This text belongs to 'Penínsulas', the newsletter that Enric Juliana will send to La Vanguardia subscribers every Tuesday. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
First of all, let me thank you for your interest in this newsletter, which is being released today. We call it a 'newsletter' because English is the language of acceleration in the world. Bulletin sounds old, very old. It is a word imported from Italian: bollettino, diminutive of bolletta, a policy through which the quality of a product was declared or the payment of a merchandise was credited. This weekly policy will try to convey to you as diligently as possible some ideas, references or interpretative keys on current events. I have suggested the title of Peninsulas because of my love of geography, because it admits very diverse contents, and because political news is a surface surrounded by turbulent waters on all sides except one, called the isthmus, which connects with the interior and with other contexts.
we started. Within a month, municipal and regional elections of notable importance will be held. In the history of this country there have been local elections that have brought great changes. The best remembered example is that of the municipal elections of April 1931, which marked the advent of the Second Republic. I would also highlight the municipal elections of April 1979, the first free local elections after the end of the Civil War, which accelerated the democratization of Spain. There are closer local elections that I also consider really important. I am referring to the electoral appointment of May 2015, in which the public discontent accumulated during the last economic crisis crystallized, in accordance with an iron law of politics: in economic crises, the discontent acquires a greater political intensity when the situation begins to improve.
In those 2015 municipal elections, a left wing outside the PSOE won the mayoralties of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza, A Coruña, Zamora and Cádiz. That same wave of protest helped the PSOE to recover the autonomous governments of the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Aragon, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha. On the crest of that wave of protest appeared a new party called Podemos, accompanied by a Valencian coalition called Compromís, the Galician movement En Marea and the Balearic Month.
We heard the whistle of the steam valve in those elections, which anticipated the hard wear suffered by the Popular Party due to the social effects of the crisis and, above all, due to the accumulation of corruption cases. This erosion was evident in the general elections of December of that same year. Mariano Rajoy lost the absolute majority and Podemos entered Congress with 71 deputies, hot on the heels of the PSOE. We know what happened next: the struggle within the Socialist Party over the interpretation of the results, Pedro Sánchez's stubborn refusal to invest Rajoy, the repetition of general elections (in which Unidas Podemos failed to overcome the PSOE), the persistent Sánchez's refusal, Sánchez's dismissal as general secretary of his party, Rajoy's investiture, Sánchez's triumphant return in the primary elections, the motion of no confidence in May 2018 that overthrew Rajoy, Sánchez's solo government, and at the end of the following year, the current coalition government of the left.
In the municipal elections of 2015, the tenacious Pedro Sánchez began to be president of the Government without even knowing it. Well advised by Verónica Fumanal, then his communication adviser, the current Prime Minister correctly interpreted what was happening: the young generations who had been promised a happy future before the crisis were protesting and wanted change. That was the fundamental key to what was happening. Sánchez clung to it stubbornly and won the presidency after three years. The Spanish Socialist Workers Party, founded in 1879, the oldest political organization operating in Spain, owes a lot to that man. The 2015 flood could have carried them off.
Will the municipal and regional elections of 2023 bring us a new change of cycle, as an early expression of the conservative wave that seems to be growing in Europe as a result of the war? This is the question that I have been asking myself for a few weeks, after seeing the results of the elections in Finland, the polls in Germany, the political evolution in Italy and the demonstrations in France, which are more than just a protest against the prolongation of retirement age. In my opinion, March 28 will not be the first round of the December general elections, but we may hear some creaking. In La Vanguardia we have been insisting for days on the importance of the results in the Valencian Community, an opinion that is also shared by the political consultant Iván Redondo, who last Thursday offered his diagnosis of the situation in the Vanguard Forum that our newspaper organizes every month in Barcelona.
Whoever wins in the Valencian Community (five million inhabitants, a bilingual society with many citizens born in other parts of Spain, the fourth most populous autonomous community after Andalucía, Catalunya and Madrid), can acquire a clear position of advantage on the board. If the Popular Party and Vox take over the government of the Generalitat Valenciana, it will mean that the PSOE is lax and that hubris (self-destructive impulse) has taken over the movements located to the left of the socialists, definitively killing the drive of 2015. We would clearly be entering a new stage.
The convoluted crisis in the space of Unidas Podemos, on whether to add or not add, is creating tensions, entanglements and confusion that can demobilize a section of the electorate that was decisive eight years ago. Aware of this, Sánchez wanted to breathe air into the left with the agreement on the Housing law and the subsequent announcement to place 50,000 homes on the rental market of the public company Sareb, the bad bank created in 2012 to manage and sell the problematic assets of financial institutions that received public aid. It is a clear attempt to mobilize the young vote in favor of the Socialist Party and to stabilize the government coalition, at least until the summer. The idea of renting out the Sareb homes was raised by Podemos two years ago, without much success. Sanchez is truly skilled. Like a good basketball player, he pays attention to rebounds. He knows when he has to take the initiative, forcing others to follow him.
We have also seen Yolanda Díaz on television this weekend, in a very melodramatic key. Vice President Díaz is showing a surprising penchant for publicly displaying her grudges and troubles. Political leadership consists of guiding, directing and grouping the diverse. In the Jordi Évole program they only talked about Pablo Iglesias. If that part of the left falls into the black hole of melodrama, it is doomed to disaster. The Díaz-Iglesias fight excites journalists, but I don't think it will move many votes. On the contrary. Those fights are a bad sign: 2015's batteries are running low.
I am a journalist because I like to read and write, in this order. My vocation woke up with school newsrooms. He enjoyed describing situations and landscapes. I remember that in one of my first essays I wrote that I would like to be a cloud to float and see the world from above. It seems that I did not want to get too involved in the closest reality. I don't know what a child psychologist would have thought about it. Later I became fond of Geography, which is a way of seeing the world from above, without climbing stairs or taking planes. At the age of twelve, together with a classmate, I made a file of all the countries, in which we wrote down the name of the capital, the area, the number of inhabitants, the bordering countries and the main resources. Once the file was completed, we painted the flag. By preparing this file, which no teacher had asked us for, I was able to memorize the names of the capitals of all the countries in the world, a faculty that I lost when I was older, since I was unable to remember the names of all the African capitals.
I am passionate about Political Geography. One of my latest obsessions is the Strait of Malacca, the connection point between the Indian and Pacific oceans, which runs between the Malay peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Through the Strait of Malacca, 60% of the world's maritime traffic passes each year. I understood the importance of this strait thanks to Josep Piqué, who recently passed away. His eyes shone when he referred to the Strait of Malacca. And he said: "It is the true center of the world." I personally met former minister Piqué in recent years and I was impressed by his intelligence. I want to travel to the Strait of Malacca. If any of you have ever been to the true center of the world I would like to know your impressions.
ejuliana@lavanguardia.es
