With the noise of the election campaign far away for a few hours, a person with very sound information asks me the following question in Madrid: do you mean that Salvador Illa, whom we know very well here, is selling management, good management, in Catalonia, and it is functioning electorally? The truth is that the question is a juicy one, and not easy to answer for anyone who has ever listed, one by one, all the mistakes that Spain has made in the crucial decisions during this year of pandemic and which, when you compare the data, situate the management of the former Spanish health minister as among the very worst in the world. This has been confirmed by several reports, from Cambridge University to The Lancet, from The Economist to several international dailies. The Australian portal Lowy Institute last week placed Spain in 78th place, behind such countries as Libya and Morocco.
So how do you explain it? If one moves away from the focus, the thing is much simpler to see. What unionism is doing in Catalonia is redistributing its seats, not growing, but staying the same, with an approximate total of between 60 and 65 parliamentarians out of 135 - within which it cannibalises the half dozen that will be awarded to Vox. On the other side of the parliamentary arc are the pro-independence parties, which oscillate between 70 and 75, a clear majority which is sometimes closer to the balance point that marks the minimum absolute majority of 68 and, at other times, is farther away from it. This is the explanation for how the concentration of the unionist vote could lead Illa to take first place on 14th February. But the most likely thing is that he will be between second and third place, and will not reach the 36 seats of Ciudadanos in 2017.
But it is true that Illa is passing through the campaign without receiving major attacks from his unionist opponents who, as in 2017, are entrusting everything to the candidacy which is ahead, hoping that the d'Hondt system of proportion representation will end up giving them a push. Well, a little more than a push. And the PSC, the PP and Vox do not place the former minister at the centre of their critiques, nor do they question his management, as the right does with the Sánchez government in the Congress of Deputies. There, they are adversaries and here they are allies, a difference that is much more than just a detail and in which Illa moves as comfortably as a fish in water, while the idea begins to take root that if Vox's votes are necessary for a change of government that will take power away from the pro-independence forces, then Vox's votes they shall have. For Spain, of course.
Iván Redondo, this almighty guru of Sánchez of whom everyone in Madrid is afraid because there is no decision of any electoral transcendence that does not require his approval - deputy PMs Carmen Calvo, Nadia Calviño and Teresa Rivera outrank him, but his status is something else, as has been seen in more than one decision - he placed a minister weighed down by all the ballast in the world in the election race, and yet he is running without any problems. As hard as it is to understand. A short campaign, entering at the last minute and not getting into trouble, those are his three fundamental lines. Maybe one day we’ll read that Redondo has sold the Empire State Building in New York in comfortable monthly installments because it can't be much harder to do.