There is a famous phrase by Tierno Galván , with a meaning that is not what I am going to use here, but that adapted condenses - as the title says - what I want to explain in the following lines. So, I take the opportunity to hold together the same thing that Frederick II of Prussia maintained in a letter addressed to Voltaire . In it he communicated the following: "The older one gets older, the more one becomes convinced that His Highness chance is responsible for three-fourths of the acts that happen in this miserable world." Well, although I share this statement in general, I also believe that we must leave a place for the personality, effort and will of certain characters, including mediocre ones, because sometimes they can change their destiny and even the chance of their own country .
That said, there is no doubt that chance has had enough to do with the fact that one of the greatest dislates in the history of Spain has been avoided, whose overcoming would have cost us many years and many dislikes, given passivity or general myopia . I refer to the possible Coalition Government between the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez and Podemos de Pablo Iglesias , happily failed for now. Historical errors are only avoided when they are not committed. Therefore, although the PCE was a split of the PSOE in 1920 and in 1936 there were two communist ministers who were part of a Largo Caballero Executive, the Socialists have never tried a coalition with the PCE or its derivatives, as is the case now . For example, in the 1993 elections, Felipe González obtained only 159 deputies, then he lacked 17 to reach an absolute majority that he could have reached with the 18 of IU. However, he preferred to resort to Catalan and Basque nationalists to secure his investiture, instead of agreeing with the communists of Julio Anguita . Guideline that has remained to this day, although in the long run we do not know if the remedy was worse than the disease.
Anyway, this behavior of avoiding communists in the Government has been about to break now, since after the elections of April 28, the PSOE and the neo-communists of Podemos had only 165 deputies, that is, less than absolute majority. Therefore, for the investiture and to be able to govern they would have had to resort to the votes of the eight localist parties of nationalist, separatist, proetarian, populist and regionalist origin . That is, each of his father and his mother, but all with a common goal: to undermine the unity of Spain, with some exceptions. In other words, the cocktail formed by a total of 10 parties, headed by two extremely narcissistic political minds, at a time when the Supreme Court ruling on the Catalan conflict is about to be made public and it is increasingly urgent to reform our State structure and our economy, could be explosive.
All this comes to mind because since the motion of censure was made, the ship of Spanish politics depends in part on the incompetence of politicians who have no experience or knowledge and claim that Spain is plurinational . Which would undoubtedly facilitate his obsession with the dismemberment of Spain, while, at the same time, they would not agree to build a Confederation of States, or something similar, that would never work. Therefore, as Gregorio Morán has written, referring to Pedro Sánchez, "only to whom cunning has granted the privilege of giving her a flower in the ass knows that everyone looks at the ground, except him." Of course, with this I do not reduce the important role of chance, but no one in his trial can deny that the failure of a Coalition Executive with Podemos, which would not have lasted more than two or three months, has been Pedro's great luck Sanchez if he knows how to take advantage of it. Although now it seems that he has discovered a white blackbird with the story of the Portuguese Government and it seems that he returns to the streets to seek the support of the enemies of Spain, since he admits only two solutions: a single-color government of 123 deputies , with which it will not be able to govern effectively or the call for elections in November that the country will not be able to support. The real solution must be found elsewhere.
Indeed, as I have been saying since 1978, Spain does not have a definitive and stable model of a decentralized State. I am not going to judge here whether the State of Autonomies has been convenient or not. I believe, based on experience, that in some regions it has been enormously useful for modernizing territories that remained the same as in the early 1950s. However, even recognizing those benefits, we must also point out the serious problems that the Autonomous Communities have amplified at par. Especially two: the disintegration of the State and the fragmentation of the official language are at the base of the conflicts of the Basque Country - and now also of Navarre - of Catalonia and the so-called Països Catalans . The cause, I repeat, is found in the disastrous Title VIII of the EC, which has not allowed an end to the praised Transition. In other words, the Transition is not yet over in this country. And here arises, if he knows how to catch the fly on the fly, Pedro Sánchez's great luck can happen to history, if he wants, as a great statesman or, on the contrary, as a villain who destroyed the state.
To achieve the former, he would have to convince Casado and Rivera - a miracle, because no one trusts anyone here - to write a reform manifesto and create a Constitutional Government formed by the PSOE, the PP and CS, which could start a process constituent to rationalize and finish Title VIII of the Constitution . The timing could not be more appropriate, because the expected ruling of the Supreme Court, to avoid violent confrontations, could incite this broadly constitutional government to an eventual negotiation to solve two riddles. On the one hand, find some reasonable way out, other than the classic pardon, so that the Catalan defendants could, in a not too long term, regain their freedom, but provided they guarantee the abandonment of all illegal activity and that they comply scrupulously with the Magna Carta, which they will have to swear again, but now seriously. They will see. And, on the other, as I have also said, we would have a strong Government to modernize our State, reforming the Constitution, updating the Senate, the electoral law, the Council of the Judiciary, also ensuring the independence of the Courts and all that is necessary. This Constitutional Government, formed by the three mentioned parties, would have a majority of more than two thirds of each House, something that will be impossible to achieve again .
Thus, Pablo Iglesias would remain as head of the opposition, a role in which he has some experience - no one in governing. On the other hand, the eight localist parties that have 38 deputies would have no choice but to accept this constituent period if they intend to remain legal.
Consequently, Pedro Sánchez must consider that chance offers him two paths: a tortuous one, if he is not resigned and continues to fight for a single-color government without any future, since he will continually depend on the independence forces. In this sense, poorly advised, claims a type of Cabinet such as Danish or Portuguese. But he is totally wrong. Denmark, one of the most stable democracies in the world, has a minority Executive, supported externally by other political forces, yes, but all parties represented in the Copenhagen Parliament not only accept the rules of the game, but also defend the Monarchy as the best symbol of the Nation . And, as for Portugal, it has a communist party so rational that it rejects violence, supports a socialist government that did not win the elections and accepts labor reforms from the right. Even bullfights are not in Portugal as in Spain. Its current form of government, so to speak, is a syringe that cannot be copied here. Regarding the second, much safer way, if Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Casado and Albert Rivera happened like San Pablo when he fell off his horse and converted to Christianity , they could save Spain from the institutional collapse we are heading to, achieving before an entente cordiale and a strong government to avoid the debacle of new elections.
Maybe I am too utopian when it comes to the right political solution for these moments in Spain. In British warships there is a nautical tradition since time immemorial that is worth highlighting. Every day, when the sunset begins, the officer on duty informs the captain of the following: "Lord, the sun sets", to which he invariably responds: "Let everyone be in their place and do what they have to do" . This British anecdote that possibly no longer means the same in Brexit times, shows us the opposite of what happens in Spain. Here the sun also sets every day, but nothing and nobody are in their place and we have been in an irregular situation for five years, with a functioning Government that could be extended until mid-2020. And the house without sweeping; without addressing the serious problems that the country has, but that are hidden behind the smokescreen that will one day dissipate, to show the deterioration of the State that until now we have called Spain and that Pedro Sánchez did not want to see.
Jorge de Esteban is a professor of Constitutional Law and president of the Editorial Board of EL MUNDO.
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