I deal with Soria, not Syria". The legend runs through Madrid that this was the answer that Mariano Rajoy gave to Felipe González when the latter, in a private conversation, suggested a greater dedication to foreign policy. It's an answer that fits the character, but we have references from a previous conversation in Madrid in which Síria and Sória already saw each other's faces. "More Soria and less Syria", the Minister of Public Administrations Jesús Posada would have warned José María Aznar when he began to overturn himself in international politics, in search of a preferential alliance with the United States. Posada, born in Soria, son of a hierarch of the Franco regime who had served as civil governor in several provinces, is a man with his feet on the ground, little given to ideological exaltation, as he demonstrated during the time he exercise the presidency of the Congress of Deputies. Either way, with so many trips to George W. Bush's ranch in Texas, Posada saw the 2004 election in jeopardy and told Aznar to take a little more care of Soria.
There is no doubt that Pedro Sánchez is from Syria and that Alberto Núñez Feijóo is very much from Soria, Ourense and Lugo. The current president of the Spanish Government loves international politics. It's no secret. He speaks languages (English, French and Italian) and was lucky enough to be trained abroad before dedicating himself to the interior business. At the age of 26, he worked as an assistant at the European Parliament and, later, between 1997 and 1999, he was part of the cabinet of the High Representative of the UN in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Spanish diplomat Carlos Westerndorp, based in Sarajevo during the last Balkan war. His great vocation is international politics and it may be that the big problem he now has to face – the difficult recovery from 28-M – is due, at least in part, to an excessive imbalance between Syria and Soria.
"Spanish policy is decided in Brussels, Spanish policy is today European policy", Sánchez used to repeat to his interlocutors a few months ago, while issues such as the Iberian cap on the price of gas were being negotiated in the European capital, which some they took it as a joke and it ended up being an effective mechanism to moderate the increase in electricity rates in the Iberian Peninsula during the most critical months in the gas market. Sánchez was absolutely right: the most substantive of Spanish politics is decided today in Brussels. The last three years document it perfectly.
The pandemic would have sunk the economy of this country – this was the prediction of Pablo Casado and his team – if it had not been for the determined German support for the recovery funds agreed in July 2020. The alignment in favor of Ukraine it is European politics – the only European politics possible at the moment – and there is no important issue that does not pass through Brussels, as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, an Italian nationalist who this week was confronted by her Polish and Hungarian nationalist friends in the tough negotiation on immigration policy in the European Union.
Sánchez is clear. The problem is that he may be too clear. The current president has not had a Posada by his side in recent months to tell him: "Be a little more sociable". The difference in level between Sánchez and Núñez Feijóo in the field of international politics is so pronounced that the president's cabinet has succumbed to the temptation to overexploit this vein.
In Spain there is no explicit anti-Europeanism like in other countries of the Union. Even Vox, which has a program openly opposed to the current European Union, tries to disguise it a little, since speaking badly of Europe is still not popular in Spain. Let's look at the following figure from this winter's Eurobarometer: 86% of Spaniards consider themselves European citizens (twelve points above the EU average), but only 45% trust the European Union (two points below of the average).
The Spanish want to be European, but they do not rely on the policy that is manufactured in Brussels. Perhaps this is the key - one of the keys - of the current Spanish moment: there is no explicit Europhobia, but there is a current of mistrust that has just given the Spanish politician who has exhibited the most Europeanism a run for his money. An almost perfect man in the glamorous photos with former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who was also hit on the head with a mallet in March in her country. Pedro Sánchez, a tall and elegant individual who at eight in the morning leaves as fresh as a rose from the train that has taken him to Kyiv from the Polish border.
This man's next challenge is to go on Ana Rosa Quintana's television show, on the Berlusconi family's Spanish channel. This program, which has never been stepped on since the beginning of the legislature, is the main distillery of social ill humor in Spain. This is the sketch: Syria, Soria and the television alchemists of Milan, great manufacturers of popular consensus in the two largest countries in southern Europe.
In the opposite sense, Alberto Núñez Feijóo receives an upward impulse proportional to the consensus that Ana Rosa and other similar programs evict. The media deployment of the Spanish right is at this moment. The cannons of Navarone are his. Feijóo is Sória in the square – since the battle will be decided in Sória and in 20 other provinces where less than five deputies are elected – but one day he will have to explain what his ideas are about Syria.
