty conveying their proposals and political convictions to the citizens, even in the electoral campaigns, is the cultural war promoted by Sumar and Vox, which has taken up all the space and the attention of public opinion.
Questions such as the family, the impact of climate change, the type of education, the role of religion, new social rights, the regulation of migration, the role of the State or security, which were previously addressed by politics through public debate and in Parliament, now they are raised in the framework of social dispute and in the media.
A cultural war between those who want to restore order, a position that Vox defends, which involves returning to a society of obedience and submission, and those who seek a radical change in the role of institutions and the system, a position that postulates some of the political forces that are integrated in Sumar, to undermine the capitalism that enslaves the citizens.
This cultural war, started in the United States, has turned public debates into a civil war, seeking to divide society and turning the exercise of democracy into a fierce contest where there can only be winners and losers, without the political nuance being given .
This political conception has taken root in Spanish politics. The two main parties, PSOE and PP, which had succeeded in being containment walls against these practices, are now being dragged into assuming their postulates as their own. This dynamic is weakening the political space of the two major parties to the point that, despite winning the elections and being able to govern, if they wanted, without the need for the political support of Vox or Sumar, they end up assuming the framework of the cultural war that these have established.
The great amount of political energy that the PSOE and the PP must allocate to debating issues unrelated to the country's needs will be accentuated to the extent that they succumb to the dangerous game of addressing Spain's great challenges from the point of view of public morality defined by Vox and Sumar. Both the PSOE and the PP have grown politically since the transition, promoting the necessary reforms that Spain needed, with a conservative or progressive vision, to consolidate democracy, enter the European Union, address major social consensuses such as the pact of pensions or deploy the Spain of the autonomies.
Beyond the political differences, the approach of the PSOE and the PP was to establish a solid consensus on the past, a strengthening of their social democratic and liberal conservative ideological framework to offer a space for coexistence to the Spanish and to keep moral issues away from the successes politicians Reason prevailed, and not emotions, to decide what could or could not be done. This vision and political action is now in danger if the two parties fail to rid themselves of the culture war and if they fail to focus on the great challenges that Spain faces.
The culture war is forging sectarianism and trenches. It is transforming the public space into a battlefield and glorifying intolerance and prejudice. It supplants real politics and imposes the dictatorship of what is supposedly moral or just.
The electoral campaign that we have just experienced has highlighted the danger for a democracy that the entire public debate is in the hands of the cultural war, where, under a possible just cause, dishonest propaganda is hidden to achieve political ends . All parties, without exception, should distance themselves from the culture war that is dividing society. Freeing ourselves from the culture war implies solving the problems in institutions, both public and private, restoring the ideal of political stability and recovering the capacity for understanding between the different political forces, even if they are not ideologically aligned.
After the electoral results, the new political stage that opens raises whether the PP and the PSOE decide to govern or oppose prioritizing a political agenda for Spain away from the cultural war or, on the contrary, if they subordinate themselves to it, waiting that one of the two fronts wins the contest definitively.
