Zapatero and the ex-presidents

Why does Zapatero take the stage to play the sad role he played, with few concrete statements, half-truths, and the intriguing nuisance of the gifted jewelry? From a judicial point of view, he insisted on recognizing the judges' final say in valuing each thing, as could not be otherwise. And in fact, he was only emphatic regarding his actions for the benefit of Plus Ultra: "It's not that I didn't influence, it's that I didn't speak to anyone." A sentence that will pass the test of validation in the courts.

It seems that the accumulated noise prompted Zapatero to a duty of explanation, in which he sought to contain the damage caused to the current government, which is where the opposition attacks to gain political advantage from the mess. The blanket of discretion in which he had taken refuge until now makes him a very different former president from Felipe González and José María Aznar, who still cannot understand that after them other people can access the position. But what Zapatero conveyed on Thursday above all else is a discourse of half-truths, which leaves ample room for confusion that does not seem to have relieved Moncloa at all, even though he has tried to keep up appearances.

As expected, Feijóo, stubbornly, repeated the usual litany: everything bad that Zapatero has done "Sánchez has made possible," the beginning and end of all the evils of this country. Which testifies to the fragility of the right. With the added significance that precisely at this moment Feijóo has just completed the process of association with the far-right, validating Vox's principles of national priority: "there is no more than one homeland and I found you on the street", as the famous verse by Rafael de León, a Hispanic classic, is usually reformulated.

However, the eternal question of the status of former presidents returns to the scene. What can they do and what can't they do? It's bad if it has to be regulated too much. I understand that it is difficult, when one has lived protected by the paraphernalia of power, to get back down to earth. So many bows on one side and so many outbursts on the other are not easy to accept with naturalness. The transition from the palace to the street requires habituation, but it has a grace precisely: it allows us to see them as they are.