This is more than just a game of strategies. Sánchez and Feijoo are in the same thing: reaching the government and, at the same time, preparing the conditions to go to new elections. The two things are one. Feijóo is known, by little, at a disadvantage: the numbers do not give him to be head of government. Sánchez seems to have it easier and that he will come to govern again. A government, by the way, different from the previous one: the axis turns to the right (PNV/Junts), Sumar weaker than Unidas Podemos and, fundamentally, the national-territorial question at the center of the public debate.
It’s a curious thing. He has been warning for years about the enormous dangers of the arrival of the right to government and its political, social and economic consequences. Now it seems that there is a possibility of a more moderate PP capable of reaching an agreement even with Junts. Once again living day to day and not knowing what is happening. The PP is four votes away from being a government, that is, there is a strategic tie between the two blocks that organize the political majorities in our country. There was no victory, only defeat was avoided. In other words, the government left won because it mobilized its depressed electorate not based on a positive project, but because it made fear of the right the axis of its electoral campaign. Fear, we know, works, but it has a limited time.
Strategic ties are broken by adding or subtracting, or both. The right-wing bloc has a project and, above all, a social imaginary that has widely colonized the political-constitutional system of ’78 and each and every one of its symbols. I’m not just talking about the monarchy, the flag or the armed forces, I’m talking about the Constitution; rather, from a reading of it that has gradually eroded the foundations of the entire system. Suffice it to think about social rights or the so-called territorial question. The left today lacks an alternative country project. It had it and it was endorsed in the squares: guarantee social rights, democratize the economy and the media, modify an unfair electoral system that promotes two-partyism, constitutional reform and constituent process, the fight against corruption. One could continue.
The key to the power of the right has been the basic consensus that has been built and that blocks policies that could limit and democratize the great powers: ironclad alignment with North American foreign policy, membership in NATO and its strategy of preventing, at any cost. whatever the cost, the emergence of a new multipolar order; agreement with the European Union of the euro and conscious acceptance with its neoliberal policies. It will be said that all this is a consequence, to a great extent, of the policies implemented by the PSOE; That has been and is the great problem of the Spanish left. More clearly, Pedro Sánchez’s party is the system, the other leg of the system and the existing polarization occurs in the territory marked by the right.
A few days ago Urtasun, spokesman for Sumar, spoke of the PSOE’s lack of programmatic ambition and, days later, Yolanda Díaz said that the coalition government was inevitable. Negotiating like this is not very promising. Debating while looking askance at early elections is the scenario. 2024 is an election year: European, Galician, Basque and, with more margin, the Catalan. Feijóo’s game is intelligent and not without risk; For now, he will have to define, for the first time, a solvent program. Not easy. The balances with Vox will be difficult to maintain and the nods to Junts and the PNV are not very credible. The question is pertinent: why go to the end in a battle that cannot be won? We talk again about tamayazos, of complicity with the Royal House and other palace games. Everything is possible.
Feijóo, I believe, is going to try to break the tie and configure itself as a consistent opposition to a government that it knows is weak and that is inevitably going to enter the minefield of the national-territorial issue. Negotiating with the Waterloo tenant will be difficult and the judicial apparatus will not be passive. The independence movement is at a low point and the conflict between Esquerra and Junts will worsen in a pre-electoral year. In the center, the government, its politics, its structure and composition. From Brussels comes fiscal consolidation and the end of budgetary joys. European deindustrialization will continue to advance to the benefit of the US and the Union’s axis of gravity will continue to turn towards the East. The news from the Ukrainian front is not good and many more resources will have to be dedicated to defense and security policies, with the perspective of a general conflict in the Sahel. The government’s weak reform drive is in question; It does not seem that the great economic, fiscal and social issues are the center of Pedro Sánchez’s concerns. The motto is last, last.
Sumar was born to govern; He will adhere, with more or less enthusiasm, to the basic criteria defined by the PSOE, I insist, in a context determined by the PNV / Junts alliance. We already experienced the scenario: negotiations, conflicts and posturing in front of the voters’ gallery that the media will inevitably turn into marketing of perks, discrimination and confrontation between communities, by the way, mostly controlled by the PP. The national-territorial question is the great weakness of the PSOE. He lacks a solvent project and is afraid to open the debate on Title VIII of the Constitution. The unified right will be used thoroughly with the explicit objective of dividing and neutralizing the electoral base of the left, starting with Catalonia.
Winning over the right, breaking the strategic tie with the political-social block of the right, would require a coalition government that is the protagonist of public life, based on a coherent set of economic, social and constitutional reforms that would make visible an alternative project for the country. . In this sense to last is to lose, postpone defeat and hand over the government; victory to the right. The PSOE will continue to exist; For now, it is still the system. What can disappear is the left, the political-social forces that continue to have a transformative and socialist perspective.
