Madrilenians: to the polls!
The die is cast. All citizens living in the capital of the Kingdom are Madrileños. And we have a date with the ballot box on 4 May. These elections will be watched by the whole of Spain and a large part of Europe because of the solution that the Community of Madrid has found to coexist with the pandemic without suffocating the economy.
The EPA data confirm that the regional government is the one that has generated the most jobs in the first quarter of the year: some 50,000 jobs. There are 1.25 million families in Spain without any income, 155,000 jobs destroyed in the private sector from January to March, 340,000 more unemployed in a year, 690,000 workers in ERTEs and an impossible deficit. We have already exceeded 5.2 million unemployed and, in the face of this "labour and human bloodletting", the doctor president says that "we are doing very well and on the verge of getting out of the crisis". Thank goodness Felipe González gave him a reality check. "When everything is bad, along comes "some guy" (sic) and says that the future is great". And he added: "But listen, are you living the reality of suffering and crisis that I am living?" The former president demanded a project that serves the citizens and not the resilience of staying in power at any price. It is the most opportune response to a Caesar with absolute powers for more than a year, incapable of making a political decision - as he promised the ACs - who leaves the helm of the state in the hands of the judges under surveillance after the end of the state of alert on 9 May. A new Pilate.
These elections are a direct battle between the PP candidate Isabel Natividad Díaz Ayuso '-"the girl from Zendal-", and the President of the Government Pedro Sánchez, who from his monclovite watchtower has mistreated the people of Madrid as if he were the owner and master of a cotton plantation with (coloured) slaves recently arrived from Africa in the 16th century. The strategy imposed on socialist candidate Ángel Gabilondo from "no to Iglesias through the cordon sanitaire to Vox to "Pablo, we have 12 days left to beat those in the Colón photo", confirms that Sanchismo is the PSOE's greatest enemy. The government and the party have thrown themselves into the hands of Podemos. A band of radicals: communist, Bolivarian and victimistic. And there are the polls. The Telemadrid debate only served for the left to manipulate data on the dead and the living without proposing alternatives to a right that has been winning elections and lowering taxes for 25 years. How many homes did you visit, Mr. Iglesias, when you were solely responsible for the first vice-presidency? None, Doña Isabel replied. Margarita Robles stressed the following day that the UME is sent by Defence - not by WhatsApp - by the head of the 2030 Agenda. Yet another lie.
Then the packages with the bullets arrived undetected at the Post Office and the Ministry of the Interior. Incomprehensible. And the knife painted in red to the minister Reyes Maroto. Nor did the detector in her Ministry of Tourism work. And even knowing that he was mentally ill, he continued to lie at a rally without explaining the truth. As if he were Mrs Lastra. Three simple questions: Why does a letter to Pablo Iglesias arrive at Marlaska's ministry when everyone knows the address of his Gal-a-pagar caseplón? That of the director of the Guardia Civil, María Gámez, seems logical, because nobody knows her except for her sectarianism, for breaking the neutrality of the Benemérita by participating in Socialist Party rallies and for always losing the Malaga City Council elections. Second question: Why do you see seven shells in the picture and not four? Why does the register read 22 abroil 2021? Abroil? A technician with ten years' experience at Barajas confirmed to Trece TV that the image on the screen is the one shown to him in practice, but that it does not correspond to reality.
This is undoubtedly a manipulation. And a fourth question: how is it possible that in the face of the size of the systems failures, the president of Correos, Juan Manuel Serrano, Sánchez's close friend, the second highest paid post in the state (around 220,000 euros a year) after SEPI (235,000), has not appeared to publicly explain these black holes in our security. And while we're at it, let him explain about the votes cast for clients who had simply certified a letter: "Pucherazos" as in 1931, 33, 34 and 1936? Let's trust the postal service but with these managers we have to be very vigilant this time in the counting of postal votes.
In the age of telecommunications, it makes no sense whatsoever that the deadlines for the call for tenders are extended by 54 days. And that, as in Catalonia, they are held on a working day that is always paid for - up to 4 hours - by the employers. The law urgently needs to be changed so that these 54 nights are reduced to 30, the elections are held on the nearest Sunday, the electoral campaign is reduced to one week, the electoral propaganda that reaches people's homes is eliminated; television debates with concrete proposals, open lists and, furthermore, the use of institutional media for partisan purposes is prohibited. Finally, it is necessary to eliminate from the electoral law of 1977 that polls cannot be published until six days before the day of reflection. Especially when they can be carried out and published in Andorra. Of course, the CIS should not be banned from publishing them either, if they are shared with the parties involved. And if we want to change the future, the Penal Code must be modified so that separatist terrorists, coup plotters, rapists and corrupt people are disqualified from standing as candidates. The case of Puigdemont is the most humiliating. Ethics, austerity, transparency and constitutional loyalty must be the pillars of political regeneration in order to consolidate a strong democracy that survives the cancer of totalitarianism. To change the world we have to change ourselves. It is now in our votes to reject the tyranny of a social-communist government and vote for decency and freedom as Nicolás Redondo Terreros, Joaquín Leguina and Fernando Savater have chosen.
