The latest abomination from the Popular Party (PP) aimed at dismantling the Catalan educational model has been to present a bill to the Congress of Deputies to create a new level of officials that would monitor the use of the Castilian (Spanish) language in schools. It would be the High Inspectorate of Education, a specific body of inspectors whose function would be to punish schools that don't comply with Spanish law. It must be assumed that these inspectors, doing more of a policing job than an educational one, would be a kind of task force of outsiders sent in by Madrid, because, of course, the first thing the PP always suspects is that the Catalan government constantly breaks the law, and it would not place its High Inspectorate under the control of the Catalan education department.
It could, for example, report to the Spanish government's delegation in Catalonia, although, with the PP as picky as it is, the fact that this office is in the hands of Teresa Cunillera, the Socialist from Lleida, may be a problem. With the PSC having made deals with EH Bildu and the Catalan pro-independence parties, these are not good credentials for Cunillera. Maybe Pablo Casado could look to the Wert Law, the former education act, named after the minister who declared that he wanted to "Spanishize" Catalan children, to see what that document says. He would get a surprise: not even Wert considered such a nonsense. Another solution would be to act directly to preserve the National Police Corps headquarters on Via Laietana and base this elite education body there. The fact that the prefecture depends on minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, with whom he is often in agreement, might soften the request of the PP president.
Or, if he were to talk to the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the new body could be managed directly by her. What could be better than putting the inspectors under the control of someone who has all the Vox voters in the palm of her hand. I don't know to what extent the PP leader is aware of his inability to generate attractive proposals among the (miniscule) electorate he has in Catalonia or of his inability to provide leadership by responding to the problems of the Spanish electorate which he claims to represent and which does not oblige him to speak about Catalan education every day. A lack of charisma is not remedied by making legislative initiatives when all they do is drag a political force which in theory is centrist to the extreme right.
It is not surprising, for example, that Angela Merkel fled from the Spanish PP like a scalded cat whenever she could, back in the days of Mariano Rajoy and much more recently too. For the former German chancellor, the PP were closer to the Polish or Hungarian right than to German Christian democracy or the liberalism represented by French president Emmanuel Macron. It's not the first time I've pointed it out, but Casado's desperation is only leading him to be a poor imitation of Díaz Ayuso, and once this becomes the approach, the original is always better than the copy.
Casado's problem is that he runs around among his supporters like a headless chicken, amid false applause and giving winks to Ayuso, while Pedro Sánchez watches him with a certain indifference: his extremism and his strange tactics serve to place the Socialist leader in a false centre. What a disaster for Spain; what a problem for Catalonia.