Pablo Casado, Pablo Iglesias, Pedro Sánchez and Albert Rivera, during the electoral debate in April 2019. JAVIER SORIANO (AFP)
Of the electoral debate that in April 2019 faced Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Casado, Pablo Iglesias and Albert Rivera, only the first remains alive politically.
United We Can, which in 2015 obtained 20.66% of the vote (5.189 million supports) would now barely exceed 10%, according to the latest 40dB barometer.
for the country.
Citizens, who came to surpass the popular in voting intention, seems mortally wounded.
The PSOE and the PP that, in the 2008 elections, added up to 83.8% of the ballots, are now satisfied with 52% and the extreme right adds up in each new electoral appointment.
The 2015 elections were repeated in 2016 and in 2019 there were two general elections in six months.
The communities of Madrid, Castilla y León and Andalusia have also advanced the elections.
Voting in Congress is
photo-finish
and every week a new crisis breaks out, often more related to politicians than politics.
Leaders and former leaders of different formations and experts analyze for EL PAÍS the frenetic pace of today that devours leaders and brands and makes big agreements difficult while problems multiply and uncertainty grows.
“This political generation is failing”
Eduardo Madina, who aspired to lead the PSOE in 2014, says: “The political history of this country produces many more events than we can absorb.
It is going faster than ever and a country project is missing.
Before there was also anger and intensity, but it was a quarrel with criteria because what was facing were different models.
Now the feeling is that there is no roadmap.
I think this political generation is failing and I include myself.
You just have to see where Iglesias, Casado, Rivera, Susana Díaz are… There is constant competition, in every vote in Congress, in every press conference, in every tweet… and no cooperation.
This makes it practically impossible to reach large state agreements at a time when they are more necessary than ever to face the consequences of a war, a pandemic,
More information
As if Vox wasn't Vox
The political scientist Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, who has just published
Political Disorder,
On the crisis of representation due to citizen mistrust in their leaders, he explains that the parties "now rely more on their leaders than on management capacity" and that, for this reason, they are "very exposed".
There is great pressure on them to maintain the level of political tension and that makes them burn out quickly.
“Married, the first leader of the PP not appointed by the previous one did not sell management capacity.
He was presented as the embodiment of the values marginalized by the team that preceded him and has been a failed experiment.
The PP has not yet stabilized;
It remains to be seen whether Alberto Núñez Feijóo is a provisional or lasting solution.
Pedro Sánchez is surviving, but we will see what happens if he loses power.
Ciudadanos appeared in Spain as a liberal party,
but on the territorial question he aligned himself with Vox based on the famous photo of Colón, which was his curse: the right-wing parties ate him up.
And Podemos is mired in uncertainty: he can be reduced to a niche or take off with Yolanda Díaz”.
Pablo Casado, Albert Rivera and Santiago Abascal, together with leaders of the PP, Cs, Vox and UPyD in the protest against the relationship between the central government and the Generalitat of Catalonia, in February 2019. CARLOS ROSILLO
“The incentives are very bad: confrontation is rewarded”
Toni Roldán, former leader of Cs, blames "social networks, the hyper-actuality of the media and
clickbait."
“I prepared a lot for my first speech in Congress, on active politics.
I read a lot of academic research, I looked for all the data and it had no repercussions because then Toni Cantó came out to fight with Gabriel Rufián saying that they were manipulating the children and that was what triumphed.
Politicians have very bad incentives: the more confrontation, the more chance they have of appearing in the media.
There has always been some of that, but it has skyrocketed as the competition has increased.”
For the veteran PNV deputy Aitor Esteban (seven legislatures in Congress) there are parties that "look like electoral machines more than anything else and some have entrusted everything to new gurus who in the short term have been able to win some moves, but in the long run They have been a disgrace."
“Politics has always had its staging point, but not everything can be staged.
Many arrived at Congress with their chests out, but then you have to know how to swim in that ecosystem.
Some go blind, as happened to Rivera.
Demoscopy and social networks make you believe the bloody master and you end up measuring distances wrong.
We need leaders without haste and with a certain vision, but they lack patience.
Sometimes it seems that you always have to say no to your opponent.
It is not even negotiated.
To me,
Leaders of the PSOE and the PP have told me at crucial moments that their electorate would not understand their giving in.
No one tries to do pedagogy, explain the whys.
I think we are all adapting to a new society and a new way of doing politics”.
Gaspar Llamazares, former IU coordinator, agrees: “It is an obsessive-compulsive policy and what produces this convulsion is the lack of balance: one reacts to everything in a maniacal way.
