The Constitution in a state of disarray
The Law of Laws is mortally wounded. Minutes before it closed on Thursday night, December 1, the social-communist government and its separatist allies, ERC, PNV and Bildu, approved with malice aforethought the elimination of the crime of sedition. A stab in the back to solidarity. What happened in Catalonia in 2017 was public disorder. And we didn't know it.
The nation was disarmed, the process moved its centre of gravity to the palatial hill of La Moncloa and the lever of hatred of the rebels moved the train of unity to the siding of High Treason.
Rufián and Otegui boasted hours later of using the force of their votes to take a giant step towards the independence of Catalonia and the Basque Country. Urkullu will pick up the nuts. Collaborationist silence from the PSOE. The PP accused Sánchez of weakening the state, but the docile Montero counterattacked by talking about continuing to "build coexistence". The PSC has already offered its votes to Aragonés to accelerate the train wreck, after the burning of books of the Magna Carta in Barcelona.
Forty-four years of freedom and democracy have been dynamited by a president, -with five unconstitutionality sentences behind him-, who will go down in history -he says- for having dug up a dead man from the Valley of the Fallen and for having discovered the luminous legacy of republicanism from '31 to '39.
We will collect signatures to award him a pensioner's medal for his courage and heroism. With the Law of Democratic Memory, "the soldier of fortune" Pérez-Castejón wants to win the civil war that the Second Republic lost because of his corruption and incompetence. This law is a monstrosity that takes us back to the Pact of San Sebastián and more directly to the revolts and the coup of 1934, the real beginning of the national struggle.
Our courageous Prime Minister did not attend the solemn hoisting of the national flag because he does not want to listen to the pulse of the street, of the people. He appeared in the Salon de Pasos Perdidos to slander the opposition. "PP and VOX are outside the Constitution". This is what he says who has been in a pact since 2018 with those who want to destroy it. Abascal's party respected the institutional tribute, but did not share the celebration with a government that wants to "burst it". An unforgivable neglect. The most significant thing was the absence of the government's partners and six regional presidents.
For yet another year, Meritxell Batet gave a conventional speech. "The political matter that shaped our Constitution", she said, "was not fear, but hope". She threaded together a series of clichés appropriate to the occasion, she remembered Ukraine, "we are a border of solidarity with Kiev", she stressed, that peace is the supreme good, and she appealed to the power of the word in the temple of sovereignty. "We ask that it be used to argue, not to hurt; to propose, not to offend," he said. He ended his speech by thanking the architects of the Transition and appealing to the generosity of all: "We live the dream of our fathers and grandfathers. Let us have the ambition to hand over a better dream to our children.
The celebration was restrained. The atmosphere was sombre, gloomy. Fortunately, the rain was pouring down on Madrid. It was needed.
The provocation of appointing as members of the Constitutional Court the former minister Juan Carlos Campos - who signed the pardons of the coup perpetrators, was legally responsible for the "Sisí" law and declared in parliament that "we are in a constituent period" - and the director general of the Presidency, Laura Díaz, close to the PSC and, therefore, to the ERC, confirm that Sanchezism has no limits. No beginning and no end. An asphyxiating populism. Kirchnerist Peronism. Eternal corruption
Sánchez seeks a submissive and obedient Court of Guarantees for Conde Pumpido to "fix" the Catalan problem in the same way he "solved" the ETA problem as Zapatero's attorney general. In other words, surrendering without conditions.
Predictably, while the Children of San Ildefonso sing the minor prizes of the National Lottery, El Gordo will hit, in all its series, this Government champion of inequality. A great gift to get us through the year until the general elections.
Carl Schmitt - the creator of the enabling laws - will be spinning in his grave with joy. Don Pedro will have achieved his goal: to be the commander-in-chief of the three branches of government. Just like Franco. Totalitarianism with an Etruscan smile. On the road to the single party. Illegalising VOX is a matter of months. Without Abascal's votes, Núñez Feijóo will rot in the middle of nowhere.
The institutional and constitutional crisis is served. The surrender of the CGPJ, tied hand and foot for almost a year, is a matter of days. The Supreme Court will live a new reverie, subjugated.
The BOE has replaced Parliament. Censure of the opposition between Batet and Gómez de Celis has always tilted in favour of the "progressive" left. The president leads the way in insulting the entire opposition: "Mr Feijóo, come wash up", the apollonian autocrat told him in the upper house. Then the rapier is dished out by all, but especially by the mother of Iglesias' children. Irene Montero, mentor of the "Sisí" law, rides on hate with a "passionate" verbal aggressiveness and accuses the PP of "promoting rape culture".
