Pedro Sanchez is in his worst moment since four years ago he arrived at La Moncloa. The majority that supported him –more of rejection than of project– seems to be consumed, he insists on “recomposing” with Catalonia, but that seems like the impossible myth of Sisyphus, and the economic wind is blowing against it. Jamie Dimon, president of JP Morgan, the first American bank, forecast an upcoming hurricane all over the world.
This week, the Spanish CPI (8.7%) and the European CPI (8.1%) point to the hawks will prevail in the ECB. Yes, unemployment has fallen, for the first time since 2008, below three million, and May has been the second month in which employment exceeds 20 million. But the IPC punishes all families (not only those who suffer unemployment). Perhaps that is why even the CIS of Tezanos foresees that in Andalusia the PSOE will stagnate, while PP and Vox will be the only ones to rise. We can go down.
But still in times of ‘sanchismo’ and ‘anti-sanchismo’ –Passions reign in Spain– it is impossible not to recognize that, in the face of the invasion of Ukraine, Sánchez was right. Not only against Putin, but betting heavily on the NATO summit in Madrid on June 29 and 30, which will be important for Spain, and by the increase in defense spending. In this, Sánchez and Feijóo will agree, and the absurd thing is that Podemos – Yolanda Díaz slips away – exhibits hostility against the summit. When Sweden and Finland break their long tradition of neutrality for fear of Putin’s nationalism, that Ione Belarra (and behind him Pablo Iglesias) demand a peace conference in Madrid (with Putin as a star?) is total nonsense.
Is a government viable in which junior partner boycotts the central axis of foreign and security policy? No, although those close to Sánchez argue that politics is realism, that Trump was president of the United States and that whoever is without sin casts the first stone.
Who could throw it away? In Spain, only Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, that in 1981 and being president after the enigmatic resignation of Suárez and the Tejero coup, he asked to join NATO and had it approved in Congress. Knowing that it was an unpopular decision, that the left would win the next election and betting that entry would anchor Spain in the West and prepare for integration into Europe.
Curious, we have celebrated the 40th anniversary of Spain’s entry into NATO as if Calvo Sotelo had not existed. Perhaps because that centrist UCD that presided over the Transition is, for some, an annoying memory. So, with that of “NATO, from the outset, no& rdquor; Y the great contrary demonstrations, Felipe González, perhaps the best president, was not up to the task. He wanted to win the elections of 1982 – otherwise his “comrades & rdquor; they would have written him off – and he couldn’t go against the sentiment of an anti-American left. Gregorio Morán, who was a leader of the PCE in hiding, He maintains that it was a great move. With a young PSOE, protected by Willy Brandt and opposed to NATO, the old and mythical Carrillo –already wounded in the elections of 77 and 79– could not survive. And with him, the Eurocommunist PCE, when Eurocommunism had “glamour”.
But Felipe González rectified. he had promised a NATO referendum to leave and ended up summoning him, but to stay. He risked losing because the Spanish right (Fraga) and the Catalan (Pujol) bet that Felipe would lose and have to leave. In the end, the ‘yes’ won, but with a meager 56.8%. And it seems that it was because Felipe said that he would leave if the ‘no’ triumphed. Just what the right and many left wanted.
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Calling a referendum that you can lose is not usual. He had promised and he kept it. Now Felipe says that the referendum was a mistake. He then he irritated the “pacifists & rdquor; when in 1990 he supported Bush father (not to be confused with the son), when the invasion of Kuwait. Then he was crucified on the left, the rector Villapalos, turned into a Bertrand Rusell del Manzanares, and the press of the young Pedro J.
Forty years in NATO, but ignoring the decision of Leolpoldo Calvo Sotelo, the center-right politician who put his sense of State before the electoral interest of the UCD. Although, curiously, today a certain centrism is longed for.