It's hard to understand how a cold, calculating person like Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría (SSS), the all-powerful former deputy Spanish prime minister under Mariano Rajoy and, without doubt, the most powerful woman in Spain since Carmen Polo de Franco, should have let herself be seduced, or worse, by an offer from a law firm, however important the firm may be. That, what's more, Cuatrecases should have its central office in Barcelona remains a bitter reminder for SSS: politics takes place in Madrid, the capital of the state, but private initiative is practiced in Barcelona. This already happened with another PP elite, Esperanza Aguirre, who at a certain time was all-powerful in the Community of Madrid and who ended up working for Seeliger y Conde, Luis Conde's headhunting firm.
When, a few days ago, a good friend commented on this possibility to me as something more than a rumour, I have to admit I gave no credit to what he was saying. How was SSS going to accept a fate like that when her aspiration remains to lead the PP party and some day aim for prime minister? All the power she enjoyed in the Moncloa government palace, the secrets she knew based on her office, her contacts with the CNI (Spain's intelligence service), which was under her control and which gave her a position of pre-eminence when it came eliminating many of the obstacles that presented themselves, was it going to end up in the trunk of memories from her move to private life? I don't know why it seemed plausible when, for example, we learnt that Duran i Lleida had finally achieved an important board position like AENA, and this about Soraya didn't seem it. It's certain that afterwards things can end up being explained in one's interests, there are always books for that.
And Soraya will have many reasons for taking this step but that doesn't mean it's not absurd. It's got nothing to do with whether it's legal or not, something the Office of Conflicts of Interest has left crystal clear despite her dismissal as deputy prime minister having appeared in the official state gazette on 2nd June 2018 and that only just over nine months should have passed since. But legislation and ethics don't always go in parallel. Nor is it the first time that Spanish politics has seen a leap between the public and the private and that's, perhaps, behind the limited stir it's caused among the political class and the well-trained print media which reaches kiosks every day.
One of the sentences attributed to Julius Caesar by Spanish sources says that "Caesar's wife, as well as being it, should seem it". As such, often, it's good to compare legality and ethics, even if only to ask where the line is. It shouldn't be an exclusive question of philosophical debates but also one of reputation when it's a question of a public figure who is going in nine months from defending the state's interests to confronting it and litigating against it. Because it runs the risk that the result is one of legality without ethics.