The Knives are Out

 As the ex-president José Maria Aznar said earlier this year, El que pueda hacer, que haga, or in English, ‘he who can do something, do something’!

This conservative leader was – and still is – keen to cause the fall of the Government – by any and all means. A call received loud and clear by many judges, police and the Media. The cloacas, as it’s called: the cesspit.

And how are things going today?

The economy is up and so is employment. Pensions have been raised and new rules are in place to tax the wealthy and the banks.

But the leading stories are the same: Begoña Gómez, the President’s wife, remains in the headlines. We learn this week that, yes, she is married to Pedro Sánchez, and further, that she only has a few bob in her bank account (maybe). The tenacious Judge Peinado remains biting at her heels.

The President’s brother, a musician, doesn’t after all have 1.4 million euros in his bank account, so there’s another door closed.

The President’s cat still hasn’t spilled the beans, but hopes are high…

All of this (except the cat) come from the denuncias of the far-right Manos Limpias, which is currently lodging complaints with the courts over the AEMET (State weather forecasters).

Maybe – just a thought – it’s time to close down this troublesome ‘pseudo-syndicate’.

Other attacks against the Government include a denuncia against the PSOE-appointed Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz – one of five hundred people who saw an email regarding the boy-friend of Madrid regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso and may have leaked it to the media. Unlikely, but there you go. The email – sent out by Miguel Ángel Rodriguez, the head of Ayuso’s cabinet, concerned a (fake) confession that the boyfriend – Alberto González Amador – had neglected to declare some 350,000 euros to Hacienda by using false documents during the Covid pandemic. So far – while nothing much has happened to the boyfriend – the leader of the opposition PSOE in Madrid has resigned, having seen the bogus (secret) email and passed it on to a notary. In short – the inquiry is not (yet) interested in the fraud itself, but rather, over the leak to the media of a phony document sent out last February.

Yet another attack against the Government comes from a businessman called Victor de Aldama, ‘unconditionally’ jailed for a massive IVA fraud in October, and released last week (can this really be true?) after he claimed paying all kinds of bribery payments to various Socialist ministers. The PSOE deny the accusations.

Lastly, there’s the Koldo Affair.  

With all this excitement, taking an inside page are the stories about Zaplana remaining free from incarceration (10.5 years); Feijóo’s sister’s business dealings in Galicia; the connection between Ayuso’s boyfriend and the giant private-health company Quirón; the accusations of corruption against the Vice-president of the Madrid region Ana Millán; the refusal of Carlos Mazón to resign following the inept handling of the flooding in Valencia; and the revelations that family and colleagues of Rita Barberá (the mayor of Valencia from 1991 to 2015 who also under investigation when she died), defrauded the Treasury of over 631,287.65 euros between 2004 and 2008. (Yes, you read that right: and sixty five cents!) And so on.

It all depends, of course, on who controls the media that one prefers to read or watch.

But what says the conservative Corner about the PSOE (and its recent congress held in Seville): ‘The PSOE closes congress in Bulgarian style to rally around Sánchez and his government, besieged by corruption’. We read that ‘absent, were Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra, the historic leaders of the PSOE, who are highly critical of the current government and the populist drift of the PSOE’.

I’m not sure what the Bulgarian Style means – probably something bad.

While some judicial investigations in Spain are agonisingly slow, others move at warp-speed (usually to be filed under the heading of 'Lawfare').

A retired (‘progressive’) judge says: ‘We are facing a permanent judicial coup d'état’.

One must ask - what would be the program of the PP and their uncomfortable ally (beyond tumbling a successful progressive government) - tax cuts for the uber-wealthy and a ban on homosexual marriages?

El que pueda hacer, que haga.

Spain (and the USA)

The last few weeks have been interesting, with the floods in Valencia (the regional president still hasn’t quit after 220 deaths through his inattention), the woeful attacks against the government by the PP leader Núñez Feijóo, and of course the disappointing results in the American elections of November 5th.

I am currently in the USA, enjoying a visit there and staying with two of my kids. The news here tends towards the parochial (bibles in the state classrooms kind of stuff – yes, I’m in the Midwest) and, frankly, if it wasn’t for the Internet… I would still be thinking that the world is flat (along with many millions of co-believers).

