From censorship to amnesty

In the wake of the farewell to our beloved Jaime Miquel (Madrid, 1959), a sociological pillar of what Professor Toni Aira called the Total Cabinet (2018-2021) that I had the honor of leading at Moncloa Palace, as you can imagine, the calls followed one another on a difficult weekend for all the members of that team. Even more so since next Sunday, May 25, will mark seven years since Pedro Sánchez 's motion of censure against the then president, Mariano Rajoy , was presented through the registry of entry of the Congress of Deputies. That event completed the electoral cycle that began with the fall of the two-party system in the 2014 European elections, opening a new and powerful political era that, after these seven years—Covid, Ukraine, or Trump—remains valid.

That government had a mission: the complete reunion of Spaniards. And it was also very clear that the two-party system no longer organized political coexistence in Spain, just as the state of autonomous communities does not. The latest CIS poll tells us that only 6 out of 10 voters, or in other words, 4 out of 10 electors, would tolerate the two-party system, the PP and PSOE; with the oldest members on the census. We're plowing with these oxen, and this has been progressively the case for eleven years. A generation later, we continue with this same Spain, in which the state of autonomous communities has become a second-reading forum for the dispute over political governance, without this territorial order fully managing the national, identity, and territorial plurality that should be its goal.

It seems that the constitutionality of the Amnesty Law will be resolved in the coming weeks.

With the success of that motion, a plurinational, cross-party, and peripheral electoral majority was established in the government, represented in Congress by President Sánchez, the winner of the primaries, with full strategic autonomy and a defined proposal for a new political cycle for his parliamentary partners. The legislator, when drafting Article 113 of the Constitution, never imagined that the censure would be successful, but the mechanism was there, and it was successful because the two-party system effectively stopped organizing coexistence. The legislator also failed to take this into account.

After the unprecedented success of the motion, Vox burst onto the scene in 2019, Ciudadanos nearly overtook the PP, and the PSOE won a general election eleven years later, when, following Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba 's withdrawal, the national Ferrari was considered finished. Seven years later, Ciudadanos disappeared like tears in the rain. The PP has certainly regained first place, but if there is a right-wing arithmetic today—according to the CIS (National Commission for Statistics and Census)—it is due to internal reasons within the left, which could win the elections in 2027. We are still technically where we were in 2018, despite all the noise, because we are the country we are, fantastic and complex, which wants to continue making progress in its coexistence and territorial understanding, as well as ensuring a place in the world for Spaniards.

The June 23rd elections were presented by the Madrid City Council as a plebiscite on Sánchez and a correction to the censure. The tie resulted in a deadlock, which could only be overcome with another bold act of our democracy—the Amnesty Law. The motion of censure and the Amnesty Law, therefore, cement the current political cycle and organize a cross-party and multinational majority in a country whose economy functions, pays its bills, and continues to move forward. There are, of course, large areas of social unrest that we share with the world's major democracies, and which we must know how to channel by providing effective political responses.

It seems that the constitutionality of the aforementioned law will be resolved in the coming weeks, and this, and not the quarrels, organizes power and the concept of political government in Spain. This remembrance of the seven years since the motion must, therefore, be the gateway to receiving the ruling of the Constitutional Court. The legislative branch did its work in the censure and also in the amnesty, and we can only hope that the judiciary channels the energy of this social and political majority, which is charged, in a pluralistic society, with providing a democratic understanding and education about the Spain we want. One that turns the page from censure to amnesty. And one that looks forward, ensuring a life plan.

Next week Lisbon and Madrid DF

Lisbon and Madrid are the same distance apart as Barcelona and Madrid. That's the measure of things. Less than half the distance between the White House and Mar-a-Lago in Florida. In general terms, Lisbon and Madrid are neighboring capitals, and that's why the outcome of yesterday's election will have a primary impact on Madrid, even though at times they find Mar-a-Lago closer than Lisbon. Would our Iberian neighbors want to see a Trump pawn sitting in their Cabinet? And what about us?

The Hawkeye The PP congress

The Popular Party, at the 1990 Seville Congress, began to build what is now impossible, but which worked then: the center-right, a product of the two-party system that no longer exists. In 1996, that project, with the support of the plural right, governed. That's what congresses are about: bringing the future into the present. Anything else, this July, is nostalgia. Those born in 1996 prefer Vox to the PP, just as core voters are increasingly joining the ranks of the authoritarian party; in other words, Trump's pawns.