It is a reactive policy for the society of catastrophes: from the volcano to the war passing through the epidemic.
The pressure has increased and this eruption takes everything it finds ahead: in France, the traditional parties.
Here, we have gone from UPyD to Ciudadanos and from Ciudadanos to Vox.
Each one gobbles up the other.”
José Luis Ayllón, former Secretary of State under Rajoy and right-hand man of former Vice President Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, points out that "bipartisanship has gone to biblocism."
“Not only do you have to beat the opposing bench, but also fight to maintain the leadership in yours.
The PSOE against Podemos and the PP trying not to feed the electoral potential of Vox.
Stability largely depends on the parties that represent moderation, that is, the PP and the PSOE, being more moderate”.
As for the leaders, he believes that there has been a "clear loss of quality in all political forces: Pedro Sánchez is not Felipe González and Pablo Casado was not Mariano Rajoy."
Political scientist Belén Barreiro believes, in any case, that politicians have little room for manoeuvre.
“Maintaining trust in the age of digitization is more complex.
Information and misinformation flow faster and there is more capacity to harm a party or candidate.
At the same time, mounting alternatives is much simpler.
A new applicant arrives and the citizen thinks: 'Maybe this one is', but everything quickly deflates.
Politics has more obstacles than many other sectors to obtain results.
It is easier to get good service in a company than in politics.
Politicians promise a better life, but they have many limitations: a pandemic is coming, there is a climate crisis and even if they set minimum wages, they are not the ones who pay citizens.
consumption policy
Martiño Noriega was one of the mayors of Las Mareas, the municipal movement that gave the electoral bell in 2016. After a few years at the head of the Santiago de Compostela City Council, he returned to medicine and wrote, together with Daniel Salgado,
The Permanent Contradiction: Conversation over five years of turbulent politics.
“When there is a crisis,” he explains, “there is usually a process of historical acceleration.
In Spain it started with the economic recession and now we are in chaos, permanent instability.
The way of understanding institutional politics has changed because the electorate has abandoned partisan patriotism, that I am from Dépor, or from the PSOE, from Celta or from the PP and I go to the pinion with my team, whatever I do.
The support is no longer as stable, it is penalized more and this has led to the appearance of new political brands.
But the references fall at lightning speed, it is almost a consumer policy.
Las Mareas knew how to connect with the discomfort of the people and the demand for change.
They were a space for contestation, but a historic opportunity was lost due to a mixture of attacks and their own mistakes.
It began to resemble the old policy.
Some acted like new rich and began to despise those who had brought them there and the space lost credibility.
Now it is a minority and defensive position and since the change that the people wanted was not achieved from the left, the electorate is looking for other spaces to challenge.
This is what explains, in part, the rise of the extreme right: they may seem like the only opponents of the system, many young people see them as fascists, but rebels.
Santiago Abascal and Marine Le Pen, in Madrid, last January.
The Latin Americanization of European politics
All those consulted for this report insist that, although with its peculiarities —fundamentally, the Catalan sovereignty challenge— political instability is not exclusive to Spain.
"Europe gives us examples," says Madina, referring to the recent elections in France, in which Macron prevailed over the second political force, the extreme right of Marine Le Pen.
"Hollande and the French Socialist Party that governed in 2015 have been subsumed," recalls the former socialist politician.
For Ayllón, “this chaos is democratically dangerous.
In the end, the laws come out, but people stop trusting politics and more totalitarian ideas or ideas that question the legal system arise.
Not only here.
The electoral result in France poses a very worrying future, also in Hungary,
Poland… And in other countries traditionally serious parties have become populist.
For example, Boris Johnson is not comparable to other conservative leaders.
It's a structural problem."
Llamazares is more optimistic.
"What happened in France could be a turning point for everyone because the message is that in a context of uncertainty and complexity what is needed is serious politics, not the simplification of populism."
“One might think”, says Sánchez-Cuenca, “that this level of instability is not sustainable, but Italy has been like this since 1994 and has not settled down.
There is a certain Latin Americanization of European politics and Spain and Italy are more advanced than the rest in this process with increasingly weaker parties, stronger candidates and an unstable policy of tremendous lurches from one year to the next”.
Barreiro notes that "it is very difficult to make predictions because when things seem to be going in one direction, they suddenly turn around."
“The feeling is that anything can happen.
We go from scare to scare.
I think we have to accept that Spanish politics is going through a period of uncertainty, which has become a box of surprises”.
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