"The Only Truth is Reality"

Why Sánchez commands the centre of Spanish politics and why Luke Stegemann is wrong.

Before I begin, a word about Argentina; Congress is debating Milei’s omnibus law and looks likely to give him a year of near-plenary powers and most of the measures he wants in it. His emergency decree is in trouble in the courts and dozens of injunctions against parts of it have been granted, the Supremes will have their say at some point. There’s also increasing evidence of cooperation between kirchnerismo (you know, those defenders of human rights, feminism and other nice things) and the new administration, “If you let us keep our ill-gotten gains and don’t energise the investigation into the murder of Special Prosecutor Nisman we’ll not make tooooooo much of a fuss about your government” seems to be the gist of it. The big unions have called a general strike for Wednesday, we’ll see how that goes.

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Spanish people struggle with the idea that their country is normal. They tend to think of their politicians as particularly venal, Spain’s territorial tensions as particularly grave and its economy as being perpetually in crisis. Perhaps this explains the tendency of Spain’s media to seek the opinion of “hispanistas” about the country’s woes. Hispanistas are foreign academics, and writers, usually British,  with a special interest in Spain. Professor Paul Preston and the late Sir John Elliot are two of the best-known among them in recent years.