Bullets, knives, disqualifications, insults and polarisation - "it is in our interest to foment tension", in the words of the master ZP (2004) - have been the common denominator of this campaign of which we can only remember six words: Ayuso's Freedom, Monasterio's Protection, Iglesias' Fascists -for him we are all fascists-, Gabilondo's "cordon sanitaire" like South African apartheid, Mónica García de MM's lies of unemployment and false CV: ("I am a communist and I find no differences with UP"), and the disconsolate call to centrism of the last "angel from hell" Edmundo Bal.
After having lost the TV debate and having switched from the official car to the taxi of his number 25 on the list Celso González to get to the TV event, Iglesias Turrión demonstrated his histrionics with the programmed "espantá" of Cadena SER. A desperate show to save the furniture. His whining about the envelope given to him by the Ministry to write his tweet - how is it possible that this evidence was not kept by the police for the subsequent investigation? - shows that he is not exactly the brave little tailor. As he did not serve his military service, his courage is not even supposed.
We learned from Adolfo Suárez that the first commitment of a political leader is to admit that he could be assassinated; his bravery on 23F, together with Gutiérrez Mellado and Carrillo, confirmed this. Iglesias puts on a show as if he had been the first to be threatened in history after defending his friends the ETA members who did not threaten, but killed unarmed civilians, soldiers and decent people with shots in the back of the head, "as an act of love", they now say. You have to be a scoundrel.
Ayuso, after the Catalan threat, with good sense, opted for silence. Even Rajoy and Aznar behaved like gentlemen after the aggressions and an attack by Eta-Batasuna. Personally, I was threatened by the Basque terrorist group from 1998 to 2000. I followed the recommendations of the Police to the letter and I told them when my responsibility at RTVE came to an end.
A few hours ago we learned that Iglesias - the most toxic politician of all Spanish democracy - has declared to Corriere della Sera that he is stepping away from politics and will hand over his powers (in 23) to the Minister of Labour, Yolanda Díaz, who is not even from Unidas Podemos. She has no respect even for the mother of his children, minister and spokeswoman in Congress, who could be charged for using a digital post in her department as a babysitter. An impostor who will be the last political force in the Assembly of Vallecas and will end up as a universal agitator for China, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea alone or in the company of Roures.
The lowering of taxes by the conservative parties, which the PSE-M has joined, contrasts with the government of the Nation, which is taking a Recovery Plan to Brussels with siderable increases, contrary to the programmes of Berlin, Rome, Paris, Athens, Lisbon and The Hague. Ayuso has not even been able to remind the citizens that her government has not raised its salary for 5 years and that it will not do so until unemployment does not fall below 9.9%, as proposed by the Multidisciplinary Reflection Group coordinated by Jesús Lizcano, professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Only his courage in not closing restaurants, cinemas, theatres and opera houses has given him the backing to win the elections. And there he is with the City Council promoting the Plan Norte de Chamartín and 15,000 social housing units. To throw at him in the final stretch of the campaign the number of partners of the popular leader is a macho vileness of the socialist secretary general, José Luis Ábalos. He still hasn't explained his nine lies about Delcy Rodríguez's suitcases. Where are the feminists? Quiet as "vulpes".
All we know about the MM candidate is that she is very green and wants to dismantle the Zendal and raise taxes even more. Iglesias is against everything that means progress. And his strong idea is to support the manteros and the squatters. And Ciudadanos wants to go back to the vice-presidency that Aguado has already lost. We insist that the only progressive thing is to create jobs and this should be the first pact for the day after.
It is worth remembering that we have come this far because of the motions of censure by Cs-PSOE and UP, in Murcia (Community and City Council) and in CyL; Ayuso's anticipation for half an hour prevented a self-coup in the Assembly of Madrid, promoted by the Presidency of the House in centrist hands. Now, let the people speak. In freedom. We have two years ahead of us to stop a left anchored in the past. I look at the signatories of the manifesto "Ahora sí" and they are always the same. The Bardems and the indispensable UCD minister Mayor Zaragoza. I want to believe that César Antonio Molina signed it without reading. To claim that "they have spent 26 infernal years of attacks on the rights and dignity of the majority of citizens" is a lie like the Ball of the World because the left has always been in the minority here. It is a text written by someone who knows neither syntax nor shame. A continuation of moral (and racist) superiority. So much for that.
The formula of fear, emotions and threats designed in the Moncloa has not worked, neither with the interventions of the secretary general of the PSOE, who has disappeared in combat, nor with the interventions of Minister Marlasca accusing the PP of being a "terrorist organisation". He later denied it, but the video is still in the networks. An honest judge would have asked for forgiveness, above all because he ascended to the heavens of the CGPJ thanks to Don Mariano's PP. Today, with no political credit whatsoever, he is an unpresentable and arrogant guy who is bringing Eta terrorists to the Basque Country so that the PNV can put them on the street and give them a life pension in the coming months. What a disgrace of a minister! What an ignominy of an (unworthy) judge who despises the victims of terrorist violence after 70 years of suffering! He is the same minister who has not supported in the Senate the State Security Forces after the Nazi discrimination of the Generalitat by refusing to vaccinate them from Covid 19 as he has done with the Mossos. Some good judges have restored the dignity of a collective dedicated to serving all Spaniards.
