“The air is confusing, stagnant
of a corrupt peace, of a corrupting peace»
Elemental verses to the Catalans of 1969, Pere Quart
Like an eternal return, a persistent democratic migraine, the pornographic recordings, the stench of the sewers, the triangulations of the subsoil mud, and the dirty money from commissions return. It happens, however, that in murky waters, full of accumulated toxic sediments, everything is always mixed at once, one thing and the contrary: legitimacy and illegitimacy, legality and illegality, naivety and arrogance. Because, in purity, it seems entirely legitimate – considering the chronology of events – that if a party and a government feel like victims of the depths of a state that already sufficiently accredited its darkness and miseries, then it tries to find out the actors, dynamics, and arteries. To denounce them publicly, to nullify them politically, and to judge them criminally, of course. Not the contrary. Because it is not that it seems illegitimate, it is that it is, radically, to pretend that the fight for a supposed democratic regeneration is carried out with identical dirty war, clumsy saviour teams and, even, using structural actors – Villarejo, once again – of the plot they intended to dismantle. Laugh to keep from crying. Felipe González used to say that At this stage of democratic degradation, we have already seen them in so many colors as to know that these types of conspiracies always end up filled with very curious, careless, and quite boastful characters, who so often boast of relationships, information, and contacts that often never existed. Even, completely naive, they think they will get away with it and never doubt if they will end up sinking the one they intended to rescue. That is, they do not fully understand the high police and military technostructure of the State. Of this State within the State, which has always seen separatism as a threat, saw in Podem a systemic risk and thinks that the current legislative majority is an anomaly to be corrected. Otherwise, in other latitudes of night and fog, the opacity of parallel structures is recurrent and habitual, and they tend to be very peripheral – trying not to leave any remains, traces, or faces. Neither the PP with the Kitchen nor the PSOE with the Leire case have made much effort. Another crude naivety that reveals where we are, but not yet what bill we will pay.The paradox, in any case, is that if everything were a lie, the PSOE's response is understandable, but if everything is true, it also is. The PSOE says that those involved were "charlatans, opportunists, and resentful." Really? Because they are two former organization secretaries –Ábalos and Santos Cerdán– whom Sánchez appointed. So, where is the catch? How far does the ripple effect go? How deep is the crater? We only need to rummage through the archives to see that we are back to square one. Seeing Grande-Marlaska change his version three times in less than a week about the finally confirmed conversations of Leire Díez with the director of the Civil Guard is simply devastating: from denying them to acknowledging them. One day, one thing, and the next day, the opposite. It won't be for lack of paradoxes. The food chain of all this is that the last one attacked –the PSOE of Pegasus and the police infiltrators, believe it or not– thinks they are the first. The PSOE now believes this –which looked the other way when the blows were falling on Podem–, Podem said it a few years ago –as if the harshness against independence hadn't existed before–, and Catalan independence said it in 2017 –forgetting the years of anti-legal exception in the Basque Country and a long cycle of repression against Catalan social movements and new criminal suspects, from Julia García-Valdecasas to Núria Pórtulas, or from the Three of Gràcia to the Eleven of El Raval–. If we start rewinding, we already know clearly where we will end up: in the blind spots of the Transition. In what lurked in the heart of the State.
Something similar happens with the illegal financing food chain, which in recent days has resurfaced. From memory, it should be noted that CiU, Unió, and the PSC have been convicted of illegal financing – Palau case, Pallerols case, Filesa case. And that their respective general or organization secretaries – Oriol Pujol, Vicenç Gavaldà, Daniel Fernández – have also been definitively convicted for corruption offenses. An anthology of silence, everyone was an expert at never knowing anything about anything. From memory too, when Jordi Pujol asked "What the hell is UDEF?", José Antonio Zarzalejos replied clearly and immediately: "The State". And he added: "Because to confront the State, by challenging it, you have to brace yourself and be as clean as a whistle, with transparent pockets and ready for intelligence services to scan you and find nothing out of place".The State scanned and found both honey and gall: Andorran accounts. The same state that has now shown how deficient an investigation can be, how clumsily a trial can be conducted, and why this country will never know what exactly account 63810 was, where President Pujol was listed as the holder of 300 million pesetas. I say this because I fear, presumably, that with Rodríguez Zapatero the same thing has happened: they have passed the metal detector and something has made the alarm sound – initially, another second-rate character like Julito Martínez with triangulated payments. The Zapatero case deserves a double mention. One, for the diffuse and thin line that seeks to separate lobbying from influence peddling. Two – an addition that is not legal but political – because I fear that the former Spanish president had no need to join the obsession with money.In any case – accumulated evidence that has served no purpose whatsoever – it turns out that responding to dirty war with dirty war and fighting corruption with corruption is stooping to the level of the tar of what you want to fight, anchoring yourself in the same arrogance of those who believe they will never be caught and finding out, eight years later, how corruption cases, many of them fueled by the far right, besiege the government that came to power in a motion of no confidence against corruption. Because the task against the stain is much more difficult, long, and patient: dirty war is fought with clean water; corruption, with integrity; disillusionment, with credibility. Ultimately, if we are to get out of this through the only available path, which is democratic deepening in a dirty and brutal context of global de-democratization, the minimum consensus should be built on an exception: that the only ones who should be able to fight fire with fire are firefighters, in the face of new-generation fires that demand it. At least we can say they know how. For non-forest fires, what is urgently needed are above all firebreaks and all the extinguishers. And never fireworks or cheap pyromaniacs. Or the vigil of democracy will end in ashes, rubble, and dust. And in the predictable nihilism, so functional to runaway authoritarianism, of no longer believing in anything or anyone. Charming.
