Amnesty and political normality

MadridThe legislature has reached a point of degradation beyond return. But this is a mistake. The exercise of opposition and control of the government should be compatible with dialogue and a willingness to reach agreements for the benefit of the community. And this is not the case. All ships have been burned and all bridges demolished. All that remains is the permanent electoral campaign and the environmental outcry. We will pay for it. In many respects, with the degradation of the system and a widespread loss of confidence in the parties and their leaders. The alternation in power should not follow the pattern of the previous destruction of the adversary. But experience and political practice show that over these decades of democracy in Spain, the conviction has taken root that prosperity and change of cycle are only achieved through scorched-earth policies.

Feijóo –who will once again take his party to the streets this Sunday– is willing to increasingly intensify the social climate with the aim of creating a sense of the end of the regime that would bring him closer to the dream goal of repealing Sánchezism. However, he still has no possible alliances, apart from the one he could continue to establish with Vox, which is doomed to suffer cyclical crises. It's an insufficient scenario. From the outset, this path doesn't lead to a hypothetical motion of censure with any chance of success. The PP will have to continue waiting, from demonstration to demonstration, and it could take a long time. On the other hand, Sánchez seems prepared for an endless policy of resistance that makes the desire for survival the only sure lever to remain in power.

Where do we want to go with this?

This, adorned with a long series of clashes over all sorts of issues, while we have no budgets in either Madrid or Catalonia, no functioning housing law, and no will to agree on a realistic and humanitarian policy regarding the immigration phenomenon. Where do we want to go with this? When and how will the strategy of constant clashes end, and at what cost? What will be the outlook after this intense battle? The alternation in power, at what price? Or do you believe that if the PP can govern the next term, the PSOE will not return the trick of blocking the institutions, preventing, for example, the current progressive majority in the Constitutional Court from suddenly transforming into a court dominated once again by the right-wing judiciary and the most conservative sectors of the judiciary?

In a scenario like the current one, attempts to regain institutional momentum with some calls, such as that of the Conference of Presidents, they only serve to enrich the archive of theatrical scenes and feed the media resumes of some leaders. Under these circumstances, it is doubtful that it was worth renaming the Pedralbes Palace for this meeting of regional government leaders. Many will remember those images of Civil Guard Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos coldly greeting Mossos Major Josep Lluís Trapero in September 2017, during meetings of a police coordination that was never achieved.

The thesis of change in Catalonia

The opportunity to change the tone of those sequences was a debt Pedro Sánchez owed to Salvador Illa. Now it was time to promote the theory that everything has changed in Catalonia, in part thanks to the amnesty law. A speech that the Constitutional Court itself has made its own. in the draft ruling on this law. The Court of Guarantees has assumed that the aforementioned law does not respond to "a whim," but rather pursues the objective of achieving political normalization in Catalonia by applying an instrument, that of amnesty, designed, among other things, to promote processes of "national reconciliation."

Just look Images of the greeting between the Minister of Health, Mónica García, and the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, to see how far the desire for conciliation and harmony extends in Spanish politics, eight years later. As for Catalonia, the most striking scene is that of Ayuso leaving the meeting of presidents upon hearing the Lehendakari speaking Basque and the president of the Generalitat expressing himself in Catalan. I wonder how Josep Piqué would have digested all this if he were still with us. What would we expect from the Madrid president if the political-fiction hypothesis of her becoming head of the Spanish government one day became a reality? Would she make one of her first decisions to expel Catalan and Basque from the Cortes Generales? Would this be the goal of reconciliation to which one could aspire?

The portrait of a time

In any case, it's not worth racking your brains with speculation about Ayuso's future, as with gestures like this she's fundamentally seeking to attack Pedro Sánchez for his concessions to Salvador Illa and the pro-independence parties. At the moment, for example, there isn't much news about the imminent pacts to change Catalonia's financing model and bring it closer to the Basque Country's economic agreement. The socialist leader's strategies and the support he still receives from the pro-independence forces. I haven't mentioned Piqué before for no reason. Feijóo, if he ever reaches the Moncloa and needs the support of representative parties in Catalonia and the Basque Country, at the very least, has had a different mentality regarding the Galician language than Ayuso. Let's say.