It was not the first time that the President of the Community of Madrid interrupted her speech. It is an optimal strategy to warm up the environment. You listen to how the shouting spreads little by little, you decide whether you want this slogan to be enforced, you stop talking, you measure every second, everything happens very quickly, but you have time to think, you remain silent and so you do The proclamation still resonates. with more power. Practical example on a Sunday lunchtime in the Puerta del Sol. Isabel Díaz Ayuso – the pop and populist leader of Spanish conservative nationalism – continued her speech about national torment. He established a dialectic on the situation of political freedom between Catalonia and the Basque Country and the rest of Spain. He said they wouldn’t give up. It happened at that exact moment. He captured the angry, rabid and vengeful message of citizens transforming en masse into something else. And then he stopped talking. She wouldn’t say it, but she encouraged the thousands of people gathered to shout it angrily. “Pedro Sanchez, go to prison.”
From home I immediately thought of Josep Borrell. It was easy to save the moment. It is kept on the website of Spanish television – the media outlet that was stigmatized yesterday with the same call heard during the trial: “Spanish, manipulative press” -. Borrell and his speech on October 8, 2017 in Barcelona almost at the end of the constitutional demonstration. I wasn’t there, but I remembered a detail of his intervention. All speakers had given a repetitive and confrontational speech. Borrell, on the other hand, spoke as a European democrat who resolutely demanded respect for the civil rights of all Catalans and their representatives. He warned of the dramatic consequences that could arise if President Puigdemont unilaterally declared independence. And after he uttered his name, there was an obsessive, punitive, devastating cry that was repeated yesterday in all the calls organized by the PP: “Puigdemont, to prison.”
That October 8, unlike Díaz Ayuso that Sunday, Borrell listened. He lifted a hand from the lectern and began to use his finger to say no. It would have been easy to stir up hatred. But first he said no with his finger and then he said it several times. Four or five. “Don’t scream like the crowd in the Roman circus. “Only whoever the judge says will go to prison.” And he continued emphatically: “I ask you to show the utmost respect.” He repeated this sentence. Because in this moment, a real politician knows that his credibility is at stake not as a leader of a movement, but as a model of democratic behavior. Díaz Ayuso, who had accused Sánchez of trampling on the separation of powers, chose not to defend democracy but to reinforce the call that called for the imprisonment of the prime minister for a bill that has not yet been registered in Congress.
Instead of questioning this anti-democratic trend, Alberto Núñez Feijóo questioned the legitimacy of the government that could be formed in the coming days, arguing that the Popular Party received the list with the most votes on July 23. This does not strengthen our institutionality. It cracks. We are at a critical moment. Let’s all show respect.
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