Catalan, a radioactive isotope
Alberto Núñez Feijóo was looking for a "plebiscite moment" to definitively corner the government—a government that is objectively in a slump—and he just twisted his ankle in Catalonia. A misstep. One of those missteps that lead to lost elections or insufficient victories, as happened on July 23, 2023.
In the campaign for the last general election, there was a last-minute shift in votes in favor of the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) after Santiago Abascal declared, with a fierce sense of war, that the Marianist application of Article 155 would be a joke compared to the measures Vox would promote if it came to power. The Spanish right slipped in Catalonia in the general elections of 2004 (a PSOE victory), 2008 (a comfortable PSOE victory), 2015 (an insufficient PP majority), 2016 (a still insufficient PP majority), 2019 (a narrow PSOE victory), and 2023 (an insufficient PP victory). Only at the worst moment of the last economic crisis (the November 2011 elections) did the PP achieve a resounding victory without the Catalan issue in the middle. It's an impressive record.
Read alsoIt's obvious that Alberto Núñez isn't interested in irritating Catalans' attachment to their language, a language with more speakers than some of the official languages of the European Union. He can't abandon the battle against the amnesty, but it's unwise to open other fronts that mobilize the Catalan and Basque electorate against the PP and generate unrest in Galicia, which is apparently dominated by the PP. He's interested in quietly attracting Junts—Feijóo has attempted to do so on several occasions in recent months—and, above all, he's interested in attracting Junts voters who might identify with the PP's economic principles.
The opposition leader, however, must square a complicated circle: he must be careful with the Catalan vote, but he must also attract Vox voters, given that that party is not losing ground in the polls and keeps the PP well below the 160 seats, the threshold from which he could consider governing alone with highly variable arithmetic. It's not an easy task to execute. It's one that may be beyond the reach of Miguel Tellado, the man in charge of the big plan.
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The PP can't shake off the long shadow of Vox, and Núñez Feijóo has an even more pressing priority: improving his rating among his party's voters, most of whom don't recognize him as the undisputed leader of the right-wing bloc. In the CIS polls, Feijóo currently appears below the popularity ratings Pablo Casado enjoyed before his ouster. In other private polls, he appears behind Abascal as the preferred candidate among voters on both right-wing parties. This explains why the president of the Popular Party is inflating his rhetoric. He needs to improve his rating among the coffee-loving right!
Ten days ago, he managed to mobilize the European People's Party (PP) to prevent the approval of the recognition of Catalan, Basque, and Galician as official languages of the European Union. The Spanish People's Party (PP) mobilized in Brussels as if the Turks were about to enter Vienna. The proposal was not vetoed at the last meeting of the General Affairs Council of the European Union, but it was shelved. The new German government's proposal to submit it to a new period of study prevailed. The powerful CDU (CDU) did not impose a veto, but postponed a decision that the Spanish government believed it had firmly secured this time. It is very likely that the issue will be brought back to the General Affairs Council for consideration during the next Danish presidency, given that the Danish government, led by the Social Democrats and embarked (pun intended) on a delicate operation to salvage its sovereignty over Greenland, is currently very sensitive to the discourse on national plurality.
Ten days ago, the People's Party (PP) fought Catalan in Brussels as if the Turks were crossing the Danube. Isabel Díaz Ayuso made waves yesterday in Barcelona by temporarily absenting herself from the meeting of the Conference of Presidents when Lehendakari Imanol Pradales spoke in Basque and President Salvador Illa spoke in Catalan. She couldn't stand it. Or rather, she wanted to dramatize that she couldn't stand it. She had to maintain her intransigent profile regarding "plurinational Spain," and she also had to try to keep an uncomfortable news story in the background: a Madrid court has charged the wife of the company Quirón Prevención to investigate whether a hidden commission was collected in the purchase of a company by lawyer Alberto González Amador, the Madrid president's partner. In short, Ayuso had compelling reasons yesterday to try to shift the spotlight.
Catalan, Basque, and Galician are combustible materials in the "Spain of castles," a phrase often used by the recently deceased Jaime Miquel, one of the best electoral analysts this country has ever had. Catalan, however, is a radioactive isotope that, if manipulated crudely, can harm the Spanish right and leave the Spain of castles in a minority. This has happened several times in the last twenty years.
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Most of the regional presidents of the Popular Party (PP) went to Barcelona yesterday to distance themselves from the government, to point out that the political situation is practically unsustainable; they went to demand, in short, the early calling of elections. Díaz Ayuso had her own agenda: yesterday she needed noise. What day doesn't? The PP's overreaction on the language issue could come back to haunt them. The Catalan writer Josep Pla used to say, quoting the French poet Paul Valéry, that the deepest part of a man is his skin. Beware of the epidermis. They fought against Catalan in Brussels as if the Turks were arriving, and yesterday Ayuso created an unnecessary and offensive scandal in Barcelona. I don't think those were Feijóo's plans for this weekend.
If the opposition leader had presented a motion of no confidence, as we pointed out last weekend, today's debate would have been better framed. It makes no sense to call the government a "mafia" and not present a motion of no confidence. It makes no sense to raise political tension to the maximum and not know how to channel it. Yesterday, the tension got out of hand for the PP, which has a large demonstration in Madrid scheduled for Sunday. There will be more activity in the Spanish capital this weekend. Aside from the PP and Vox, Argentine President Javier Milei will chair a forum of the ultra-liberal right in Madrid, while Donald Trump and Elon Musk are tearing each other apart in Washington.
There are four right-wing parties currently in contention in Spain: Feijóo's official PP, the Ayuso-supporting PP, Vox, and the club being organized by Iván Espinosa de los Monteros. On the other side are the PSOE and the troubled club of the splinter groups.
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