The stunts offered these days have far exceeded the usual parliamentary spectacle full of theatrical phrases. Their honors have consciously invested in the discredit of their own business, the credibility on which the confidence that the voters grant them rests. In this there are no differences or singularities between the Congress of Deputies and the Parliament of Catalonia.
The parliamentary roguery of the Government of Sánchez to approve the absurd decree law of the mandatory mask, that will decline in a week, thanks to the ‘pack’ with the revaluation of pensions; the mockery ‘urbi et orbi’ carried out by Laura Borràs on account of a false disobedience to defend an indefensible seat, or the transfugismo of the deputies of UPN are examples of a different nature and seriousness, but they all respond to the same policy: breach of trust. An abuse practiced knowing the existence among their respective electorates of a segment of staunch followers who find everything their leaders do fantastic, what in football we would call fans of the team.
Football has also lent to politics the tactic of resultism. This, transferred to the management of public interests, has its ‘ad hoc’ advantages and offers serious drawbacks in the medium term. The most serious, acting as an engine of distance between politics and society. The estrangement is followed by popular disaffection and this creates the favorable conditions to destroy credibility of the institutions and undermine democratic authority essential to rule. It is a classic of political theory that is usually combated by strengthening the stability of governments with solid parliamentary majorities that are consistent with the demands of the circumstances.
And in this, in Spain, including Catalonia, not just hit the key. To the lack of experience in coalition governments, a formula that a priori should enrich transversal politics, a discouraging praxis has been added. The narrow approval of the reform of the labor reform approved in its day by the PP has certified the volatility of the pacts that should ensure stability. The political chronicle of recent years lives on the daily and almost obscene display of discrepancies between PSOE and United We Can and between ERC and Junts. However, the vote on a decision of the social and economic importance of labor legislation has enthroned the temporization of disloyalty as a substitute agreement.
PSOE and ERC are at the antipodes of the Spanish project. Some defend unity and others yearn to break it. The Socialists are a state party, trained in negotiation and in the permanent concession that governability demands, while the Republicans are discovering the advantages of holding power, even if it is only autonomous. Some and others believed that this pact could be an example of ‘realpolitik’. for now, seems little more than a survival agreement and of slowing down a history that has been rampant precisely because of ERC and its partners in Catalonia.
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The contradiction between the objectives of ERC and PSOE is indisputable, as much as the imbalance of the benefits obtained from the agreement (Some, the necessary votes to govern the State; others, conciliatory words to keep an illusion alive). This decompensation favors reluctance which, skilfully magnified by adversaries, seem to push allies to continually express their mistrust of one another.
The socialists have habitually opted for the mute and the republicans for viper message. With one formula or another they seek to reassure their bases and their adversaries, however they inevitably encourage instability. Until one day the pitcher breaks definitively, be it because the day of truth at the negotiation table will have arrived or because the stage fright caused by Junts and PP (and their powerful media and corporate friends) becomes unbearable. That day we will have to take stock of whether it will have been worth so much filigree.