The rule of three
Margarita Robles lost what little dignity she had left when she shamelessly denied in the Moncloa that CNI director Paz Esteban had not been dismissed but replaced. The following day, the BOE (Official State Gazette) stated: "At the proposal of the Minister of Defence, I am proposing the dismissal...". The same formula used by her fellow villain Fernando Grande-Marlaska to decapitate Civil Guard Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos.
Neither dismissal nor replacement, Margarita Robespierre: prostitution. You have corrupted yourself because you were already corrupted from the very moment your idol Pedro I, the plagiarism doctor, rose to power. You kept quiet after all the outrages committed (suitcases of Delcy-Ábalos, appointment of the attorney general, lies of the CIS, outrage in the State Attorney's Office, destruction of RTVE, pardon to the coup perpetrators, economic support to them from the Court of Auditors, opening the prisons to the ETA, admitting Otegui's support, Brahim Ghali's entry into Spain without papers, handing over Western Sahara to Morocco, unconstitutional closure of the Parliament during the COVID and commanding by decrees and silence) because you are united by the same ambition: power.
Tin-pot patriot
Nobody has humiliated Spain so much in less time. A false report appears in the New Yorker - elaborated by a Catalan extremist who tried to set Barcelona on fire -, claiming that 65 Catalan coup plotters were expiated by the CNI. This is a lie. Instead of dismantling it, the government admits it as good and surrenders unconditionally to the fugitive Puigdemont and Aragonés' troops, who had been preparing the denunciation-trap since 2020.
The number one coup leader in the BOM (Boletín Oficioso de Moncloa) Oriol Junqueras spoke, and 24 hours later, after a parliamentary performance in the theatre of the absurd, Sanchez's Magdalena defends the director of the secret services with warlike ardour. Many of us sensed that this was a smokescreen, otherwise she would have challenged her feudal lord to pay the sacrifice of two for the price of one.
Margarita, the tin-pot patriot, who accepted a Sabino Arana prize as a judge of the Audiencia Nacional, took advantage of the support of the constitutional opposition (PP, VOX and Ciudadanos) to ask herself what a government has to do to defend itself against the enemies of the state. She did not answer, but the answer is easy, Madam Minister: never enter into dialogue with those who want to break up Spain and never pardon the perpetrators of the coup. When the senior civil servant Esteban discovered that the 18 seditionists had been placed under surveillance by court order, she signed her civil death warrant. They demand that he resign voluntarily and atone for his mistakes publicly as in Lenin's and Stalin's CP. But she refused. A furtive, nocturnal meeting in Moncloa between Sánchez, always silent in all conspiracies against the institutions, and the Minister of Defence, sentenced the head of the spies, a highly respected person among her colleagues. In other words, she was thrown out on the street for doing her duty. Nothing is known about the other 47. A set-up to make noise.
Permanent blackmail
You already know the rest of the story; the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, wakes up early one morning to announce "urbi et orbi" that the nationalist "victims" should be reassured. That the President himself, the Minister Margarita and the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas - former ambassador to Morocco - have also been infected with the Pegasus system. Félix forgets that he is solely responsible for the security of the president's communications in the monclovite sphere. And he shamelessly omits that the CNI had alerted them to the need to check the Palace's mobile phones. He also admits that 9.2 Gigas of information have been stolen from the president - will we ever know the content - and almost 1 Giga from Mrs. Robespierre. Has there ever been greater incompetence in any government in the world? Never. Security breaches are never aired; they are corrected in intimidation. But here, the doctor and his acolytes are making a mess of the secret services just 40 days before the NATO summit in Madrid. How can it be made clear that the tapping of the president's phone took place a year ago and is only now coming to light? Suspicions of well-founded lies.