Part of the future team enjoying burgers on Trump's aircraft

As far as Trump goes, we will only know how bad things are going to become once he is sworn in on January 20th, and I am sure it is going to be terrible – whether thanks to an alarmingly ancient president with signs of dementia, or through his choices of a new department to eradicate Federal overspending (with Elon Musk in charge), or an anti-vaxxer for Health Secretary, a Fox newscaster for Defence, or a pro-Russia politician for Intelligence. 

Then there's the forthcoming deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants using the military, under 'a National Emergency'. 

In Spain, Feijóo has been trying to pass the blame for the many deaths in the Valencia flooding on to other shoulders than those of the regional president Mazón (who was busy having a very long lunch with a journalist on the day of the DANA and wouldn’t be interrupted). The main targets being the Spanish weather agency (the AEMET) or the Minister for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera, now (and since) confirmed in Brussels as the new vice-president of the European Commission. ‘Her appointment, as you know, has been achieved overcoming lies and manoeuvres, over which truth and evidence have finally triumphed," said Pedro Sánchez.

Feijóo’s opposition to her ascendency was considered – even in Europe – as an anti-patriotic manoeuvre in his endless and rather futile struggle to take Spain in some new direction. After all, the economy is doing well, and there is little suggestion that it would do better with someone else in the engine room.

Otherwise, we are left only with opportunities (as allowable with a necessary alliance with Vox).

Fresh hope for Feijóo comes from a businessman convicted of an enormous scam – buying and selling petrol using fictitious companies which were then closed before the IVA came due – who has now been allowed out of jail after claiming that he had been giving bribes to various senior PSOE members. Victor Aldama has so far failed to provide any proof of his disbursements.

Fresh public protests in Valencia against Mazón are scheduled for November 29th and 30th. For the organisers, ‘the Valencian Executive, with Carlos Mazón at the helm, has demonstrated a "serious inability and inefficiency" in managing any type of crisis. Thus, they have condemned the fact that, one month after the catastrophe, "the basic needs of the people affected are still not covered"’.

In other news, the Council of Ministers has approved a reform of the regulations of the Immigration Law that reduces deadlines and simplifies requirements for regularizing migrants living in Spain without papers, which could benefit some 300,000 people each year over the next three years.

The Literary Regent

 

The previous king of Spain, who abdicated in 2014 to give way to Felipe VI, is to publish his memoirs – evidently with the idea of presenting his side of the story. “I get the feeling”, he says, “that they are trying to rob me of my own history”. The book is being ghost-written by a French journalist and will be published early next year with the title: Reconciliación.

“My father always advised me not to write my memoirs. Kings do not confess, and even less so publicly”, says Juanca (his nickname in progressive circles).

It may not be such a good idea. One should always consider the reputation of The Firm.

A second story about Juan Carlos had also hit the news-stands last week: photos in a Dutch magazine of His Royal Highness in a clinch with a companion of the female persuasion called Bárbara Rey. (El Rey kissing La Rey). The relationship had been considered until now as an open secret.

The Bourbons (going back through the ages) have long enjoyed activities which have been quietly swept under the carpet: but Royalty is not as other people, and their peccadillos should be at best, unremembered. President Clinton might have got into hot water in his day for his extra-curricular activities (and we shake our heads, even though many of us have done the same, or worse), but our leaders, our shepherds, chosen as it were by God (or Franco maybe) must be kept to a higher standard.

Why, if it’s OK for His Nibs to cheat on his wife (and his subjects), then what about little me?

For this whole thing to work, the Royals must be revered by their subjects, since they are, and must be, an example to us all. One thinks of Elizabeth II or Spain’s Felipe VI and of course many others.

All said, it must be a strain – living such a virtuous life under the public eye at all times. One mistake or lapse in judgement, especially in these times of intrusive paparazzi, and one’s Royal reputation is in the dust.

Not that Juan Carlos didn’t have other reasons to upset the applecart – other lovers such as Corinne, other enthusiasms such as shooting elephants, and other vices including accepting bribes from foreign leaders. José Antonio Zarzalejos, former director of the ABC, once defined JC's behaviour with three words in the book about his son called ‘Felipe VI. Un rey en la adversidad’: greed, promiscuity and arrogance.

