The 'Plumber' and Goya's Black Painting

MadridThe political agenda continues to be marked by the actions of judges, police and prosecutors in a totum revolutum This makes it difficult to distinguish blame and responsibility. Especially when the PP and PSOE compete in pointing fingers at each other while offering no explanations for the cases affecting them. In any case, there are scenes, videos, and recordings that create an unusual, purely surreal current situation. The meetings of a socialist activist like Leire Díez Castro with businessmen affected by investigations into economic crimes in search of information to discredit Civil Guard commanders have the air of an implausible film script. But it happened and left a trace. In this sense, it is very curious how attempts at collusion of this kind are recorded and circulate so easily. It is simplistic to immediately speak of a mafia, because organizations of this type usually work more efficiently. However, the episode demands and deserves investigations and clarifications.

The government must necessarily be very concerned about events of this nature, especially—but not only—that a PSOE activist and former employee of public companies is participating in data-gathering activities against the Central Operative Union (UCO), dedicated to combating corruption cases. That businessmen linked to hydrocarbon fraud choose this route to defend themselves is serious enough. But that in the middle of the party, a supposedly spontaneous socialist appears, offering guarantees of being able to influence the Prosecutor's Office in exchange for information against specific officials of the aforementioned unit of a body that functions as a judicial police force, gives the matter the profile of Goya's black paintings. It was André Malraux who, in his essay on the Aragonese painter, considered those works precursors to the surrealist movement that developed a hundred years later. If you visit the Prado Museum, you won't just stop in front of the Duel with sticks –perhaps the best-known scene–, but also before the composition entitled Men reading, interpreted as a reflection of the period of political instability that the country was going through in those years – between 1820 and 1823 – those of the Liberal Triennium, after six pronouncements, the last of which, that of Colonel Rafael del Riego, triumphed.

The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, would love to be able to draw inspiration from some passages of the speech that Riego gave to his troops in January 1820, when on June 8 he addresses his militants and supporters, now summoned to the sixth demonstration against the president of the government installed in Madrid in 2022. "Spain," said the colonel, "is living under arbitrary and absolute power, exercised without respect for the fundamental laws of the nation." With these words, Riego criticized King Ferdinand VII, who had not sworn an oath to the Constitution, described by the military man as a "pact between the monarch and the people, the foundation and embodiment of every modern nation." Spanish politics, however, is not done these days with grand words. We have seen this clearly in recent days. The Popular Party leader has contributed other concepts to the history of this period, among them the epithet "hood"of a mafia organization dedicated to Pedro Sánchez. "That's about democracy or mafia," he added. Without a doubt, the PSOE owes an explanation about the activities of its militant, forever baptized as the plumber, a new political participation title that we still don't know if it will be granted the status of capacity.

Aznar's words

This time, I thought the former Prime Minister, José María Aznar, was more accurate. Instead of supporting Feijóo in his desire to present a motion of censure, he opted for a more realistic analysis. Aznar said that he sees Sánchez in an "unbearable" situation, but admits that there may still be two years left. He was probably thinking about the conspiratorial meetings of the plumber when he added that "we must be careful when the underworld of society rises to positions of responsibility, we must be in a state of maximum concern and alert," because "Spain is in the hands of the underworld." But he said this coinciding with judicial decisions quite damaging to his party. On the one hand, the provisional imprisonment of Francisco Martínez, former Secretary of State for Security during Mariano Rajoy's time as president, for his alleged involvement in a scheme involving the buying and selling of stolen data and money laundering. And the second development, the prosecution of Alberto González Amador—partner of Madrid's president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso—for crimes of tax fraud and document forgery.

All this, while the Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, continues to hang in the balance for an alleged crime of revealing secrets in relation to the alleged attempted pact between González Amador and the Madrid Prosecutor's Office for the businessman to admit to tax fraud in exchange for not... An issue in which it has also been interesting to note the contradictions between the defendant and his former lawyer, Carlos Neira. The former says he did not authorize him to negotiate, and the latter claims he consulted with the client beforehand.

In parallel, in Extremadura, the regional socialist leader and former president of the Badajoz Provincial Council, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, made his debut in the regional Parliament, with the recently acquired status of aforado (privileged parliamentary group), as a member of the chamber, after the judge had sent him to trial for alleged illegal placement of Pedro Sánchez's brother in 2016. A move, this one, going to the Extremadura Parliament after the opportune resignation of another deputy, aimed at trying to facilitate the dismissal of the case. And, along with all this, a PSOE incapable of giving a reasonable explanation for the conduct of its member and plumber, who has been subject to an informational file, not a disciplinary one, and without suspension of membership or precautionary measure. Given this situation, do you want more surrealism and more black paint? And some are then wondering why Vox can rise.