2023-09-20 22:01:27
“[Los expresidentes] They express opinions that sometimes cast too much shadow or that become weapons thrown during the daily political battle.” Felipe González wrote this in 2013, in a book titled In search of answers, leadership in times of crisis, and a decade later it can be read as an exact self-premonition. González’s words have certainly become a weapon against what, despite everything, continues to be his party. And it doesn’t seem to bother him too much. That is what the now octogenarian González has become and in that process the small miracle of public reconciliation has even been achieved with the man who was his youth’s squire before becoming an internal rival: Alfonso Guerra.
In an image that could not have been seen in a long time, González and Guerra appeared together again this Wednesday at an event at the Ateneo de Madrid. And the predictable happened, in view of the political opinions that have been expressed in recent weeks. As in the old days, Guerra was in charge of the most terrible speech, with the hypothetical pacts between Sánchez and the nationalists as a source of scandal. And also in the purest style of the couple’s glorious years, González then arrived with elegant style to finish off the play. Both attacked the possibility of an amnesty due to the events of the process and both maintained that they are the ones who defend the traditional positions of the PSOE against Sánchez’s changes. There he revived the bravest Guerra, the one who always shot at the opponent’s heart. “I have not been a dissident or disloyal, the other person will have been.” [Sánchez]”, he declared before a dedicated audience. González could then allow himself to fly over with a smile: “Would anyone be surprised if we agree?”
30 years have passed since the couple’s breakup, but the longing for the past and the mutual bad mood in the face of a present that both repudiate made Felipe and Alfonso, Alfonso and Felipe, the inseparable duo that seemed to have been blown up forever there by the beginning of the nineties, met again this Wednesday at the Ateneo de Madrid. There González went to support his old comrade in the presentation of his latest book, The Rose and the Thorns (The Sphere of Books), a mix of memories and personal reflections on politics and on life itself in conversation with the writer Manuel Lamarca.
In the heat of this reunion, elevated to the category of “historical event” by the president of the Ateneo, Luis Arroyo, a kind of summit of anti-sanchist socialists ended up meeting. There were veterans who have distinguished themselves by their distance from the current leadership of the PSOE: José Luis Corcuera, Tomás Gómez, Javier Fernández – the president of the management company that once ousted Pedro Sánchez – or the recently expelled Nicolás Redondo. And the two territorial barons who fought with Sánchez, the Castilian-La Mancha Emiliano García-Page and the Aragonese Javier Lambán. “This is not a conspiracy,” Page was quick to clarify at the entrance. “The conspirators are at Waterloo.”
Guerra started in an ironic way, playing with the same idea: “I don’t know if I’m going to disappoint expectations, this is just the presentation of a book. Some lunatic has said that it is a plot with other parties. It’s nothing like that.” It wouldn’t be a plot, but neither would it be a mere presentation of a book. Because Guerra did not disappoint even a single one of the expectations. He immediately attacked the possibility of an amnesty. And he illustrated it almost in terms of a generational battle. Pardoning the leaders of the process would be “a deliberate humiliation of the Transition generation”, a “condemnation of democracy” perpetrated by “those immature young people who started the new politics in 2015 and which is nothing more than a scam.” huge”.
The man who led the PSOE apparatus with an iron fist in the 80s and 90s now regrets that the parties “have changed towards verticality.” The rest of his speech was a demolition of nationalism, a category in which Guerra, it seems, only includes the peripheral. Because with regard to Spain, the former vice president writes in his book: “Not feeling Spain as something you have inside, that is not left-wing, that is very reactionary people who don’t understand anything. From ignorant people.”
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The auditorium erupted with enthusiasm and González took over with his calmest style. He also began with some poisoned irony, like when he remembered that he had coincided with Guerra supporting José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in his last campaign and let it slip between laughs: “I don’t know if I should regret it or not.” He then went on to defend the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, against the acting second vice president, Yolanda Díaz: “Whoever has never won an election gives lessons to the one who has spent 15 years winning them and has left her with the empty seat [en Galicia]”.
In a personal tone, he regretted the criticism received from “old colleagues and very dear friends” for his participation in an event in Andalusia last week with the regional authorities of the PP. Without falling into the depths of Guerra, he repeated several times that he assumed all of his speech and agreed that they are the two who defend the authentic positions of the PSOE. He reiterated his opinion that the amnesty is “flatly unconstitutional”, handed out a few more sticks to Yolanda Díaz and ended in a warning tone: “We cannot allow ourselves to be blackmailed, especially by a minority that is on the verge of extinction.”
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