In a lightning trip to Barcelona, Pedro tells Pere that he knew nothing - he lies because the president is the one who signs the orders of the Advisory Commission of Inquiry - and promises the less-than-honourable president of the Generalitat that he will tell him everything at the next bilateral summit. ERC calls for more heads and the Parliament demands Robles' head. That same day, Margarita handed the head of Mrs. Esteban on a silver platter. And here peace and then glory. Well, then Esperanza. Esperanza Casteleiro, chief of staff of the discredited minister herself and also a spy in Zapatero's time. And Margarita still maintains that she can go out on the streets with her head held high. Will she resign when they boo her as they did in Ciudad Real a few days ago with Don Pedro Sánchez and Pérez-Castejón? She will not because she has lost her dignity.
When he appeared centuries later in the parliamentary seat, the providential leader limited himself to stating three truisms: that there had been a security breach in communications, that it had been reported to the courts and that the public had been informed in real time. This is not true: who spied on us, what data was stolen from his mobile phone and whether the theft of Pegasus is linked to the Moroccan crisis and the subsequent personal decision to hand over the Sahara for no other consideration than the Instituto de Empresa's contracts with Rabat? We want to know whether the King and Queen's mobile phones have been tapped. Relations with Algeria have deteriorated as never before and we will be paying the gas bill at US prices.
Why have we not found out who is behind the Cataluyagate accusation? Why have we not made public Puigdemont's interview with Putin's agent, the visits to the Kremlin and Waterloo by spies from the former KGB and the offer of 10,000 Russian soldiers and money - a lot of money in Switzerland - in exchange for breaking up Spain and setting up a communist state - nuclear-communist? - and a tax haven with Soviet cryptocurrencies. Now Puigdemont does not want the EP to investigate his dealings with Putin, the genocidal murderer of thousands of innocent Ukrainians. ERC and Just were the tsar's favourite partners.
In his moral and political baseness, Sánchez has surrendered a little more to the nationalists. Aragonés has not denied that he was the "coordinator" of the CDR in 2019 in his time as vice-president with the delinquent Torra and feels wounded in his honour. Like all cowards he threatens the State and blackmails Sánchez with dynamiting the legislature. He won't do it because Sánchez is the necessary accomplice for his plans to go ahead.
Marlaska's response is timely: 1 billion euros for the Mossos. Not only to improve the expansion of the regional police and pensions, but even to buy heavy weapons. Tanks, submarines? Sooner rather than later, he will hand over control of the Catalan borders and coasts to them. All for the secessionists while denying bulletproof vests to the GC and the National Police.
The peneuvistas have achieved in this flowery May one of their demands for supporting the current Budgets: the exclusive transfer of the Town Hall secretaries. You will never speak of corruption in the Basque administration again. "Ours" -yours- will cover up all the excesses of the penuvists. Sanchez's objective accomplished: destroy the institutions, disregard the parliamentary monarchy, neutralise the Constitution and return to the Third Republic without counting that the Second Republic, with Largo Caballero at the head of the Government tried to give the Balearic and Canary Islands to Mussolini and Hitler, respectively, so that they would not support Franco (See El Mundo of 11 May 2022). Sanchismo is the PSOE of ZP and Largo Caballero. It is still in the hands of the same people it had to spy on (A)paga y vámonos).
The opposition makes the wave
Feijóo landed this week in Madrid from Santiago to take over the controls of the flagship of Genova 13. The Senate will relieve the party's payroll. His trips to Catalonia and the Basque Country are identical to those made by Casado: obeisance to the bourgeoisie that sponsored the 2017 coup. What a missed opportunity to first visit the constitutionalists of the Catalan Civil Society (SCC), the brave university students of S'ha acabat, the family harassed in Canet de Mar who demanded that their son could study in Spanish and what better occasion to claim 25% in schools as the Courts have ruled Nothing of the sort: praise of friendly nationalism!
The same goes for the Basque Country and the PNV. They do not learn, as witnessed by the flamboyant general coordinator of the Popular Party Elías Bendodo, who returns to the plurinational Spain of the communist Pablo Iglesias.
