End of term
A political week with the shadow car syndrome of the end of July. Current affairs are speeding up to close issues, whether in Barcelona, Madrid or Salamanca, as if the prospect of a few days' holiday were to make a big difference to the prospect of a return when a new notebook is opened.
Pedro Sánchez has defended his operation renuevo, with which he intends, unperturbed, that the change of faces in his government and the mass vaccination will allow him to open a new stage beyond the harshness of the management of the pandemic and the annoying Catalan lawsuit. The Moncloa had decided that the year had to end in the media with a joint photograph of all the regional presidents and the head of state. A photograph courtesy of the pragmatic Iñigo Urkullu, who once again exchanged the photo for new direct revenues for the Basque treasury. The immutable law of Spanish politics is that the Basques always win and that nobody has the bad taste to remind them of the failure of so many years of terrorism.
The change of government and the family photograph aim to move the Catalan folder from the centre of the Spanish political debate now that the prisoners have been pardoned. Next week's Bilateral Commission and the negotiating table in September will be the real thermometer of whether the pardons are the beginning or the end of Sánchez's policy towards Catalonia. Everything seems to indicate that today the socialist strategy only involves deflation and the negotiation of the financing system led by Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The major reforms would have to involve an opposition that right now only promotes the quarrel with the government with the aspiration to distract from the prosecution of the former Minister of Home Affairs and his men for spying on the party's ex-treasurer.
Endorsed endorsement
In Catalonia the week has ended with the approval of the complementary risk fund to support the 34 former officials of the Generalitat indicted by the Court of Auditors for the external action of the Generalitat between 2011 and 2017. The endorsement has served to restart the competition of Ciudadanos and Vox to see who is faster and more intense filing lawsuits against public servants, despite the opinion of the Consell de Garanties Estatutàries and the large parliamentary majority obtained.
Along the way it has become evident that the financial system has broken with one of its main clients in Catalonia, the Generalitat. The fear of judicial action added to journalistic and political pressures would be the reason for the inaction of some entities that practically broke the relationship with the Government in 2017. An institutional relationship that was not recovered during the presidency of Torra, despite having produced business movements of great magnitude, such as the merger of CaixaBank and Bankia.
The step forward to endorse public servants has been made by the ICF (the Catalan Finance Institute), which for years has been trying to shield its operation in the hope of obtaining a banking token that it is optimistic to think it can be obtained in the face of political opposition from the Spanish government and regulator.
Faced with the impossibility of obtaining the financial guarantee, the President of the Generalitat and the Minister of Economy decided to use the ICF as the guarantor of an operation that has pushed the board of the institution to the limit and will require the renewal of the body and, it cannot be ruled out, of its managing director.
The post-war period
The end of term will take longer to arrive for health workers, who have seen how the fifth wave has overwhelmed them. On the threshold of resistance, it seems to be stabilising just as the economy begins to show consistent signs of recovery. The optimistic data on growth also coincide with the fragility of many, despite the fact that the good implementation of the furlough scheme measures and the rest of the social shield have avoided a real catastrophe.
August arrives this year in an environment of general exhaustion due to the effects of a pandemic that is dragging on, that has made us live in a permanent state of alert, that has robbed us of expectations and illusions and has placed us before our fragility. An inherent uncertainty, which we should never lose sight of, but which we prefer to ignore.
Our environment is full of tired, saddened people, who have faced economic difficulties or the death of loved ones, loneliness and anguish, marathon working days. Little by little we are coming out of the well. For a few days, without a clock, in the sea, without so many hours of masks and gels, we will be able to take a break, each one in our own way. Dear readers, happy and well-deserved holidays. We will meet again in a few weeks with batteries charged to continue doing the best work in the world.