In the EU we have a regulatory framework that aims to guarantee fundamental freedoms. In this context, having a democratic culture means accepting without reservation the principle that governments are determined by elections and that a majority is as legitimate as any other. The Spanish political problem is that a very important sector of the right wing does not have a democratic culture; on the contrary, it has a patrimonial conception of the State. It considers it its own and aspires to have its legitimacy as something natural to be imposed. Within Europe this would describe, for example, the situation in Poland.
For this right wing point of view, if, by accident, the government is occupied by others, it is legitimate to do whatever is necessary to evict them. This is the drive that led to General Franco's insurrection in 1936. In the EU - its membership is surely the only basic consensus we have - the military instrument has been cancelled. And hence the instrumentalisation of a judiciary that includes very good professionals but has a leadership dominated by a conservative, politicised and activist sector that shares the patrimonial vision and wants to complete the involution of the Constitution that President Aznar started at the beginning of the century.
In view of the anomaly that the government of Spain is currently in the hands of illegitimate powers, destabilisation is necessary with the aim of making them fall, or, in the worst case, to make them lose the next legislature. The strategy is one of continuous provocation. And that is why I have had very respectable and peaceful friends who, for almost a thousand days now, have been confirmed as political prisoners by a Supreme Court (SC) without any sense of the measure. Jail is part of the provocation. Angry reaction, polarization and the prominence of extremes are being sought. They want us to be violent.
There is a current of opinion that insists that the democratic consolidation of Spain requires a central consensus that can lead to political configurations of government like the German one (conservative-socialist coalition). This is so, but not because the supermajorities have special virtues in themselves. At the most fundamental level, democratic consolidation calls for a much more basic type of consensus, and one that is absent today from the bulk of the right: what I have previously called democratic culture, that is, the internalisation that democracy means that half plus one of the electorate can legitimately govern. The United States and its judicial system have given us a magnificent example of this culture: it has been the judges, whether conservative or progressive, who, with impressive and practically unanimous professionalism, have put the brakes on Trump's coup aberration.
The option of confrontation and provocation, implemented today by the Supreme Court, should have only one answer: to work to build a social base, composed of various varieties of the left and sectors of the middle classes, which has the capacity, as long as the right does not evolve in depth, to systematically win elections. In short, the appropriate path is that of Portugal. With a little luck, which we well deserve, we will save Poland and one day we will reach Germany and perhaps we will have governments, coalition or otherwise, which are from the centre because that is what the voters have wanted. But for this we will have to go through Portugal for as long as it takes.
Portugal's path will not be easy. I believe that demographics help, but above all we need to control ourselves: not to fall into provocation. The majority that I have described to you must be not only competent but also calm. Also, within the majority and its different sectors and sub-sectors, we need to know how to reach agreements and project ourselves towards the citizens with moderate platforms. And to avoid continuous quarrels. It is not always true that the multiplicity of options maximises votes. The discouraged voter may stay at home.
I return, more specifically, to my friends in prison. With prisoners and exiles it will be difficult to move forward in consolidating a stable parliamentary majority. The right-wing activist judges and prosecutors know this, and that is why we will have them in jail for Christmas. One step that is convenient, and fast, is for them to get out. Perfection would ask for an amnesty, but we have to realize that the intransigence of the Supreme Court has given much political significance to pardon. It is not the same that pardon comes as a measure of grace granted at the request of the Supreme Court itself, than one obtained against its will.
