Sometimes an image brings us closer than anything has to the past we had thought overcome, and which, we don't know quite how, has crept again into our dining room. That far-right that roams freely in public spaces, ravages our language and denationalises our country, taking us back through a time warp to our most recent history. The Madrid buses circulating through the streets of the Spanish capital with a striking and visible advertisement with the following slogan: Do it for José Antonio, vote Fe de las JONS, the Falange [Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, originating from a fascist group founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1936]and the characteristic symbol of the yoke and arrows is a return to black and white Spain in what is politically and mediatically one of the most far-right-wing capitals in Europe. Because it is not just that Madrid today is right-wing, it has moved away from European right and has often fallen into an authoritarian attitude that is too dangerous for coexistence.
A few days ago we learned that the Central Electoral Commission (JEC) declared, in response to a query from RTVE, Spain's largest state-owned public media company, that it was not in its powers to suspend an electoral advertisement for allegedly criminal content and, consequently, had to broadcast a Falange advert that included the Cara al Sol Francoist anthem during the election campaign. The same commission that muddied everything it wanted when it came to ruling on situations that affected Catalan pro-independence parties. Then it did have, or attribute to itself, all the powers that have existed or ever will, in an incomprehensible attitude, which no one disputed. There are plenty of examples: from banning Puigdemont's candidacy for the European elections to the dismissal of Catalan president Quim Torra as Catalan MP, disqualifying him after he was sentenced for hanging a banner. In recent days, the Provincial Electoral Commissions have forced some thirty town councils to remove Catalan all pro-independence flags and symbols from public buildings and spaces. In short, it is hard to understand —or perhaps not— that the Central Electoral Commission washes its hands on the Cara al Sol issue, and yet on issues of great political significance, it takes a firm and decisive stance.
The Spain of the Cara al Sol is just around the corner, as we are seeing in the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands, a process of dismantling the Catalan linguistic and cultural framework is being conducted by the new autonomous governments recently formed. Situations that are already taking place and which affect the educational model and the school in Catalan are going to take on a new nature. Judges have been in this battle for some time now, and periodically rulings are passed in which Catalan schools are urged to teach more classes in Spanish. This Tuesday, 18th July, we have learned of a new one by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) which insists that the linguistic model established in the new regulations of the Catalan ministry of Education —Decree Law 6/22 and Law 8/22— is unconstitutional as opposed to the model of linguistic conjunction, enforced in the Spanish State.
It is only a prelude to a dangerous return to the past in which we will have to defend things that we have taken for granted since the beginning of the Spanish Transition and which are now going to be questioned by a centralist state that walks with firm and determined steps towards the demolition of the autonomous state as we have known it. José María Aznar made the first twist of the screw in his second term in office, the one with an absolute majority. Partly to get even for his 1996 concessions to Jordi Pujol and Catalan nationalism, and also because the Valladolid-born man's idea of Spain is more similar to French centralism than to Germany's länder model. That Spain lost power with Zapatero and Sánchez and regained it with Rajoy, but beyond the changes in government and the mood of one or another, it reassembled itself and ideologically took over the narrative with the pernicious Ciudadanos factor and that ticket of Albert Rivera and Inés Arrimadas, both of whom have now politically disappeared.
It is a pity that in this dull electoral campaign, the cards seem to have been dealt for many months, and we are apparently only fulfilling the mere formality of getting to 23rd July as best we can. Perhaps the real campaign to preserve identity and roots will not begin until the 24th because, as the Spanish saying goes, nobody remembers Saint Barbara until it thunders. And now we are in times of persistent drought and unbearable heat.