In this trip to the polls - 213 years and two days after the famous 2 May 1808 - we have a lot at stake. Freedom, democracy and to punish a government of the Nation that has been against us all. A crouching social-communist government, which, the next day, can begin to speed up the pardons for the Catalan coup plotters, including Puigdemónt and his comrades in Waterloo; an executive that uses the BOE to attack the opposition, phagocytize institutions such as the CIS and the Post Office, and facilitate that the unions can stop the country with impunity by decriminalizing coercion on strike days; a council of ministers that will soon break the Single Social Security Fund to hand it over to Urkullu; a team of irresponsible people that will dismantle the Guardia civil from the roads of Navarre in mid-May as Otegi demands; a government that keeps silent when a Catalan terrorist group hangs effigies of the leaders who do not sufficiently promote independence on the bridges of the main motorways; a government that after having sold eight times the propaganda of the Recovery Plan, approves it in the last council of ministers and hides it from the citizens. Then, spokeswoman Montero's mouth is full of transparency.
When you vote, think about the confinement and the 53 million that were given to Plus Ultra by the same managers who sank Air Madrid; when you go to your polling station, think about the increase in the deficit (8.4%) and the obscene debt of 119%. When casting your vote, remember that Minister Nadia Calviño has already admitted that in the recently approved PGE there is a "gap" of 36,000 million euros. And in the Celaá law and in the euthanasia law. Don't forget the generous millions given to the trade unions and the decriminalisation of disobedience. Bear in mind Sánchez's neglect of responsibility on immigration and the pandemic. He has left the Autonomous Communities without tools to fight the coronavirus. To vote on the 4th is to visualise the judiciary in a stranglehold: "I turn my back on the judiciary", they say; although they have not had the courage to denounce their harassment and demolition either to the TC or to the Ombudsman. If this is progressivism, may God come down and see.
Fellow citizens of Madrid from all over the world: we are just a few hours away from the day of reflection. To vote today is to take a first step towards putting an end to this Frankenstein government that has distanced us from the EU and Latin America. A government that never tells the truth. Vote, without fear; vote in freedom. Democracy and the ballot box drive away the hatred of a left (that claims to be progressive) but never talks about the unemployment queues or the solidarity of the Catholic Church and Manos Unidas. Look at the salaries, pensions and freedoms in Venezuela and Cuba. In Caracas and Havana they also said that communism could not happen there. Compare. What is at stake is the pillar of the Magna Carta, the Transition of 78 and prosperity.
These elections should be the first step for the centre, the right and social democracy to work together to overturn the next general elections when the lesser god of La Moncloa decides to call them. Because the ruin of the coronavirus cannot be used to generate a permanent universal violence protected by totalitarian ideologies (I recommend reading The Devil in History, (Stella Maris, 2015) by Vladimir Tisnaneaunu, a Romanian researcher who suffered under Ceausescu and investigated Hitler and Stalin). Two projects fused in a single term: national-Stalinism, which Pablo Iglesias so ardently defends every day that he has managed to podemise La Moncloa and Ferraz in parallel.
"We are the terrible blow of an unresolved heart", as Gabriel Celaya portrayed us. We have the obligation not to fracture society any further. "We democrats", Iglesias whispers, when he knows full well that a communist (and a nationalist) cannot be a democrat". The podemite leader makes a last-minute effort to align "what he does with what he believes and what he says with what he does". He calls it riding between contradictions. In common parlance, cheating. If we don't turn out en masse to the polls this Tuesday we run the risk that the peace of conformism will break out and this cowardice will lead us straight to national-Stalinism.
Madrilenians: fill the ballot boxes with freedom, the Constitution, unity for Spain, support for King Felipe VI; flood the ballot boxes with illusion, coexistence, progress, solidarity, employment and life. To the ballot boxes! Madrid is everyone's home!
PS. In memoriam. - I didn't know David Beriáin or Roberto Fraile, but I followed on DMAX their dangerous documentaries with Colombian drug traffickers or Albanian mafiosi. Chilling. Pure journalism. They have been executed in Burkina Faso when they tried to denounce the clandestine hunting of endangered animals. They are an example for the whole profession and a source of pride for those of us who believe in journalism as a banner of Truth. The government will award the Civil Merit medal to David and Roberto. "No report is worth a life," he declared in a talk at the University of Navarra. They did everything in journalism. We are left with their example. We share the pain with their families and friends. Death always lives in love with life. We will pray for them. Rest in peace, colleagues.
Antonio Regalado directs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA at: aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com