Marvel has put out so many superhero and female superhero movies in the last few years, that it needs a constant supply of characters for the casting department. In the most unlikely place one can imagine, the stony mass of the Ministry of Economy, there is a candidate who pushes hard. She could be paired in a movie with Doctor Strange, who seems like a laid-back guy, with whom she could have small talk about interest rates and money supply before dishing out the shit.
The question remained of how he could behave in the scenes of violence unleashed when you have to blow the head off a deranged alien who was not hugged as a child. Nadia Calviño showed Wednesday that if she is given a hammer she knows how to use it.
The Vox spokesman launched one of those usual phrases in parliamentary debates in the control session. They are false but what counts is their rhetorical effect. Exaggeration does not even reach a venial sin in politics. “Since you have come to the Government, I do not know any Spaniard who has prospered.”
How many friends or acquaintances does Iván Espinosa de los Monteros have? Perhaps they all have a lot of money and their existence does not depend on social spending. According to his own confession, they will be the type of people who do not want to pay Social Security to domestic workers. Let the state take care of it. They prefer to enjoy a cheap and submissive workforce, that is, without labor rights.
What the Vox spokesman did not expect is that someone he did not count on would be thrown at him. The question was for the economic vice president, politically raised under the clouds of Brussels, a world where a good Excel table is enjoyed as much as a few beers and a few pinchos. By the time she wanted to realize it, it was already too late. She jumped on him…
The enraged technocrat!!!
“You say that you do not know any Spaniard who benefits from the action of this Government. Well, you have to check your friends,” Calviño responded. Until then, normal. Almost the required answer. Espinosa’s friends, heh, heh. Imagine them. Don’t forget Rocío Monasterio and her plans of lofts Unlicensed. Okay, it’s not that big of a deal either.
From that moment on, Calviño’s eyes lit up and he began to throw fire at his opponent’s seat. Espinosa de los Monteros did not see the twenty-car train coming that was bearing down on him. Nor the socialist deputies. The latter did not mind, because the surprise excited them even more.
“Do you mean that you don’t know anyone who receives the Interprofessional Minimum Wage? That you don’t know any young person who has obtained a permanent job for the first time thanks to the labor reform?” That’s where the applause from the government parties began. Politicians love enumerations. At rallies they work very well, because they are capable of waking up even the most asleep public.
Pedro Sánchez began to laugh. He didn’t smile, he laughed when he saw his vice president crushing Espinosa’s bones.
“That you don’t know anyone who benefits from the scholarships? -Calviño continued, already packed towards the selection of the best highlights of the day – That you don’t know anyone who benefits from investing in education? That you don’t know anyone who benefits from public health, free public transport, aid to the self-employed, ERTES, aid to companies, ICO guarantees, the Minimum Vital Income, the help families with poor children?
Luckily it was the control session and each participant has a maximum time of two and a half minutes. But Calviño still had time to give the Vox deputy one more hammer blow, or what was left of him. Meanwhile, Santiago Abascal outlined a half smile in plan: the one that is falling on us.
“But how can it be, Mr. Espinosa de los Monteros, that you don’t know any real Spaniards?” Calviño concluded. The deputies of the PSOE and United We Can, applauding standing up like crazy. Fade to black in the mind of the Vox spokesman.
If it had been a football game, the team doctor would have jumped onto the field at that moment with a stretcher, a defibrillator and, just in case, a death certificate ready for the signature.
In just over two minutes, Nadia Calviño offered leftist deputies a campaign manual for the 2023 election year, especially with the aim of standing up to the extreme right. It is not necessary to focus on anti-fascism, because we have already seen how little it worked in Italy, and not much better in Madrid or Andalusia. It seems more effective to execute a variation of ‘what have the Romans done for us?’, adapted to the social spending measures approved in the legislature.
“I was moved. It came from my soul,” Calviño said later on La Sexta. Spanish politics has not completely lost its ability to surprise. We now know not only that technocrats have souls, but also that they can develop coherent and effective leftist messages. What will be next? Flying cars?
