The fraud

Once again we have to agree with José María Aznar, analyst: the general elections of November 29 are not just any elections. According to Aznar they are "the most important in the last fifty years": more "important", we must understand, therefore, than the constituent general elections of June 1977, where the Cortes that drafted and approved the 1978 Constitution were chosen, the same one against which Aznar wrote some deeply furious and "liberal" articles in the newspaper La Nueva Rioja. Now, having long since become a Visigothic Pelagius of the self-styled constitutionalism, the former president of the Iraq war and the "España va bien" warns us of the hecatomb: "If the current government majority continues in power, the constitutional system and the parliamentary monarchy will end", he has warned. It must be recognized that, depending on how you look at it, it is a tempting scenario.

The elections of November 29th are not just any elections, not because they are “the most important,” but because they are clearly the most confrontational that will have been held so far. The logic of fronts has no mercy for the defeated nor for those who claim to remain on the sidelines. If the right-wing and far-right bloc wins the elections, as seems likely, a vengeful agenda will foreseeably begin, ranging from the repeal of the 'Sanchista' laws to the attempt to imprison Pedro Sánchez for high treason. There will also, foreseeably, be a very specific Catalan agenda, which will involve an unsparing onslaught against public schools, the language, and the institutions of self-government. Also against pro-independence parties or those that could be considered close to independence, and this naturally includes Junts, which claims not to be part of either of the two Spanish blocs, but which has simply played the role of the useful idiot. Puigdemont may find that he returns from exile only to see a new case opened against him and his party, if the constitutional patriots deem it convenient to safeguard “the constitutional system and the parliamentary monarchy” which, according to Aznar, are in danger.

The long-term goal of the right and the far-right is the corrosion of the representation system, and that is why they begin by questioning the validity of the vote. In this case, they have focused on mail-in voting, which according to Abascal and Ayuso is controlled by “Pedro Sánchez”. In our day, the first thing that comes to mind is the Trump benchmark, who also dedicates himself to spreading the suspicion of electoral fraud in the already imminent midterm elections, because he sees that he will lose them. But the Spanish right, in reality, has fueled this same conspiracy theory since the days of the Republic. And, in fact, the accusation that the February 1936 elections had been “fraudulent” was used (and still is today) to justify the fascist and military coup d'état of July of that year. In any case, it is about undermining the credibility of democratic institutions for one's own benefit, in order to tailor them to one's own needs.