Who said that there is no room for humor in political literature? The book of conversations of the late Fernando Sánchez Dragó with Santiago Abascal and with whom he calls his guru, Kiko Méndez-Monasterio (Santiago Abascal, Spain VertebratePlaneta, 2019), contains some memorable passages. The writer’s dithyrambs towards the leader of Vox explode into heroic similes: “But if you are like Viriato, like El Cid, like Guzmán the Good…!”; The three gentlemen burst into laughter and jokes about the women while Dragó’s secretary fails to light a fire in the fireplace of the house where the talk takes place; Abascal emerges as a paragon of moderation in the face of a Dragó that denigrates universal suffrage and democracy…
The book also includes a confession from Abascal that is very illuminating at this time when we are trying to find out – the PP being the first – whether Vox really wants to govern or not. In a reflective rapture, the ultra leader regrets that politics has been transformed “into a job similar to that of a shoemaker or a carpenter” and leaves aside “feelings and convictions: honor, patriotism and things like that.” “Politics,” Abascal concludes, “is not just the urban planning plan, nor the school schedule, nor the street lighting. All of that has never interested me, although I have been a councilor for eight years (in the Alava municipality of Amurrio). These are debates in which one thing almost doesn’t matter to me or the opposite.”
What Abascal calls feelings and convictions is equivalent to what others have called “cultural wars.” A hallmark of today’s politics that does not distinguish ideological sides. On the left we saw Pablo Iglesias leave a legacy of magnificent speeches and unknown management in the Government. On the other side of the spectrum we still enjoy Isabel Díaz Ayuso, in whom one cannot quite guess what her dedication is between devastating and devastating diatribe against abject sanchismo.
We know from Vox that it is against the 2030 Agenda and that it likes to promote bullfighting and hunting, repeal memory laws and remove subsidies from feminists and unions. Also that it intends to expel immigrants without papers, although that cannot be done from the regional governments and hardly from the central one (Meloni could enlighten them on this). Their ideas on the very relevant issues that the autonomous communities do manage (education, health, social services…) are lost in a nebula.
Just like its economic postulates. In the past they were ultra-liberal. Now, according to the dissidents, the leadership has become “workerist,” while the leader happily goes to be photographed with Javier Milei, the man who has declared that social justice is theft. Could it be that, as Abascal said about urban planning or lighting, “one thing is almost the same as the opposite.”
Given what we have seen, the PP believes that the best way to wear down Vox is to put it in charge and let it fail. The bad thing is that this failure would occur in governments led by the PP. In a debate during the recent Castilla y León campaign, the popular Alfonso Fernández Mañueco accused Vox of spending two and a half years at the head of the Ministry of Agriculture “without doing anything.” He said it as if it were not with him, when the head of that Government and that apparently useless advisor was none other than Mañueco himself. So that’s where the PP is: wondering if with Vox or without Vox they will have a remedy for their ills.
