In 1959 the Communist Party of Spain launched the slogan of the National Political Strike (VNP). The Treaty of Rome (1957) had left Spain out of the nascent European economic community and monarchist circles were restless. In January, at a dinner at the Hotel Menfis in Madrid, monarchists and undercover socialists had outlined the idea of a Spanish Union to promote a transition that would avoid losing the European train. One of many ideas born on a table. In that context, the PCE, which did not want to be marginalized, proposed the voluntary slogan of the National Political Strike and put a thread on the needle. He called for a general mobilization for June 18.
Thousands of leaflets were thrown and some of the party's main leaders in exile crossed the border clandestinely to be close to the protests. The VNP was a failure. The police controlled everything. Part of the country had adapted to the dictatorship and the other part was afraid. The regime was not supposed to fall in the short term. The young Javier Pradera was the first to warn in a letter sent to the PCE secretariat in Paris. That year 1959, the Catalan economist Joan Sardà Dexeus was putting the finishing touches to the Stabilization Plan that would save Franco's Spain from economic bankruptcy.
The VNP failed, but that voluntarist zeal remained and, suddenly, in 1973, when the oil crisis broke out, the big cities turned towards the VNP, without reaching a general strike: the mobilizations workers caused by inflation were linked to the demand for political freedoms, and reached a great social breadth. Without those strikes and mobilizations, the transition to democracy would have been much slower and would not have culminated in the Constitution of 1978. There was no VNP, but the dynamics of change went in that direction. This is why the figure of Adolfo Suárez emerged, from above: to intercept and redirect the underlying dynamics.
Yesterday, while Alberto Núñez Feijóo, dressed in a May 68-style turtleneck, spoke at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, shouts were heard in favor of a general strike to prevent the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. They were from Vox. A part of the right wants "something more" to happen in the next few days.
When he heard the slogan "general strike", the speaker slowed down. Núñez Feijóo is playing these days to exhaust the margin that can be allowed for a party politically represented in the European Commission. He goes strong, but he knows he has a limit. Isabel Díaz Ayuso pushes to verbally cross this limit, let's see what happens. There is Milei passion in some Madrid areas.
The right has launched a dynamic spectral VNP. Manifestos from above against the investiture pact (judges, prosecutors, state lawyers, tax inspectors, labor inspectors, Civil Guard associations, professional associations, Madrid law firms) and places crowded from below, especially in Madrid and Seville. Maximum tension sustained over time to bring down the future government when possible.
The right has rediscovered, in reverse, from top to bottom, the National Political Strike that Santiago Carrillo and Fernando Claudín failed to carry out. But there is something inside this analogy that we should not forget: freedom consists of being able to call demonstrations to try as a traitor and ask for prison for a politician who is about to revalidate a legitimate parliamentary majority. The dictatorship consisted of beating, torturing and imprisoning those who protested against a truly illegitimate government.
