10 The same party (the PP) that has just swept the Madrid elections with 44.74% of the vote only two months ago obtained 3.85% in the Catalan elections, which, if Madrid's electoral law were applied, would have been left out of the Parliament. This difference in the results of a large, state-wide governing party in two significant territories - more than forty points and from almost an absolute majority to the possibility of being left out of Parliament - is unusual. It doesn't happen anywhere. Just as an example, Angela Merkel's party, the CDU/CSU, governs Bavaria with 37% of the vote; in the Baden-Württemberg elections the party considered it a huge disaster to get only 24% of votes, leaving it in opposition. Thirteen points difference, not forty. Any observer, with this data alone, would diagnose Spain as an ungovernable state because there are enormous differences and tensions between territories. Such a brutally contradictory political map - which you do not find in France, Italy or even Great Britain - is the expression of an unresolved underlying problem. In this sense, the forcefulness of the results in Madrid certifies that today Spain has no political formula within its reach to be governed with stability and efficiency.

]]> I read in the press: "According to the polls, Ayuso and Vox will obtain an absolute majority in Madrid". And I try to reread this headline with Angela Merkel's eyes. I imagine her surprise, shock and indignation. In the 2018 elections in Bavaria, the CSU - the Bavarian version of Merkel's party - won 85 seats out of 205 in parliament. Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the far-right party equivalent of Vox, won 22. So the two parties together arithmetically had an absolute majority. But it did not occur to anyone either in the polls or when the results were made public to write a headline saying that the CSU and AfD had an absolute majority. Simply because this arithmetically possible majority was politically impossible. Worse, disgusting. A few Bavarian MPs dared to hint at the possibility, not many, and were quashed by Merkel. And the CSU sought alliances with other parties. Merkel would be scandalised by the naturalness with which Madrid takes for granted an alliance that in Bavaria would be aberrant. Vox is like AfD, but Madrid is not Bavaria, nor is the PP the equivalent, when it comes to forming coalitions, of the German Christian Democrats. Nor is Ayuso Merkel. Even if they share a group in Europe.

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