There are mafias and mafias | Opinion
« At the end of the month the situation is disappointed, » Carlos Solchaga scored in his newspapers on April 30, 1994. « Felipe González seems to be knocked out. » Solchaga, a key figure of felipism as Minister of Economy, was a parliamentary spokesman in a critical situation. As the historian writes Charles Powell in his essay Spain in democracy, That was the legislature of the tension: the political initiative of a minority government was permanently buried by « the almost uninterrupted outbreak of scandals of diverse nature and gravity. »
In the first entrance of his dietary of that April of Vía Crucis, which can be read in the splendid Things as they areSolchaga referred to a conference pronounced by the journalist Pedro J. Ramírez – for then director of The world – in the Universities of Princeton and Columbia. It is reproduced in David against Goliath. « The history of Spain of the second half of the twentieth century cannot be limited to the replacement of Franco by felipism, two regimes of very different legitimacy but equally personalists. » Two days after dictating it, his newspaper published a certain and scandalous information that Ramírez had taken in the suitcase with which he traveled to the United States: the governor of the Bank of Spain had 130 million pesetas of black money. It was much less the only scandal that was running the Executive. The dismissed Luis Roldán had not only made a murky and huge embezzlement, but there was a report that allegedly demonstrated payments of the Government’s vice presidency to the corrupt former director of the Civil Guard, and the press had to detonate it. Vice President Narcís Serra, the head of the Gabinet of the President of the Government and the head of the CESID, according to The chief of spiesgathered in the Moncloa to calibrate the dimension of that new crisis, one more of those that were exploding with the perfection of a precision bomb. « This responds to a political maneuver of destabilization, » said journalist Luis María Ansón to Serra, according to the notes of Emilio Alonso Manglano. In mid -April, Solchaga was able to talk a moment with González. « He has confessed to me if he was not the one who had to resign. » « If the president of the Government has to resign, which is resolved, » said prosecutor Baltasar Garzón.
After a few days, the debate on the state of the nation was celebrated. The opposition leader pronounced a phrase that would become A classic of parliamentary rhetoric: « Go, Mr. González! » Five days later, Ramírez spared the praise: José María Aznar had reaped « the greatest success of her parliamentary life with what was ultimately the discourse of frustration and exasperation. » It only was missing that the day he had to appear before the judge, Luis Roldán disappeared. « He vanished, » says Solchaga in his dietary on April 29. The day later he wrote in his dietary that the political situation was disappointed and described what the state of the media opposition to the government was: « They are delighted and triggered, resorting to defamation and personal insult now that they do not need to do so because they have in their hands authentic scandals. »
More than 30 years ago and, for lto hysteria used by the various oppositions From the previous legislature, it might seem now. But are we really in a situation as scandalous as that? It seems difficult not to agree that today the presidency of the Government is undergoing a loss of authority that demonstrates the difficulty of giving convincing explanations to cases of an unfortunate shabby and that the reactions are being disappointing. But, to be honest, let’s recognize that there are still mafias and mafias.
