It was the greatest fight of all time. Year 1974, Kinshasa, capital of Zaire, today the Democratic Republic of Congo, before more than 60,000 people in the National Stadium. It was immortalized in an iconic documentary, recounting the boxing match between George Foreman and Mohamed Ali, under the title: When We Were Kings. Norman Mailer tells us in the audiovisual that when Foreman's body collapsed, Ali could have finished him off with his right hand, but he preferred the aesthetic of "the falling man" rather than launching a last coup de grace that would only have sullied the recognition of his adversary. That happened ten seconds before the bell for the eighth round rang. And it is the image that has remained in our memory. After resisting the inhuman blows like anvils from his great rival, old Ali won.
Who is who in our story? We left it open, because the 28-M event was not Kinsasa. That will take place in December when the Moncloa is played. What happened yesterday were the Descampados of the brilliant work of Manuel Calderón, the beyond of the M-30, the chronicle of a moral territory that will operate in the generals, but they are not the generals. It was a great victory without palliatives for the PP. And it will generate an anchor effect this June, with which he will present his alternative in favor and modify all the polls.
The people on the right won and the mobilization worked. It has been seen in the votes, councilors and squares. Alberto Núñez Feijóo proposed a plebiscite and the PSOE bit. Transforming the local ones into a first round Sánchez-Feijóo, when for the socialist presidents and mayors it was not the first round, but the final one. Each national ad cost votes, because it blurred the great local balance sheet. Facilitating the campaign of an empty signifier, repealing the "sanchismo" of the PP. And, of course, the PSOE ended the campaign nailed and asking for the time. It lacked rennet and a strong campaign of local contrast. They underestimated his strength on the ground and overestimated the air campaigns from Madrid. The PP did not even need to enter the local campaign. In the last quarter, they forgot the management to put their heart into it. But it was already late. Not a single one entered the hoop and what happened in Bildu, Melilla or Mójácar happened on top of that, the buying of votes. There was not even a Yugoslav minute like in 2019, not a trace of Petrovic on the field to whom to pass.
The Socialists put so many kilos on the truck, so much mahogany overweight, that when they wanted to change direction they went straight out of the curve into 2016. The winning PSOE was not a truck, but a Ferrari, the one from the days of red, red Ferrari. Do you know when in races with 100 meters to go the one who goes first turns in the final meters to see the second and how he ends up passing like lightning? That was on 28-M.
Kinshasa, however, will be about the future: Trump or De Santis, Le Pen, Meloni, PP and Vox. We are headed for a very complicated situation. And the future will be won by whoever is bold in clarifying and assuring it, whoever is near and not far. There is a Spain in which your parents bought apartments and another Spain in which their granddaughters rent a room. That is what Kinshasa is going to be about, why you want to be president for the next four years, an idea of Spain that unites generations. Of perestroika and restoration. From Ali and Foreman. From what we explained in this war room two years ago and it has happened.
Now they will say that Yolanda Díaz is a bluff, that Feijóo is president and that Pedro Sánchez has already lost the generals. He doesn't have to. We know what election nights are like. Loquillo synthesized it in When we were the best. I enjoyed it live on a magical night at the Roman Theater in Mérida. He was overflowing. There we danced and sang "when we were the best... we stopped being us". How can the economy grow, unemployment drop and social peace, being theoretically the best, can elections and governments be lost? The left is a sleeping elephant waiting for an ingenuity to wake it up.
If, in the end, what there has been is a first round, then let the second begin. Ali at the closing of a Harvard course he recited an unforgettable poem. It's just two words: "I, we." In Kinshasa, whoever stops being the best and returns to being us will win. When we were the best, when we were not kings.