Sánchez may find himself "at the end of the escape, with an artificial government and without support", but he does not need it. When ERC fails him, Bildu comes to his aid. And if the two of them sulk that week, then PP, VOX and Ciudadanos arrive in a flurry and the Caesarist variable geometry gets an absolute majority to push through its pharaonic decrees without changing a comma. "Let it be written and carried out", orders Pedro.
The "ad hominen" humiliation of the citizen spokesman Edmundo Bal certifies Sánchez's hatred for the merit and capacity of public servants. I will recall Sánchez's words to Rajoy: "You are not a decent person". Well, that's just it.
Here are recent examples of surrender: it happened in the tragals of confinement, with Casero's miraculous and exclusive vote for the Labour Law, the PP did not absent itself from the Official Secrets Commission after Batet broke all the rules of the game; supported Margarita while she did the dirty work of killing Paz Esteban, saved the opposition to soldier Sánchez in the processing of the Law of State Security that attributes almost unlimited powers to the tenant of the Moncloa and has not had the courage to advance that it will kill rules such as the Historical Memory, Education or abortion that includes menstruation policy.
Moreover, in the year that remains, the FEMP will distribute the European manna generously to the municipalities governed by socialists and the Executive will condition EU investments and reforms until 2027 without counting on the popular party. Eye on the fact and on the disregard.
Immobility in the face of fear, and after insulting them in the parliamentary seat - "you are a bunch of crooks" - he told Cuca Gamarra that he never prepares the answers to the ideological wars, they are the government's best weapon.
This is the toxic politics of the doctor president that he calls healthy politics. "What is not good for Europe cannot be good for Spain", he threatens Moreno Bonilla and Macarena Olona from Jaén, when they have more than 55 MPs.
The wolf is coming!
The Andalusian Front of Judea with the "chulapa" Yolanda Díaz in profile will chew again the defeat of 4M no matter how much Adriana Lastra says in Cádiz that "we have to talk about corruption". Let's talk. With two presidents in capilla (Chaves and Griñán), it is like naming the noose in the house of the hanged man. Justice should never prolong its time for electoral convenience. And it always does so in favour of the PSOE.
It should be added that the PP, with its "black holes" in the Cantabrian Sea, Catalonia, C-LM, Extremadura, Rioja, Valencia, Murcia and the islands should not waste another minute in ceasing to be the real opposition to Sanchismo. When the president appeals to a sense of State, he forgets that the open fronts (Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Ceuta, Melilla, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Mexico...) are the exclusive work of his talent and daring. To paraphrase Marca after Real Madrid's victory over Guardiola's Liverpool, we ask "God to come down and explain it". There are miracles, my friend, even for atheists.
The painful rule
As I deliver this Bahía, Ayuso is finalising her Madrid congress in preparation for next year's municipal and regional elections. And the Council of Ministers is preparing to approve an abortion law that will allow 16-year-old girls to have abortions without parental consent. They cannot buy tobacco or alcohol, but they can have an abortion. And who will be responsible if something happens in the operating theatre? The parents or Irene Montero? The parents. Thanks to the TC for taking more than 13 years to pronounce on the Zapatero law that already authorised this savagery.
But the government's painful menstrual policy is great: that the SS should pay for sick leave. If a working woman is unwell because of pain during that period, doesn't she take legal sick leave now? And will female students at universities and high schools be allowed to take three or four days a month off work, and will they be entitled to special exams and make-up work? And will the state pay housewives for those difficult days? I don't know any woman in my family or at work who feels guilt, stigma or shame about painful or non-painful menstruation. It would be greatly alleviated if I had achieved something simpler: reducing VAT on those menstrual products.
Now that Brussels has downgraded our growth forecasts for the second time in just three weeks (it has left it at 4% compared to Calviño's 7.8); now that farmers, truckers and companies are with their energy sky-high, it would be better to worry more about the things to eat. It is time to re-establish the rules to make ends meet. So that no one falls by the wayside. It is time to restore the rule of threes in primary education. First the simple rule and then the compound rule of three.
Antonio REGALADO directs BAHÍA DE ITACA EN: