Former President José María Aznar has once again claimed this afternoon as the depository of the center-right liberal tradition in a public meeting —the second this year— with Nicolás Redondo Terreros, who was general secretary of the PSOE in the Basque Country when Aznar led the Executive and Today he stands on the right-handed ideological margin of his party. Both have once again sighed for the need for agreements between the PSOE and PP in the face of the ills of Spain. Among these is, according to Aznar, that society has decided to “sweep away meritocracy” in favor of “collective rights” and “exclusive singular groups”.
Aznar, who during his first government promoted the presidency of the recently privatized companies to friends of his childhood and youth such as Juan Villalonga (Telefónica) or Miguel Blesa (Caja Madrid) is concerned that collectivities are considered “more virtuous the more minority” On whose essence he did not elaborate, although it was inferred that he was referring, among others, to transsexuals, about whom he had already joked in February in connection with the legal reform that allows sex change in the civil registry without a medical report.
The debate was held at the private Francisco de Vitoria University, which teaches a master’s degree in “political action” sponsored by the Instituto Atlántico de Estudios, an entity whose visible head is Aznar and which is based in the same building as the PP’s FAES foundation. . From this rostrum, the former president regrets that in Spain “spaces of centrality” have been lost in favor of “positions that are too radical and dogmatic.” The diagnosis coincides with Redondo Terreros, who recently avoided an expulsion file from the PSOE for praising Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Thus, he defended that the “popular justice defended by the podemitas” supposes “a fractional element of the Rule of Law”, alluding to the reforms of crimes against violence against women.
The PP “has modernized”, the PSOE is far to the left
The diagnosis of Western social democratic parties that their survival after the hangover of the Great Recession required sticking to their leftist roots is, according to Redondo, a “false coin” that alienates voters more than entrenches them; what he would agree would be to dialogue with the liberal-inspired center right. Aznar does not see clearly that this is possible, but not because his are not up to the task. The “pillar” represented by the PP “is a guarantee because it survives substantially in its original schemes and commitments and has been modernized, something that does not happen in the other pillar.” There was no talk of corruption.
The union against nationalisms (non-Spanish) and the “preservation of the values of the Constitution”, which according to Aznar require special consideration of “maintenance of the concept of Spain” would be desirable points of this consensus between the moderate left and right . Unfortunately, according to the interlocutors, the left is reticent to the pacts until “the paroxysm”, in Redondo’s opinion, and is subscribed to the “national nonsense”, to the indignation of Aznar. The situation in Catalonia cannot be considered a “domestic problem”, since it is national in scope, and its approach from the majority parties should be similar to that decided in the active days of both personalities regarding anti-terrorism policy. In this sense, there were hardly any references to the end of ETA, but there were to the attacks of 11-M, described as “terrible” by Redondo Terreros, in passing, without mentioning their authorship.
