The last time I saw Segador, the talking bull of Madrid's Plaza Mayor, was in April 2017. Our conversations had been spaced out since the first meeting, on a hot June day in the bar La Torre del Oro, when, shortly after drinking a cup of gazpacho with cumin, I had the impression that a dissected head was speaking to me. Seven years later, I walk through Plaça Mayor and dare to enter the premises. Segador continues there, surrounded by bull prints. Almost everything remains the same: the straightforward professionalism of the waiters and the greenish light that radiates from the head of a coal-black bull at the bottom of Zarathustra's Cave. I drink gazpacho and think I'm entering seventh heaven.
You over here? what brings him
Nostalgia.
Any penance?
It's twenty years and one day.
Explain yourself better.
Twenty years and a day ago I arrived in Madrid to dedicate myself to the political chronicle. April 13, 2004, one month after the attacks of March 11. I found a traumatized city and enormous political tension. A tension that has returned. 2004 lives in 2024.
You should know that I haven't missed him for a single day. I was disappointed. Why is he back?
I already said it. Twenty years have passed since my arrival in Madrid. I have not resisted the temptation to come and see him, because these days I remember the time that has passed. So much has happened! Conversations with you helped me organize my ideas...
don't lie You came for the first time on a blustery day in June, June 2005. He was stunned, I gave him a talk and then he believed he could create a character. A talking bull. A character similar to that talking head with which some clever people from Barcelona tricked Don Quixote. A way to get attention, until he got scared when the jokes started about the reporter talking to a bull. You stopped coming out of fear. Afraid of what they will say.
Let's say I wanted to avoid a horn. It is not good to become a caricature. In 2017, the situation was getting very tense.
He won't tell me that things are much better now.
Maybe I have gained confidence in myself. Twenty years and one day.
What does he want?
Hear the voice of Zarathustra.
I am not an oracle. I only give hints.
I know. I think we are approaching a crossroads. The drums of war announce important changes of course.
The European Union will change its priorities. La Vanguardiaha recently wrote about this. You haven't come to see me for seven years, but I keep paying attention to your diary. More spending on defense and less ecological demands. A belittling European policy is coming. Germany is rearming and the countries of the East, combined, have a lot of weight. The center of gravity is now there. The underlying issue is not much of a mystery: will the current Spanish Government be functional to the new military spending requirements?
The left-wing coalition was functional in the recovery pact in the midst of the epidemic. The Spanish left, allied with the Portuguese left, brought stability to southern Europe. Unides Podemos wasn't causing anyone in Berlin to lose sleep. Let's remember how the labor reform was agreed.
This is why Pablo Casado fell. Casado and some other people in Madrid, among them some veteran journalists, became convinced that the economy would plummet as a result of the epidemic, and the social-communist government would take over. They did not count on Brussels.
The question is whether the current left-wing Government and its fragile parliamentary support can adapt to the new European demands. The negotiation of the general State budgets for 2025 will be key.
I find it complicated. The current parliamentary majority goes from Indra to Taverna Garibaldi. It is a very difficult bow to keep straight in the current circumstances. A political arc that goes from the pragmatic managers of companies owned by the State, most of whom are close to the PSC, to the four deputies of Podemos. If this block breaks, no quotes.
This would be the opportunity for Junts to redeem itself from the accusations of complicity with Russia, which have taken effect in the European Parliament.
Don't run so much. The Catalan elections must be held first. And in Catalonia I keep seeing thick chocolate. The convergent gene, as you call it, is still alive and presents three electoral lists: Junts, the far-right Aliança Catalana, which was there, inside the process, latent, and the Alhora group, which would become a regenerationism for disillusioned youth. The convergent gene is more resilient than the Chinese Kuomintang. It reactivates in whatever way every time the socialists can win.
Your Basque forecast?
It remains to be seen whether the PNB and the PSOE continue to add a majority. It remains to be seen how the parliamentary majority that gave the investiture to Sánchez remains after the electoral sequence of April, May and June. It remains to be seen whether in October Junts has incentives to discreetly agree with the Popular Party at the end of the legislature. And we have to see what happens with Sumar and Podemos in the Europeans.
The left pillar of the Government coalition may be the true weak point of the legislature. I've been saying this for months.
They have entered a destructive spiral that is difficult to resolve. Too many tricks per square meter. Too many fantasies, while the wind of history changed. Yolanda Díaz came to believe that she could be Pedro Sánchez's replacement in the medium term. Pay attention to Esquerra Unida in the coming weeks.
This week I noticed Felipe González. Round table in Lisbon with Mariano Rajoy and former Portuguese Socialist Prime Minister António Costa, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the April Revolution. Obviously they did not speak of revolution, but of concertation. González feels vindicated in Portugal: the PS lets the centre-right govern so that it does not make an agreement with the extreme right. There will be pressure for the current Portuguese policy of national reconciliation to end up being applied to Spain. They will face José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who predicts a four-year legislature, "whatever happens in Catalonia".
Don't go so fast. Since he likes maps, I suggest he now pay attention to the Strait of Hormuz, the exit door for hydrocarbons from the Persian Gulf. Iran has begun its retaliation by seizing an Israeli ship in Hormuz. If the Houthis have just blocked Bab al-Mandab and the Iranians put pressure on Hormuz, the great sea route Europe-East may be greatly affected. Everything we've talked about can fade away.
Adolfo Suarez's decline began in the Strait of Hormuz in 1980. The Iranians put pressure on Western oil companies, prices rose again, there was an economic downturn, and all of Suarez's enemies, who were already many, they conspired to bring him down. We could say that without the Hormuz crisis there would not have been the coup of 23-F. I see signs.
Don't hallucinate and come see me again.
forgive me
The amnesty
