The country of Yolanda Díaz

And yet, it moves.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
26 October 2023 Thursday 11:26
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The country of Yolanda Díaz

And yet, it moves. They don't have the delicacy to explain to us how the yes to Pedro Sánchez is negotiated, the newspapers can only publish speculations, the obscurantism is dark, the rulers hold press conferences without questions, they feel like writing that they are killing the information , but this is moving and this week the first legislative pact of the half dozen that will be needed to avoid repeat elections was celebrated. Congratulations to the signatories, who won it at the Queen Sofia Museum as if it were a work of art and with speeches full of colorful triumphalism. The first harvest of information has not been bad: they got quite a few covers, hundreds of comments and took up a lot of talk time. It was the first success of the hard-working Yolanda Díaz in the new and still confusing legislature.

I attribute the success to Mrs. Díaz because, indeed, it is hers. She has worked on it since she took over the inheritance of Pablo Iglesias. She cultivated it province by province, to incorporate into her discipline all the parties now integrated in Sumar. She demonstrated that she knew how to act as a killer, essential learning in Spanish politics, and deposited the corpses of Podemos in the numerous funeral pyre in Moncloa. And the almost three hundred government commitments – “intentions”, wrote Josep Martí Blanch here – that he signed with Pedro Sánchez bear his hallmarks. They are much more similar to the ideology we know of Yolanda Díaz than to that of any current leader of the Socialist Party. It is not surprising that Díaz celebrated it as a holiday: "today is a big day". Many people on the left think the same.

He thinks the same because only one of the agreed measures, the reduction of working hours, is the dream of any left-wing leader, especially a trade unionist, to go down in history. Therefore, the more employers and conservative published opinion oppose it, the stronger they will become, because it gives them the security of going on the right path. And he also thinks the same, or at least similar, because the agreement is the first sign of progressive unity. It is insufficient to guarantee power on its own, but without this gesture it would be impossible. In this sense, the Sánchez Díaz marriage is the starting point. The content is bad, because there are four years ahead to expand it, prioritize it, nuance it or directly change it, and we already know how easy it is to change your mind if the circumstances dictate it. It seemed much more difficult to accommodate the legality of amnesty and other counterparts of Catalan independence, and these days it is being shown that in politics there are difficulties, but nothing is impossible, as long as there is will, and in the Moncloa something else will not be there, but there is plenty of will to prevent Feijóo from accessing it.

After this declaration of covered necessity, countless doubts can be expressed, some of them transcendent. For example, what will the five Podemos seats do in the medium term, ostentatiously marginalized; which anti-capitalist aspects could lead to the rejection of future partners of conservative fame such as Junts and the PNB; what will be the effects of fiscal policy, income, investments and very important social spending in an economy in the process of cooling, or what is the credibility of a management program that does not present a single revenue forecast and expenses

Tomorrow will be another day, Sánchez and Díaz's teams will say; that the absence of something as vulgar as economic memory does not impair the greatness of a project. Tomorrow will be another day, repeats this chronicler, who reads the fifty folios, the baptismal letter of the basic agreement of the new government, closes his eyes and sees this new Spain that announces that it will be born. It is the Spain of the great Yolanda Díaz. Yolanda in Wonderland, the paradise of social rights, where you will work less, earn more, there will be affordable housing, the rich will pay what they deserve, the poor will live better, the minimum wage will be fair, pensions will have the maximum guarantee, healthcare will work perfectly, education will reach a level of excellence...

All this, of course, with the permission of the elements: Putin, Netanyahu and, God forbid, Donald Trump. I do not include Puigdemont in this list because, once Feijóo showed him his respect, because at least he does not deceive anyone, it is already a guarantee of credibility. A pasmés and the leader of Junts will be a guarantee of stability.