The guardians of morality will see to it that the Journal of Sessions does not reflect reality. Why should the representatives of the people be censured in the temple of sovereignty? Because the government cannot stand the truth. To throw out a "voxista" member of parliament for saying that the only thing Irene has studied in depth in her life has been her husband - a shallow fellow - is a truism. And yet it allows and consents to Rufián making fun of the "fascist judges".
The Frankenstein government welcomes all the enemies of democracy. The division of PSOE and Podemos is an eternal lie. Where do they go separately? Echenique already explained it in a tweet: "We are not going to break this Executive because PP and VOX come to occupy the seats".
With the incorporation to the High Court of a politician like Campos and an enemy of the 155 like Díaz, all the president's wet dreams will come true. The III Federal Republic (asymmetrical, of course), will be presented as the Third Spain that never existed. Legal disarmament and separatist levers will crumble the constitutional edifice in the next legislature.
The backbone of a nation is the common language, and here it is not possible to study Spanish in Catalonia, Navarre, the Basque Country, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Galicia and part of Aragon (more than 11 million citizens).
Without foundations, the constitutional architecture collapses. The assault on the CGPJ will fall under its own weight. The factions always reach a consensus. In the next legislature, if we do not stop this suicidal drift at the ballot box, we will be the main actors in a political and social engineering between climate change and feminazism that will freeze our blood. Now revolutions are not made with tanks, they are won with lies.
The state of affairs was explained with such sharp simplicity by Isabel Díaz Ayuso: "We are on the way to a dictatorship under the rule of a tyrant who endangers the rule of law".
By mid-January, Dr Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón will have concentrated more power in his hands with just 120 seats than Felipe González with his 202 deputies in the historic October 82 changeover. The socialist Chinese vase has been critical on Antena 3 of the abolition of sedition - "it is not comparable to the street riots in Europe", he said - and has asked him to rectify the "Sisí" law for its lack of legal rigour.
Half a hundred rapists have already benefited from the Montero law and fifteen have been released from prison to rape again. But Pedro, the divine, will never ever rectify. The gods are not wrong.
The lions of Congress are roaring "enough is enough! The unity of Spain is in danger. One of these days, like Caligula, Sánchez will appoint his Falcon as deputy for life.
Some pundits say he will bring forward the general elections to May; others predict that he will not stand as a candidate. Sánchez is predestined. He will not bring forward the elections because if he loses them he will not preside over the EU in the second half of 23rd May, nor will he be able to travel by presidential plane to the gastronomic summits of the Socialist International.
He will be the PSOE's indispensable candidate because he has eliminated all his peers. Who could succeed him? Himself. He is indispensable. Let them tell this to Lambán from Aragon, who has had to publicly retract three times after a call from Ferraz. He is an example that Stalinism is still present in the organisation. It is the vanity and arrogance of a salon revolutionary César. You have to see how he liquefies before Bildu, ERC and PNV. He has promised Urkullu that the tax on the rich will not be applied in his territory. More unsupportive Quota.
The labour reform is a scam. If the figures don't add up, the messenger will be shot. The INE has gone into "CIS mode". The denunciations of seven national and foreign organisations have confirmed that last November's unemployment data are not credible. Anyway, the PP is blamed for catastrophism and the unions of the "mariscadas" give the reason to Yolanda Díaz. The minister about whom nobody knows why she attended the Guadalajara Book Fair (Mexico) replacing Iceta has never explained where the permanent unemployed who collect unemployment and those attached to ERTEs are counted.
Experts believe that there are between 400,000 and 600,000 workers in labour limbo and that the real figure would be closer to the 3.5 million unemployed than the 2.8 million that the government blesses. According to industry sources, 3,000 people have left the self-employed in the past month. The recession is here whether Calviño, Díez or Montero deny it.
The reality is that Spain, with 12.6%, is the leading country in terms of unemployment in the whole of the EU. Not to mention youth unemployment, which is scandalous. Therefore, we must have a single method of accounting so that the others, if they come along, do not continue to lie to us. Unemployment data need unemployment from the government. Double or triple counting must be stopped. Lying in the data is also corruption.
The exalted Yolanda, the "blonde arrow" of adding by subtracting, the one of the 57 seats without a party, the trade unionist of the sonorous silences, the mourner of Castro and Chávez; the one who puts herself in profile like nobody else, is more false than Sánchez's impostures.
The lady of the subsidised food baskets so that no one is left behind now wants to "expropriate" forks (without spoon) that have more than five floors. "They distort the market," she claims. And this Labour minister is the most highly rated of the mega-government. Seeing is believing.
If Irene Montero is burned by the law that puts rapists on the street -surely she wanted to protect women, but her arrogance has favoured sexual aggressors-, she will be scorched by the Trans Law. And Belarra with the Animal Protection Law and that of the 1,000 families.
The head of the Interior, Fernando Grande Marlaska, is burnt. He has lied so much to the MPs with his films on Melilla (or Ceuta, it doesn't matter) that he was unable to explain in Parliament the footage of last summer's invasion operation.
