Pedro Sanchez He has led a band of unscrupulous political climbers. As has been seen, his faithful squires, José Luis Ábalos y Santos Cerdanthey were preparing the ground waiting for their opportunity to obtain constant and resounding performance of their fidelity.
This band turned Spanish politics, and especially the entente with nationalisms (key to obtaining central power) into a kind of gambling table where anything went to win the hand.
The episode of hamlet pactwhich we have learned about through this medium, was a masterstroke between Sánchez and the Abertzale left. A pact that marked the beginning of a trend where the political influence of both was put into play on the board of alliances for the Government of Spain.
That 2018 pact is understood, on the Basque side, if we see the comparison of EH Bildu with the PNV in the results of the general elections.
In 2016 they had 2 seats to the PNV’s 5. In 2019 they went to 5 seats to 6 for the PNV. And in 2023, Bildu got 6 to 5 for the PNV (given that the PNV in Navarra does not scratch balls, and on the other hand, Bildu always obtains one in the Old Kingdom).
Aitor Esteban and Pedro Sánchez.
Europa Press
The PNV, accustomed since the beginning of the Transition to doing and undoing as it pleases as the sole interlocutor in the offices with the party in power in the Government in Spain, never had anything to fear, faced with a nationalist left thrown into the mountains. AND It took full advantage of the benefits of being the moderate party with which it could negotiate within nationalism.
This is how all presidents considered it, from Felipe Gonzálezpassing through Aznar, Zapatero y Rajoy.
For everyone, the PNV was the only Basque interlocutor in Madrid. With which the party founded by Sabino Arana It became what it is today: a regime party that made and broke in the Basque Country, even above the Basque branches of PP and PSOE, which it mercilessly bypassed.
This dynamic reduced these branches over time to what they are today: the PP, a tiny party and the PSOE, the crutch of the PNV governments both in the Parliament of Vitoria and in the Provincial Councils and main town councils.
All this had to be told in order to understand the importance of what Sánchez’s agreement with Otegi meant in the hamlet where the driver took them. Koldo Garciaand with Cerdán as master of ceremonies and the businessman’s contest Antxon Alonsoknown to Otegi for being both from the same town, Elgóibar.
It was a masterstroke because it meant, with all the transfers that had to be made, giving for the first time the main dialogue with Madrid to the Abertzale left to the detriment of the PNV.
“The change of roles was there. For the first time, the PNV lost its footing in its traditional dominance of Basque politics”
And the main transfer was clear: prisons, and with them prisoner policy, would become the responsibility of the Basque Country for the first time since the beginning of the Transition.
The transfer materialized in October 2021, when he was still lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu. And now we have to rewrite everything that was said then about that transfer, when we all believed that it was done to tie the PNV as Sánchez’s preferred partner. Or when its promoters claimed that it had nothing to do with the transfer of prisoners.
It was quite the opposite: It was not done to tie up the PNV, but rather Bildu. And, indeed, it was done to transfer prisoners.
The proof is that when the Basque Government changed, in the new PNV-PSE coalition government of the Lehendakari Pradales The Ministry of Justice, responsible for prisons, was transferred to the PSE for the first time, to the surprise of everyone.
It was the PSOE, with its pacts with Bildu, that was going to directly manage the transfer of prisoners and the releases. Evidently it shows that the person in charge in the distribution of powers was no longer just the PNV, as it had been historically since the beginning of the Transition.
The role reversal was there. For the first time, Sabino Arana’s party lost its traditional dominance of Basque politics. There were already other agents who were capable of setting the agenda and communicating directly with each other without the mediation of the jeltzales.
“A band of unscrupulous gamblers has made the PNV submit to their rhythms”
In short, a band of unscrupulous gamblers has managed to make the PNV submit to their rhythms. And the PNV then staged that the decision was made by agreement of its supreme council.
Remember that meeting in which a group of chapelaundis (the Euskadi Buru Batzar) decided, on the eve of June 1, 2018, to vote in favor of Sánchez’s motion of censure, with the excuse that the sentence of the Belt condemned the PP as corrupt (in a sentence that later had to be amended).
But there was no such autonomous decision by the PNV. Because by then everything was already tied and well tied. And there the factor counted Paris mansiona candy impossible for the PNV to refuse, a promise that would serve as grease for this party to accept its new role as second-in-command.
The PNV leaders were dazed: they lost their voracity and the memory of Jose Antonio Aguirrewho cried when in 1951 the palace was taken away from him by the Government of Franco and that of Paris.
But, paradoxically, by obtaining a palace they are going to lose political hegemony in the Basque Country.
Now it is also understood that Bildu was among the first to congratulate the PNV for obtaining the palace. To go like headless chickens of Basque nationalism, doing a lot of harm to a lot of people, They have learned to benefit too.
It only took someone like Pedro Sánchez to arrive at the front line of Spanish politics for them to achieve it. They needed each other.
*** Pedro Chacón is a professor of History of Political Thought at the UPV/EHU.