We await to see if the battle over the continuity of Margarita Robles at the head of the ministry of defence really has ended, but the minister seems to have defeated all those who were demanding that Pedro Sánchez ask for her resignation. After ten days in the eye of the hurricane, the Spanish prime minister has come out to support her, and with him, an indeterminate number of cabinet colleagues. The most popular minister in the cabinet, also the one who is rated most highly by the public, wins the day and holds on to her post, after explaining to Spaniards from the rostrum of the Congress of Deputies, with great clarity, that the pro-independence activists had obviously been spied on massively, since there was a challenge to the state. Unacceptable statements in any other country in our neighbourhood but perfectly acceptable within the political and media discourse prevailing in Madrid, as has been seen in some other speeches in the Spanish Cortes in the last few days.
Robles, who the day before had left Congress in turmoil, with a certain irritation among her supporters because she had passionately confronted arguments that usually remain in the private sphere, and with rumours of all kinds floating over the always-complex arithmetic of an unstable legislature, was this Thursday once again a powerful and cheery minister. The protective layer of the deep state had surely left its mark where required, and to those who had any doubt, it clarified that a pata negra of the state cannot be dismissed just for saying what many people had hoped and, above all, had expected to hear. The episode brings to mind - and the newspaper archive on this is a rich vein - the words of Felipe VI in that televised speech on October 3rd, 2017 in which, departing from his constitutional role, he attacked the Catalan independence movement.
That evening, irate and with clenched fists, he affirmed at one point, after accusing the legitimate authorities of Catalonia of having appropriated their institutions of self-government: "Because of all this, and in the face of the situation of extremely gravity, which requires the firm commitment of all to the general interest, it is the responsibility of the legitimate powers of the state to ensure the constitutional order and the normal functioning of the institutions." Ensuring the constitutional order and the normal functioning of the institutions, putting an end by any means necessary to the path taken by the Catalan independence movement. In other words, this Wednesday in Congress, Robles was drinking from the same well: "What must a government do when someone violates the Constitution, when someone declares independence, when someone blocks public roads, commits public disorder..."
Two discourses that are as similar as peas in a pod and that show - let's not waste time fooling ourselves - that whoever governs, the main trunk of Spanish politics continues. The pro-independence parties with seats in the Spanish Cortes are left with the official secrets committee, which will meet with members of ERC, Junts, Bildu and the CUP and that, as expected, will not shed any light on the illegal mass espionage conducted by the Spanish state. Whether it was the work of the CNI, some other security body or the so-called "sewers", which, it will have to be said at some point, are simply one more information-gathering channel for the state, even if they are less able to be put on display and authorized than the others.
Having lost the battle, at least for the moment, of the resignations that were demanded - here, the support by the Basque Nationalist Party and EH Bildu to the government over the economic measures arising from the Ukraine war has indirectly given oxygen to Sánchez and prevented the CatalanGate crisis from blowing wide open - we await to see whether the new assault that will now arrive, the call for a commission of inquiry in the Congress of Deputies, will become reality or not. It is important that it be constituted, as it is the only way to have information that the government, otherwise, will not give. The other way is to denounce the affair in the institutions and, above all, in the European judiciary, which always ends up offering prospects that are impossible to access in Spain.