A few days ago, someone who has a certain influence influence in the Spanish capital and who not that long ago was defending, with apparent conviction, an Albert Rivera government to end with Mariano Rajoy commented to me: "Now I do understand you Catalans: Rivera is a real danger." When I reminded him of his prior opinion, head bowed, he only managed to say: "Dude, he was a liberal and many of us believed that he was a breath of fresh air, but he's gone so far to the right...". Seeing the images of Rivera in the town of Altsasu, Navarre this Sunday, I remembered my friend's words and others which I had said to him: Rivera has turned politics into a permanent row and his capacity to bring hate into Spanish politics is without limit.
Today, luckily, this isn't, as it was previously, the exclusive view of the independence movement. Pablo Iglesias, secretary general of Podemos, was the first to distance himself from those joint stances with Rivera in which they were presenting themselves as the regenerators of a Spain which, in the large majority, doesn't want to regenerate itself. Which feels comfortable with a monarchy aligned with the Spanish right, capable of validating a non-existent coup d'état in Catalonia and a legal narrative which is indefensible from any point of view.
After Iglesias, Pedro Sánchez, who saw the writing on the wall, distanced himself. Rivera was nothing but a destabilising agent with forever the same script: anti-Catalonia, anti-democracy and anti-social harmony. His was the rhetoric of hate. But this Sunday even Pablo Casado, the very conservative leader of PP, has thrown the manner of his trip to Altsasu (which saw incidents) in his face and reminded him that he went in June to show solidarity with the Civil Guard "without the need to make so much fuss".
But Iglesias, Sánchez, Casado and ever more people know that Rivera lives on fuss. Otherwise, why go to Altsasu? That's how he's grown, between cushioned the large companies, by Atresmedia and by Mediaset, where he's never been wanting for an interview on the private television channels. Today, the hate caravan is touring round Spain, and there's now no distinguishing who is from Vox, who from Cs and who, PP. It could even win an election, who knows. But its rhetoric is every more like José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Not liberal, not right-wing. Like the founder of the Falange.