In 18th-century Russia, there was someone who knew how to impress the empress. Field Marshal Grigory Potemkin ordered the erection of a series of fake buildings—mostly consisting of a splendid façade—that would provide a magnificent scene along the Dnieper River during Catherine II’s trip to Crimea in 1787. The scene included extras, men who pretended to be peasants benefiting from the development made possible by the government. It is true that historians have come to the conclusion that it was a myth, but it has remained a symbol of the artifices that power constructs to sell a fiction.
This Friday, the Popular Party and Alberto Núñez Feijóo erected their own Potemkin City in Madrid. The audience on this occasion was not the empress or the foreign ambassadors who accompanied her, but public opinion. They chose the Palace of the Dukes of Pastrana, a 19th-century building owned by the ONCE and rented for corporate events. In the absence of Moncloa, Feijóo could pretend to everyone that he was president of something, in this case president of all the regional presidents of the PP.
The aim was to make everyone believe that they all have the same point of view on regional funding. This is not true, but it does not matter. The photos turned out great, that is what it was about. In fact, they were too good if the aim was to give a meeting of senior party officials the solemn character that it lacked. On Twitter, they put on their boots by commenting on the incomparable setting. La Moncloa de Hacendado. The Moncloa toy. La Moncloa from AliExpress. The LegoMoncloa.
Fortunately, nothing came to change the plans, starting with the journalists. There were speeches, but the media were not allowed to ask any questions. Neither to Feijóo nor to the others. For fear that some impertinent person would point out that there was nothing behind the facade.
There were flags, many flags. In the room where the meeting was held, there were those of all the autonomies, not only those chaired by the PP. As they were in protocol order, Feijóo had just behind, in addition to the Spanish, those of Euskadi and Catalonia, whose presidents were obviously not there.
It was not just a matter of decor. The Potemkin touch was also appreciated in later speeches.
Unlike Pedro Sánchez’s government, Feijóo said, those gathered “represent all of Spain.” It is already known that he won the July elections and that he is not president because he does not want to be, but he and his people speak on behalf of the entire country, because they want to be. “We are the only party that represents autonomous Spain,” Isabel Díaz Ayuso said. The others are just accessories.
With such a spectacle, one would think that the party would take the opportunity to propose its regional financing proposal in order to solve all the problems of a model that should have been renewed ten years ago. You have to be very innocent to think that. The conflicting interests of the different communities mean that no one wants to move an inch, for fear of discovering that unity is just a simulation.
This is no surprise. In 2014, the government of Mariano Rajoy made no attempt to promote negotiations with the autonomous communities. It let the issue stagnate for the next four years. Not that Sánchez has done anything since 2018.
The conclave produced a statement of almost 2,500 words in which there is no alternative model, beyond the total rejection of the PSC and Esquerra agreement, the basis of which is to give Catalonia the capacity to collect all taxes. What is new is that they want more money. The PP demands that the government provide 18 billion euros of European funds to the autonomies. For what projects? We do not know. Something is going to happen to them.
Not to finance a network of public daycare centers, for example. The Andalusian government rejected 119 million that were to be dedicated to supporting free public places in education from zero to three years, because it preferred to continue with a concerted model based on agreements with private daycare centers. The Madrid City Council gave up spending 136 million that could have been dedicated to rehabilitating homes and improving their energy insulation. The majority of the autonomous communities governed by the PP preferred not to request 300 million to promote self-consumption of electricity in companies and individuals.
“Are you planning to celebrate your wedding, a corporate event or a convention?” says the website of the company that manages the mansion. The PP thing was like a wedding, so they chose the right place. Those present pledged to stay together until the end and not let death or Sánchez separate them. No falling into “a deceptive bilaterality,” as Feijóo puts it.
It is logical that the party prefers to maintain a common position that otherwise does not exist. But it seems that they do not trust each other much, because Génova has decided to put this commitment in writing.
A few days ago, when Díaz Ayuso probably already knew the agreement that was going to be reached, the Madrid president demanded that the other presidents not agree to meet individually with Sánchez. “This government is going to try to bribe them one by one in La Moncloa,” he said. With her, however intelligent she may be, she would not succeed, but with the others, who knows. He was also aware that some of his colleagues could not afford to be afraid and make it clear to their voters that they were not willing to go to Madrid to defend the interests of their community. Juanma Moreno gave him the answer: “We are going to talk to everyone and of course dialogue with the president of the government.”
In the afternoon, sources from the Madrid government indicated that Ayuso was willing to meet with Sánchez, but without talking about regional funding. Now she is the one who does not want to be left alone in the institutional boycott. It made no sense that he ruined the day when Feijóo presented himself to all Spaniards as president of the Palace of the Dukes of Pastrana. It starts with something.
