Felipe VI urges to avoid a danger, “the germ of discord”, which is no longer so much a danger as an installed virus that we should eradicate, but for the moment we are allowing ourselves and learning to coexist. It is true that in 2023, with two very tense elections – municipal and legislative – polarization and discord have reached maximums. But the germ is earlier. When did it begin to be the dominant factor in Spanish politics? Political and territorial, or national, tensions always existed. Alfonso Guerra, with his theatrical tic in harassing UCD, compared Adolfo Suárez, the president-midwife of democracy, with General Pavía’s horse, alluding to the coup against the First Republic. But UCD and the PSOE (along with Fraga, Roca and Carrillo) agreed on the Constitution.
Then there was the coup d’état of 23F, but the next day a large unitary demonstration, from Fraga to Carrillo, repudiated it. The problems with “nationalities” go back a long way, but Pujol and the PNV successively supported the governments of Felipe and Aznar. The virus of discord had not yet been inoculated.
The virus that threatens Spanish politics began when, after the Atocha attack, the PP lost – against the odds – the elections. Rajoy was then thrust into fierce opposition. Against Zapatero, against the Statute of Catalonia and against the negotiation with ETA
When did the germ give way to the virus? I think it was after the terrible terrorist attack in Atocha in 2004 (193 deaths), when the Aznar Government lied about its responsibility, a climate of great indignation was generated and the PP lost the elections against the odds. And to overcome the trauma Mariano Rajoy – a candidate defeated because of Aznar – was forced to practice fierce opposition, both against the Statute of Catalonia, amended and approved by the Cortes, and the subsequent Catalan referendum, and then against the negotiation of Zapatero with ETA, which was the prologue to the end of the band. Do you remember “the betrayal of the dead” with which Zapatero was attacked? All of this caused a PP-PSOE schism, but milder than the current one since Rajoy and Rubalcaba and Rajoy and Sánchez still agreed on both the abdication of Juan Carlos and 155.
But the Statute conflict ended up leading, after the 2010 Constitutional Court ruling against the 2006 Statute (four years later and with a very politicized court) to the emergence of independence and the unilateral declaration of independence in 2017.
Now the virus of the territorial conflict has subsided. In Basque Country because ETA stopped killing, it was dissolved years ago and the PNV is a factor of stability. Although Bildu is still a throwing weapon. And it also goes down in Catalonia. The pardons deflated, Artur Mas -the president who promoted independence- has just declared that in the coming years it is not possible, the PSC wins the last elections and there are beginning to be transversal pacts.
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But, on the contrary, after the motion of censure that evicted Rajoy from La Moncloa, the two legislative elections of 2019 and those of last July, not only the discord but the incompatibility has reached the extreme among the PP, which does not handle be in La Moncloa and needs Vox to govern some autonomous communities and municipalities, and the PSOE, which has needed all the parties to its left and the entire independence movement to achieve the investiture. The imperfect two-party system has been replaced by an ideological combat between two blocs that is making any dialogue and any consensus impossible.
Felipe VI is wrong. We are already in full discord. But he is right that without the Constitution there is no democracy or coexistence possible, and that each institution, starting with the King, must be placed in the place that constitutionally corresponds to it. And also – it is the key to everything – that the Constitution must preserve its identity as a “collective pact” and as a “place of mutual recognition.” Discord and conflict are seriously damaging the normal functioning of democracy. But The advantage of the Constitution is that, although worn out, it has no alternative. No one is strong enough to break it. And even less to impose their recipes.