Cuca Gamarra and Teodoro García Egea gesturing in a plenary session of Congress on February 3. Andrea Comas
At the tachycardia rhythm of the media and networks, politics is shaken every week in Spain.
In that carousel there is no month that does not seem to certify a "crisis" or an "end of cycle".
The government is issued death certificates on a daily basis, although it has yet to lose a major vote in Parliament.
The PP was in the UCI in March and three months later it was again presented as the virtual winner of the elections.
In the same period, Vox went from cherishing what his comrades in Italy and France have already achieved — cornering the traditional right — to being perceived almost as a zombie.
Events occur at full speed —from a war in Europe to an internal earthquake in the main opposition party— and politicians and the media build on them a story so changing that it is difficult to digest.
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Sánchez will change the ERC plan but will reduce the penalty for embezzlement
Married heads to La Moncloa.
The year began with the trumpeting of a master move that the PP was preparing.
Some surveys placed the popular on the verge of an absolute majority in Castilla y León.
Pablo Casado rubbed his hands.
Still with the echoes of the great Madrid victory in May, all that remained was to first dissolve the Cortes of Valladolid and a few weeks later the Andalusian Parliament to chain a triumphant streak that would bring what the pandemic had not achieved: knock out Pedro Sánchez.
In those days, the Government also looked into an abyss, which it dodged thanks to a carambola, on February 3, when a mistake by a PP deputy prevented a defeat in the vote on the labor reform that would have inflicted a difficult wound on him. to put together
The polls in Castilla y León opened 11 days later: Pyrrhic victory of the PP,
while Vox came out on top of a government for the first time.
Now it was Casado who was shivering.
Vox, a new hope.
Not even 72 hours had passed since the elections and the war broke out between Casado and Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
For a few days, the popular ones gave themselves up to the public exhibition of their miseries.
The polls came into action again.
Some right-wing media were already trumpeting Vox's
sorpasso
.
Without going so far, the barometer of EL PAÍS and SER placed those of Abascal only one and a half points away from the PP.
In the street, a carrier strike, initially scorned by the government, pushed the current in favor of the extreme right.
The war had broken out, the price of fuel was skyrocketing and the Executive was arguing about whether to send weapons to Ukraine.
Only Vox seemed fit.
The 'Feijóo effect' arrives.
Spring storms drowned the government.
The inflation figures were like a trip back in time to the 80s. And the Cabinet was creaking inside again.
The partners discussed heatedly about the Atlanticist enthusiasm of the chief executive and about the measures to stop the economic deterioration.
In a Council of Ministers, Sánchez even threatened to dismiss the members of United We Can.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a brand new leader, with a sensational track record of electoral victories in Galicia and well regarded among the more moderate layers of the population, had already settled in the PP.
The picture ended with the overwhelming victory of the PP in the great sentimental territory of the PSOE, Andalusia.
The funeral marches sounded again for Sánchez.
And this time also by Vox, the emerging force three months ago,
frustrated in her bid to enter the Andalusian Government and dragged into her first major crisis by her candidate in those elections, Macarena Olona.
The imaginary that every so often is brewing in Madrid among politicians, the media and opinion-makers of all stripes had a new fixed photo: Feijóo entering La Moncloa.
Sanchez is reborn.
The Socialists went on their summer vacation with an optimism that even some of those closest to them seemed unjustified.
The president had raised the morale of his people in the debate on the state of the nation.
After a few months trying to maintain a more moderate profile, Sánchez dusted off flags from the left, devoted himself to combating liberal economic discourse and announced extraordinary taxes on large companies and fortunes.
It was what UP had been asking for for a long time.
Suddenly, everything returned to being smiles and good vibrations among the members of the Executive.
The star goes out.
After the holidays, La Moncloa launched into an open grave against Feijóo.
Sánchez challenged him in the Senate and the fight was not very profitable for the PP leader.
The monothematic economic offer of the popular ones - to lower taxes - was muted after the disaster of the fiscal policy of the British conservatives, and the economic catastrophe that was ventured is not such for the moment.
The breakdown of the negotiations to renew the Judiciary gave Feijóo's adversaries —with the highly appreciated help of some friendly fire— the opportunity to paint the image of a leader who was too subject to pressure.
New surveys circulated and with them the story of the umpteenth end of the cycle.
The
Feijóo effect
it was a passing cloud, while Sánchez wrote new pages for the second part of his
Resistance Manual
.
Christmas storms.
In those we were, with Feijóo's star losing its shine and the Government exhibiting muscle after approving its third consecutive Budgets on November 24 —a certificate of survival for another year— when new storms lurk on the way to Christmas.
One of them was sung for the Government, the reform of the crime of sedition, which, despite the fact that both parties officially deny it, has figured at the center of the negotiations with ERC that culminated in the support of the Republican group for the Budgets.
The other has been unforeseen: the reduction of sentences for sexual offenders in application of the law of
only yes is yes
.
There are more laws, like the
trans
or housing, which have revived the embers between the partners of the Government.
The ministers are asked again in each interview if the Executive is going to break.
There is also another threat of rupture on the horizon: that of the space to the left of the PSOE which, in practice, already functions within the Cabinet as two different legs, Podemos, on the one hand, and Yolanda Díaz and her supporters, on the other.
Vox is not sinking and the PP, although it has lost steam, is better off than with Casado.
The carousel continues and now comes the controversial reduction in penalties for some forms of embezzlement, the last box of thunder in the final stretch of 2022, together with a legal reform to overcome the resistance of the Constitutional Court to be renewed.
Lurking is a new year,
surely laden with those extraordinary events that have become so ordinary.
And with three electoral appointments in sight, the best invitation to continue collecting fragments of the apocalypse.
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