In The hour of the predatorsGiuliano da Empoli describes the three stages that politicians generally go through, based on a book by Tony Blair. When they come to power, they are receptive, aware of their own ignorance, trying to understand how to play their role. After a while, they believe they know enough: "They no longer want to listen," Blair writes. "Are you the boss? Who knows more than you?" Then comes the third stage, maturity: "Experience leads them to listen to others again." The problem, Blair himself says, is that most never reach it.
We could say that President Sánchez is currently fully immersed in the second stage. He has a natural tendency to deny the bad news he receives, and in the Spanish case, he has the advantage of facing a right wing trapped in authoritarianism, encouraged by "a digital ecosystem where it doesn't matter what is good and what is bad." A perfect collusion: "National populism and the tech elite freeing themselves from anything that overshadows them," as Empoli says.
The past week is a synthesis of this reality. On the one hand, a taboo has been definitively broken: the PP, in order to retain the presidency of the Valencian Community, has quite naturally surrendered itself to Vox, adopting the two guiding principles of the far right: environmental denial and the portrayal of immigrants as a threat to the nation. And I have the feeling that, as things stand, if the PP doesn't want to be swallowed up by Abascal, it will have to find a leader with a coherent message and who exudes a certain authority. If Feijóo's aim was to reunify the right by radicalizing it under the PP's tutelage, he has done so badly that now the risk is that Abascal will achieve hegemony, that the model (the genuine far right) will devour the copy.
This evolution of the right wing gives President Sánchez room to present himself as a champion of democracy against authoritarianism, the very discourse he uses to tour Europe. But the cracks in the corruption scandal have long weakened him, and with the imprisonment of Ábalos, former minister and confidant of the president, now the alleged ringleader of a criminal network, he can no longer tiptoe around the issue. Resigning himself to the idea that time marches on can hardly lead to anything other than failure. Somehow, Sánchez must craft a political response that allows him to regain a parliamentary majority to confront this drift. It's becoming clear these days that democratic unity against authoritarianism is no longer viable. The PP has already taken the step. And even Junts is flirting with the new reactionary alliance. Elections? The risk they would entail is obvious. But every day we are getting closer to them being inevitable. And who knows, given the current state of his adversaries, it might be the president's only chance of survival.
