Ángel Collado
The 44 people convicted of terrorism that Bildu, the heir party to ETA’s political wing, is presenting for the regional and municipal elections on 28 May have ruined the PSOE’s start to the campaign.
Pedro Sánchez has in this Basque pro-independence party led by the gang’s former gunman Arnaldo Otegi his most loyal supporter since he came to power in 2018. But it does not do the main socialist candidates any good to be reminded now of a fact that mobilises the vote for the opposition parties and paralyses their own more traditional voters.
Bildu, with the Podemos populists and the Catalan separatists, forms part of the left-wing front that sustains the government and with which its current president aspires to repeat his mandate after the general elections at the end of the year.
In addition to the penitentiary benefits for imprisoned ETA members, Sánchez had made an effort to whitewash Bildu and give it play in legislative tasks in order to normalise an alliance that made part of the PSOE uncomfortable, at least some regional barons who do not depend on pro-independence groups to govern: Emiliano García-Page (Castilla-La Mancha), Javier Lambán (Aragón) and Guillermo Fernández Vara (Extremadura).
What the lists truffled with ETA supporters have done away with is Sanchista’s discourse to get his party’s militants and traditional voters to digest the company of the party that inherited the gang: that ETA had disappeared, that there was no need to talk about the gang that murdered 853 Spaniards and that Bildu was only a left-wing and pro-independence party that the “progressive coalition” government had to rely on.
The votes of the six successor deputies in Congress of the former Batasuna, the last political brand of the terrorists prior to the current one, have been in the majorities that have approved the main projects of the Executive, from the Budget to the labour reform, the “only if it is if” law or the alarm decrees applied during the pandemic and later declared unconstitutional.
In application of the pro-ETA doctrine, Sánchez’s so-called law of democratic memory passed last October changed the history of the Transition to extend the Francoist period to the first socialist government of Felipe González. Some Socialist leaders in office, the usual barons, and the veterans of the time were once again scandalised by the degree of complicity or dependence of their leader with Bildu, but without the protests having any internal consequences in the party.
The presence of the 44 terrorists on the lists reproduces that episode of public criticism with no practical effect, but with the added bonus that the polls are very close. The effects of national politics on regional and local politics are increasing, much to the chagrin of the socialists, who will have to examine themselves personally before the citizens in 12 days.
Sánchez has had to make a comment (“it is legal but not decent”) on the fact that his whitewashing of Bildu has been exposed, while the disassociation of the barons this time is part of their respective campaigns. “Me, with the murderers of ETA, not even around the corner”, said García-Page at a rally with the President of the Government himself in front of him.
Lambán directly calls for a rupture of relations with Bildu, but in the knowledge that Sánchez is not in a position to lose a partner with whom he is mortgaged in the long term and in whom he has invested all his political potential and media influence in order to blur his origins.
The three barons indignant with Bildu are gambling their respective government majorities for a handful of votes against the rise of the Popular Party. And the PP does not let go of the prey of denouncing the “indecency” of Sanchismo in governing for and by the heirs of Batasuna-ETA.
Another sector of the PSOE keeps an expressive silence in the face of the gap opened in the socialists’ general campaign: the one that depends, like its leader, on the support of the separatist parties to repeat in power. The case of María Chivite in Navarre stands out, as she has been at the head of the region for four years thanks to the external support provided by Bildu’s local brand. Nor does Ximo Puig enter the debate as president of the Generalitat Valenciana and in turn mortgaged with all the populist and pro-independence parties in the region.
Sánchez contributed to the PSOE’s campaign for 28M with his photos with Biden and announcements of bonds for all, but his mortgage with Bildu has become the main problem for the socialist candidates.