He maintains his falsehoods because they are the pillars of his administration. When I hear that he will be killed by the "killer monclovita" like his dolphin Ábalos, experience tells me that Marlaska is the owner of the secret of Pegasus, the content of Sánchez's mobile phone and the delivery of the Sahara to Morocco without going through either the Council of Ministers or Parliament. He will not be dismissed because no one does the dirty work of Fridays better, -approaching ETA prisoners-, than the ex-magistrate.
Pensions have always been the unfinished business of the last twenty years. Now Brussels is demanding that the accounts be adjusted and not a settling of accounts with employers and workers as the head of this portfolio, José Luis Escrivá, intends to do. This man has renounced all his convictions and expert knowledge that he held in the AIReF of Rajoy's time.
He is now a chiquilicuatre playing with the future of millions of workers. The Social Security is bankrupt (58 billion). The latest proposal to fool Brussels has been to extend the period of contributions from 25 to 30 years, although the two worst ones would be excluded. In other words, it is extended to 28 years. And it wants us to believe that the result of the reduction is neutral. This is impossible. He is lying knowingly and, by lying, he is prevaricating beyond his means.
The most optimistic analysts have given a terrifying figure: 80 billion more deficit until 2030. There are no budgets that can withstand it. And if social security contributions go up, employment will go down the drain.
Pensions are going to go up because next year is a double election year and whoever comes after them will be left to fend for themselves. After Zapatero's freeze in 2009, they want the "brown" to be swallowed by the PP if it comes to power and continue with the rattle of strikes over "right-wing cuts". I have never seen a government in democracy that only talks about rights, never about duties. It is clear that they no longer sing "The Internationale" or read Mahatma Gandhi.
The holiday aqueduct gives no respite to the journalist: I note the unease of the female aspirants to join the Benemérita because this Government wants to reduce the severity of the tests. The applicants want to be equal. Free and equal.
Calviño's former number 2, Ana de la Cueva, places her husband Ignacio Manrique - Nadia's husband - in Patrimonio Nacional with a salary of over 100,000. Top marketing executive. Nepotism at the top. More corruption.
And finally, the head of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, has signed in the BOE the appointment of the former ERC deputy Lluís Salvadó, indicted for several crimes in the 1-O, including embezzlement of public funds, as president of the Port of Barcelona, 120,000 euros a year. It is clear that the crime of embezzlement will be removed from the Penal Code to favour the same criminals.
Let us await the development of events with this wave of homemade devices, which reached Moncloa without the Presidency reporting it to the Audiencia Nacional, to two embassies, to a company in Zaragoza and to the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles. Everything is confusing. Except for your belly (M. Hernández).
We have already seen what became of the investigation into the bullet casings sent to Marlaska and Iglesias, hours before the 4-M election campaign in Madrid. We never heard anything more. Marlaska is still there muddying his words and demanding transparency. The navajita "plateá" will come in handy for Reyes Maroto in his conquest of the City Council of the capital of the Kingdom.
The water war is once again pitting the Popular Party and the Socialists of Castilla-La Mancha against the Socialists and Popular Party of Valencia, Murcia and Almería. Water belongs to everyone. The drought has made it clear that the National Hydrological Plan that Rodríguez Zapatero threw into the rubbish bin the day after withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq is urgent and necessary. Where are they, Mrs María Cristina Narbona, ex-minister of the Environment, senator and president of the PSOE, the desalination plants that you sold as an alternative to the water transfer? Desalinated water - it has to be said - does not have sufficient nutrients and has to be mixed with natural water so that it can be used in agriculture.
It was all another lie that has come to the surface as the houses and churches drowned in the empty reservoirs now emerge. Territorial unity and lack of water are the two most serious problems of our time.
The perception of a large majority of Spaniards is that, at this moment, after four years of social-communist government, the State Pacts are further away than ever. Nor for education, health, pensions, unemployment or water. Sánchez feeds division and seeks to get the Autonomous Regions to kill each other.
As long as this Government generously rewards constitutional disloyalty and the unity of the homeland is endangered at the price of street riots, we will not learn that none of us is as good as all of us put together.
The Magna Carta may need a facelift. Never an explosive charge to dynamite it from within. Sedition has unsealed it. What we demand is that this Government complies with it and enforces it. That would be the best tribute in such turbulent times.
The Constitution is the refuge of our freedoms, rights and obligations and the pillar of our coexistence. The Transition has been the best period of our lives. And King Felipe VI, the first citizen and guarantor. Concord, as President Adolfo Suárez taught us then, was possible; it is still possible. Let us celebrate now, while there is still time, this 44th anniversary of 6-D. Long live the Constitution!
Antonio REGALADO directs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA at:
aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com