His fortune is estimated by Forbes as running to 2,000 million euros. He is leaving it all to his two daughters Elena and Cristina – Felipe wants nothing to do with it.

El Emerito moved to Abu Dhabi a few years back to keep himself out of the public eye, however he sometimes briefly returns to participate in regattas in Sanxenxo (Pontevedra).

His son ignores him on these occasions.

For the institution of Royalty to survive, it has to be without blemish. Now that may be hard to do; but there are only two answers to that, and Spain has been careful not to ask the public in any of its many official surveys, which they would prefer: a monarchy or a republic. It is strange to think that the obligation for a country to elect a system with a head of state is like throwing a coin to choose between pot luck and naked ambition.   

Feijóo Does Spain No Favours

 For those who yearn for a change in the Spanish government, there’s the problem of the leading opposition champion evidently not being the right person for the job.

The hard-to-pronounce (or spell) Alberto Núñez Feijóo had been the president of Galicia and was chosen to take over the leadership of the Partido Popular following the defenestration of Pablo Casado (for criticising on the television the behaviour of his colleague Isabel Díaz Ayuso during the pandemic). Since he can’t talk about the economy – which is doing surprisingly well (now that everyone has been obliged to pay their taxes), Feijóo must concentrate his relentless opposition to the actions of his rival and his crew, whether actually true or basely dreamed up by the innumerable fábricas de bulos which are endlessly circling the ship of state.

Feijóo (pronounce him fay-who) sort of won the election last year (he has the most seats), only he didn’t since he and his allies – the Vox and a couple of tiddlers – weren’t quite enough to win against the coalition of the PSOE and its partners to the left plus some nationalist parties from the north. I could have been president, he said at one point, if it wasn’t for Vox, producing the jocular rejoinder of Pedro Sánchez in the Cortes with "That’s a very good one! Sr. Feijóo, you are not president because you do not want to be. In fact, you have even proclaimed that you are the first Spaniard to renounce being president of the Government when you could have been".

They’ve been at daggers drawn ever since, with Sánchez only last week complaining of Feijóo’s ‘vinegary’ and senseless opposition. Why, he will even go against the opinion of the PPE in Brussels in doomed attempts to pull down either Spain’s standing internationally, or Sanchez’ britches at home.

The party (and its supporters) is beginning to have second thoughts about the Galician (and his troubles back in his home region), his lack of constructive ideas ("When there is a problem with Morocco, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; if there is a problem with Algeria, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; if there is an issue in Venezuela, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; always against the Government of Spain and never in defence of the Spanish people" says a government minister with candour), and his recent performance over Venezuela, where his claim that Spain had plotted with the Caracas government to allow the disputed winner of their recent elections, Edmundo González, to seek asylum in Spain – was afterwards denied by the arch-conservative candidate González himself.

Feijóo with Ayuso

Feijóo wouldn’t make much of a president anyway – he gabbles and doesn’t speak English – and waiting in the wings is the above-mentioned Isabel Diáz Ayuso, who may be a handful with much baggage, but for some reason – she’s bulletproof. Pretty, too, like Meloni.

Talking of the Italian torpedo, Feijóo was over in Rome this weekend, to discuss immigration from the point of an ultra – however it panned out, Georgia Meloni wouldn’t say – and apart from a stolen snapshot, there’s no record of the summit anywhere in the Italian media.

Now we have the pre-budgets for 2025. The Conservative regions want more money from Central Government, but their colleagues in Parliament will likely be voting against the proposals this Thursday, which include any increase for the autonomies (mostly under PP control).

Pedro Sánchez certainly has problems to keep his majority, but the loosest of his allies – Junts per Catalunya (the exiled Puigdemont’s rabble) – know full well that they would get short shrift if the PP and its friends at Vox were to somehow take over the government.

So, maybe Sánchez and his claim of three more years is not such a fantasy, and with Feijóo for his rival, he may be right.

As someone says: better a Frankenstein government than a Neanderthal one.