Ayuso, Spain
The PSOE wants to turn Isabel Díaz Ayuso into the wicked witch in the story, and she is delighted because the witches of the socialists are fairies in the Spain of the PP. The umpteenth blunder of the Madrid president at the regional summit in Barcelona – behaving rudely and acting offended when some of the presidents used Catalan and Basque – is nothing more than a publicity stunt that bothers the few sensible leaders of the PP, but not entirely, because also. While Ayuso gets down in the mud, Feijóo and the men They may appear well-mannered. But if the summit came to nothing, it's not just Ayuso's fault; she's the battering ram of a collective political strategy.
This, on the other hand, strengthens the socialist alliance with the peripheries and, even more so, in our case, the presidential profile of Salvador Illa, who needs to show himself as a Catalan supporter without making a fuss. This compensates for his poker face when, a few days ago, he appeared at the Palau de la Música, a place of uncertain balance that separates the presidents "of everyone" from the presidents who are not quite of anyone.
In marketing terms, then, one could say that the result is a win-win, but in the meantime the summit of presidents, where Sánchez and Isla wanted to stage the famous reunion, was concluded without fanfare, and above all without any agreements, which consolidates the institutional impasse. As so often before, when the Spanish government and the Generalitat come closer, they burst at the seams in the rest of the country. The Spanish blanket is too short to cover us all; and the Socialists run the risk, at a critical moment in the legislature, of losing both oxen and cowbells, because neither Catalonia can be satisfied with a mere policy of gestures, nor will the PP miss the opportunity to denounce this gesture as another undignified surrender. And when I say PP, I also mean the PSOE of Aragon, Castilla-La Mancha, and all the territories where the anti-Catalan fixation continues to be profitable. This nonsense in Sijena proves it.
The PSOE has been successful, for the moment, with its Catalan strategy (because Catalan nationalism doesn't have the energy to complain), but now what it needs is a Spanish strategy: a discourse that tinges its commitment to a pluralistic Spain with patriotism. The problem is that Pedro Sánchez's true colors are obvious—he acts out of arithmetic necessity—and, furthermore, he knows that if governing without Catalonia is very difficult, governing without Madrid is impossible. And for now, Ayuso's Madrid, ultra-liberal and Babylonian, is the foundation of the PP's economic and media power, which radiates throughout the Iberian Peninsula; it is an insatiable monster that devours everything around it, starting with the two Castillas, turning centralism into a physical entity.
"Madrid is leaving," said Pasqual Maragall – 24 years ago! –, taking the testimony of the old federalists, the regenerationists, even the Austrians who, in the 18th century, fought to prevent Philip V from turning the Peninsula into an administrative extension of Castile. But Maragall's lament found no response, and now, a quarter of a century later, majority Spain still feels better represented by Ayuso and her little beers than by the entelechy of plurinationality. This is what makes the PSOE's numbers not add up, and - even more importantly - it is what makes Spain a lame project that requires the constant mobilization of its most reactionary elements to continue keeping a tight rein on the dissident territories, while Lamine Yamal's goals with the red one They keep us properly entertained.