The double decision of the People's Party (PP) to call a demonstration in Madrid against the proposed amnesty the weekend before the debate on the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo and to encourage another in Barcelona on October 8th with the same basic argument shows that humans are the only creatures that trip up twice on the same stone. The Spanish right, fearful of losing its historical rights and privileges, is reacting viscerally and taking a confrontational position against the vast majority of Catalans. It is doing so in a flashy and provocative way, to make it seem, falsely, that it is defending the unity of Spain, something which appeals so much to interests in Madrid, and it is without allies in the periphery of Spain and will have to achieve absolute majorities if it wants to govern one day, since along the way it has lost any possible ally.
More than four million signatures were gathered against the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia presented in 2006, after a shameful PP campaign setting up petition tables in all corners of Spain and inciting the basest anti-Catalan passions. Mariano Rajoy even took part in the mission, receiving the signatories, in more than one event in Madrid or Andalusia, alongside the late Josep Piqué; the now-expatriate Catalan in Madrid, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho; the former Spanish interior minister Jorge Fernández; and fellow Catalan Jorge Moragas, former chief of staff of Rajoy and currently ambassador to Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. There is no record of any destruction he has caused in those African countries, unlike his passage through the Spanish government, where his role in the events of October 2017 was not exactly to reduce tension.
This right wing, when it has options to win, hides Aznar; when things go badly, it gets the ex-prime minister out for a stroll around the TV sets and sets him up to instill right-wing morale into the troops, predict the disintegration of Spain, proclaim himself a defender of the Constitution that he never respected and call the masses to the streets. Aznar has found in Isabel Díaz Ayuso a perfect partner who has an appeal in spaces they share, in business and in the media, partly because the discourses of both of them have the same author, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez. Feijóo is not, at least in appearance, exactly the same, but that matters little when he moves with a huge ignorance of what the world of Madrid really is, like that soft-toy named Tristón, an abandoned dog looking for adoption. Feijóo has little bite and I don't remember a PP president who has changed his mind more times in such a short time under pressure from that right-wing Madrid media.
The crusade of Aznar and Ayuso thus clearly displaces Feijóo, who will end up, on the 26th and 27th of this month, as the protagonist of the saddest investiture session for a would-be prime minister after an election. No options, no speech and no allies, beyond Vox. It is obvious that the PP campaign is aimed at going to new elections on January 14th by way of making impossible the pact between the Socialists (PSOE) and the Catalan pro-independence parties. Mobilize the street to see if Pedro Sánchez shrugs and takes a step back on the amnesty law. For this reason, not only the right and the ultra-right, but also the Socialism that governed during the Transition, with Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra at the helm, are also joining the anti-Sánchez fray. The regime of '78 that does not want Spain to change century and prefers to walk backwards like a crab. In black and white rather than colour, Jacobinism as a model of state and the past as a false era of glory.
Getting out of this repeating loop is not at all easy, but, perhaps, the route to a new election is such a narrow path for Pedro Sánchez that, if he does not want to lose, he has no choice but to reach an agreement. In the end, perhaps, the right, in its eagerness to trash the party, is placing the noose around its own neck.