If, on the evening after the 28th April general election, someone had bet that the vote would have to be rerun almost seven months later, they would have been labelled many things. But, above all, an agent of the trifachito [right-wing trio of PP, Cs and Vox] aiming at that time to boost the morale of three political parties which had lost the match to the left. How was the election going to be repeated when Pedro Sánchez, with the results in hand, was assured of four years in government and with a toll to pay as simple as a government that would appear to be a coalition? With less than 24 hours to go before we find out the ending, the tenant of the Moncloa government palace appears determined to continue playing Russian roulette and to throw the dice again, trusting his luck. Not just his good luck, clearly, also in that he's undone that image of a prime minister dependent on the independence supporters he won the confidence motion with.
Now, he's even making a show of the opposite. And, what's going to be his final document before the final decision, as a wink to PP and Ciudadanos, is titled in the current situation as follows: "For a progressive government whose stability doesn't depend on the Catalan pro-independence parties". It can depend on Basque independence supporters, Basque nationalists, Podemos, on the votes of PP, of Ciudadanos, even, who knows, of Vox, as he doesn't mention them in the 46 lines of the statement. The acting prime minister has clearly changed the aim: from stopping fascism to stopping independence supporters. Now Sánchez has decided to, in solidarity, share that stage which protects him in those areas of the Spains which always take a stand against anything to do with Catalan identity.
Sánchez's inability to close a political agreement goes hand in hand with the mediocrity of Spain's political class and, although it may seem strange, mediocrity has ended up becoming a form of success. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Seen from Catalonia, the independence movement has once again thrown Spanish politics into confusion. Through cowardice, basically, more than through the pressure and strength of independence supporters. If this Tuesday the election ends up being confirmed, the Catalan agenda is going to return to the foreground of Spanish political life in the middle of an election campaign. President Torra's trial, the Supreme Court's sentence against the Catalan political prisoners, a new petition for the extradition of the political leaders and members of the Catalan government in exile... A cocktail which Sánchez must think can be a platform for his growth in Spain but which, depending on how the game turns out, could lead to the situation in Catalonia breaking over its banks. The match is about to start. Or so it seems.