Those who are part of the political, social and economic circle of José María Aznar explain that the distant, apocalyptic and ill-tempered former Spanish prime minister who appears on television and, with an expression like the end of the world has begun, speaks of Spain's roller-coaster-ride situation ever since the PSOE reached its agreement with Junts, is enormously content with his role as the bugler who must wake up the troops with his reveille. Having become accustomed to years of ostracism, he starts each week with an over-the-top television appearance, in which he does not hesitate to compare Pedro Sánchez's political pacts to the 1981 attempted miitary coup. Nor does he hold back from labelling the partners of the Spanish prime minister as "communists, terrorists and criminals". Nor does he mind repeating, even if it is false - even the Supreme Court says it is false - that in October 2017 there was a coup d'état in Catalonia with Carles Puigdemont leading it.
It's a shame that the past exists, and the newspaper archives as well, and most of our politicians with years of government behind them have episodes that they can show off, but also chapters that they try to erase with Tipex as if they had never happened. Felipe González had to make concessions in 1989, when he lost his absolute majority, and especially in 1993, when he needed Convergència i Unió. Known concessions - he had to hand over the collection of a part of the personal income tax take - and also secret concessions, many times through economic agreements that were resolved in an opaque manner. Pacts that could not be explained and that were made because Pujol had 17 seats which, in the end, were decisive.
When Aznar blames Sánchez and says that you can't drag a country through the mud more than he is doing, perhaps he should be reminded that the mud was the state's response to Catalonia in 2017
In 1996, to gain Pujol's sympathy, Aznar made concessions as no Spanish PM had ever done before. I have no doubt that the left at the time would have been unable to do what they did because the right-wing press would have simply prevented it. Military service was abolished, the Gobiernos Civiles were abolished and, among other things, responsibilities for traffic policing were transferred to the Generalitat. Nothing that Pujol demanded was left off the list of Aznar, who, without so much as a blush, proclaimed on TV3, to satisfy the Catalan nationalist leader and improve his image in Catalonia, that he even spoke Catalan himself in private. Pedro Sánchez has returned to the same path 23 years on, and certainly, the pro-independence parties have shown him that, in the end, it was a problem of votes and he had to either take the medicine or go to the elections, with a large chance of ending up in the opposition.
When Aznar says that the amnesty is oblivion, you can't argue with him, because it is. It is the recognition of the error committed by the Spanish state, from the king downwards. It is the state that is asking for forgiveness through the passing of the amnesty law. Clearly it's hard to accept, but others also did what they had to do to hang on to power. The difference is that no-one demanded so much from them, and therefore, however indignant the expressions are on those who are now tearing their hair out, we don't know how much they would have been willing to do. Nor is it unreasonable to think that with them it would have been very different, because there was a series of actions they took when when they won the right to do so. Aznar does not like to be reminded that in 1999 he referred to the ETA terrorist group as the "Basque Liberation Movement" in order to empathize with them at the start of the negotiations that subsequently failed. Xabier Arzalluz did not do this, nor any other Basque nationalist leader. It was Aznar who said it from Madrid and with ETA still operating. I don't know what the PP and Vox would say if that context occurred now, with a Socialist PM in the Moncloa, 25 years later.
It is obvious that the right is comfortable inciting the streets, with situations that can only be understood in the context of the red line that Spain's politics and judiciary crossed in 2017 and that now, from the PSOE, need be to re-positioned in their correct place. Because when Aznar blames Sánchez and says that you can't drag a country through the mud more than he is doing, that what he is doing is not politics, but rather total nonsense, and that it's "completely unbearable the shame to which Spaniards are being submitted in this matter", perhaps he should be reminded that the mud, the nonsense and the shame were the state's response to Catalonia in 2017.