Spain, as a society organized into a State, is experiencing a delicate moment.
The 1978 Constitution represented a pact of coexistence to try to successfully channel the main problems that had conditioned Spanish history for too long. These were not exceptional problems, different from those that other Western countries have had to face: protection of public freedoms, correction of the most lacerating social inequalities, recognition of territorial plurality, secularism of the State, containment of military power... to make peaceful coexistence possible.
Some of these commitments, and the values that supported them, have suffered very intense attacks in recent years. The economic crisis has served as an alibi for many of these attacks.
Although establishing comparisons is not very useful, the validity of the Spanish Constitution, and the pact of coexistence it represents, has not only been attacked by the independence challenge. It was also attacked by the principle of the Social State, which was the express reform of Article 135.
The PP's "arguments" in its counter-offensive these days are also attacking it: aggressively invoking the interests of Spain to delegitimize a key instrument of our political system, such as the Motion of Censure against the Government of a Party that, according to the ruling, almost since its refoundation, has sheltered a sewer of irregularities around its finances, produces serious damage to the constitutional order that they presume to defend.
The Gurtel Case ruling has served as a trigger; but the factors of deterioration have been there for some time: decline of the Social State/increase in inequalities, deterioration of freedoms, questioning of the unity of Spain, impression of rampant corruption...
The response of the political parties was quite predictable:
Ciudadanos cannot continue to support the PP until it manages to monopolize its political space; nor can it allow the PSOE, the second political force in the Cortes but the third in the polls, to take advantage of a new stay in the Government to try to turn the polls around. It must maintain its discourse on the unity of Spain with the greatest radicalism, therefore, and prevent the other leg of its message, the regenerationist one, from deteriorating if they support the PP by action or omission.
The tactic of refusing to support the Motion, and then predicting that "it is very difficult for them to think that a president of the government elected with the votes of those who want to break Spain", is a trick as childish as it is typical of the oldest politics.
PSOE could not not do what it is doing: take the initiative, as the main opposition group, avoid an immediate call for elections that do not suit it, put Ciudadanos in a bind and, above all, try to seize the opportunity to recompose its bad electoral prospects from power.
The position of Podemos/IU, whose emergence has visibly lost momentum, is the least risky. It doesn't have much to gain or lose here and now.
I won't even talk about Coalición Canaria. As always, the most predictable: they will try anything, or the opposite, that they think will perpetuate them in power. Forgetting their "sovereignist" and pro-Free Associated State leanings, the Barcelona Declaration and their electoral alliances with the PNV and CiU, they are trying to stammer a "Spanish" discourse to prevent Ciudadanos from snatching the electorate that they have vampirized from the PP in so many regional and municipal elections. And, by the way, to further secure the PP's support in these parts. And let's see if, in addition, they manage to get them to unblock the reform of the Canary Islands electoral system in Congress in exchange. Because Coalición Canaria has the same problem with the State institutions as the PP has with the nationalists: they are only valid when they bless their interests.
Nueva Canarias's stance, announcing its support for the Motion of Censure, was, in my opinion, a foregone conclusion. Because they don't depend on the PP anywhere and that, in the current scenario, makes them free.
Although the reactions of the PP and Ciudadanos against Pedro Sánchez are sown with reactionary ticks, both the PSOE's and Ciudadanos's underlying positions are perfectly legitimate. Partisan, but legitimate. As partisan as they are incompatible.
Ciudadanos's No to Pedro Sánchez, if it ultimately results in the continuity of the PP, will not be free.
A success of the Motion of Censure would probably place the PSOE at the head of an impracticable single-color government, with unpredictable political and electoral consequences.
Since in the current circumstances one cannot choose between the bad and the good, but between problematic solutions, I believe --discarding the continuity of the PP, almost impossible to defend with criteria comparable in democratic societies-- that the orientation criterion should be the one that best reflects the democratic principle. And, in the current circumstances, that criterion leads us to call elections now.
It's not the one I like the most, because I prefer a government with a progressive orientation. And I believe that the PSOE has the resources, even from a minority government, to take some measures that cannot be postponed. But it is the one that is appropriate.
By Santiago Pérez