A packed room received with standing applause the two most distinguished men of the PSOE in democracy: the President of the Government Felipe González and the former Vice President Alfonso Guerra. “The most relevant couple in Spanish politics”, as the president of the Ateneo, Luis Arroyo, presented them.
Felipe and Alfonso, González and Guerra. Together, side by side, in a pose that marks their reconciliation before the public 25 years after both left the political scene and left, separating their paths, the Madrid Congress Palace, in 1997, after González surprised to the entire PSOE and the country announcing his decision not to once again run for the general secretary of the party.
Today they are united again by politics, the defense of democracy, socialism and the Constitution. Today they are once again united by firm ideas about the State, the unity of the nation, equality between all Spaniards and the need for dialogue and pact. Today they are also united by their disagreement with a party that they are beginning to not recognize as the one they refounded in Suresnes 50 years ago. And today, in short, they join their voices against “resignation” and warn: “We cannot allow ourselves to be blackmailed.” Their opposition to the possibility of an amnesty for those involved in the process and to the demand for self-determination raised by the independentists is emphatic and radical.
All this is what the two protagonists made clear last night at the presentation of Alfonso Guerra’s book, The Rose and the Thorns. The man behind the politician (La Esfera), at the Ateneo de Madrid.
The former vice president did not disappoint. “If a man sees injustices he should say it out loud,” he began. And he got the first applause. Then he called “the other” a “dissident”, in reference to Pedro Sánchez who, as he pointed out, changes his mind and “one day he defends one thing and another, another.” “I,” he said, “have always stuck to the same thing.”
Guerra’s words did not lack reproaches for nationalism, regretting that the country is now talking about a possible amnesty for those who committed the crime of sedition and a future right to self-determination. For him, the amnesty is the deliberate humiliation of the Transition, the condemnation of democracy. All of this is, he explained, the result of the “new policy that is a huge scam.”
With his sharp verb, he flatly rejected the oblivion of what happened during the process. And, “as a socialist,” he solemnly asked that “the step not be taken” of granting amnesty to “the criminals who promise every day that they will do it again.” «The question is whether the criminal responsibility of those who, according to the Supreme Court, promoted a process to subvert the constitutional order can be extinguished. This, he added, if adopted, “would hamper the future of the nation” because it ultimately implies that “the nation denies itself.”
Guerra regretted that all Spanish politics depends on nationalists who together barely represent 6% of the nation as a whole. “The two major parties have to speak,” he repeated, to prevent minority nationalism from being in power and “deconstructing the constitutional order.” «The left has to distance itself from the parties that advocate separatism. “Nationalism is a reactionary ideology,” he concluded.
For Guerra, it is painful that the two major parties are increasingly distancing themselves from each other, turning towards their extremes. He confirmed the current decline of Parliament which, according to him, is “reduced to legitimizing the decisions” of Sánchez “expressed through decree laws” that do not respond to any “urgent need.”
«Parliament», he concluded, «is a deliberative assembly of the nation in which general reason must prevail. Hence,” she assured, “the need to get rid of nationalists and small groups that seek the destruction of democracy.” “I am not resigned,” she insisted, “and I know that many resist me.”
Felipe González then said it all in just one sentence: “Would anyone be surprised if I agreed?” There was no need for more. He was tough too. “The PSOE,” he recalled, “is the only political force that continues with its acronym and that was part of the drafting of the Constitution.” And in that sense, as “the only survivor of the constitutional pact”, he has the duty to defend it. «One can defend the ideas he wants but what he cannot do is ignore the law. “The amnesty is not constitutional,” he stated. “It doesn’t fit, just as self-determination doesn’t fit.”
González and Guerra. Felipe and Alfonso. They both agreed that they had no doubts about this matter. “In two days they destroyed the Statute and in two days they destroyed the Constitution and now with an amnesty that would be erased and the legitimacy of those who tried to defend it would be taken away,” said González, who said he did not know of any democratic country that introduced an element of “self-destruction of its unity, of its integrity.” «We cannot allow ourselves to be blackmailed by anyone. For nobody. And much less for minorities in danger of extinction,” he cried, eliciting applause from the audience.
He also advocated for agreements between the PSOE and the PP because, otherwise, he said, “no important reform will go forward.” And he cited, for example, the reform of the Senate to turn it into a true chamber of territorial representation. “What I hear is that people want them to agree, but,” he asked, “how are we going to agree with that lady who gives lessons to everyone?”, referring to Yolanda Díaz. González pointed out on several occasions against the second vice president and her tendency to “always lecture”, even, he said, “from whom she has won all the elections”, in obvious reference to Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
