Is Sanchez on to a good thing?

Flickr by PP de Galicia

Young kings will punish

DOLORES DE COSPEDAL, the Partido Popular’s secretary general and president of the Castilla-La Mancha region, recently weighed in against Ciudadanos and Podemos.

De Cospedal, with territory to defend, would hardly spare kind words for the two new political parties poaching PP votes.

But by quoting “The gods send young kings when they want to punish humans,” she tacitly agreed that the PP’s frontman Mariano Rajoy is vulnerable to competition from younger rivals.

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias is no oil painting but he’s young and the ponytail scores points in some quarters. Ciudadanos, doubly disliked by the PP for its Centre orientation, have a good-looker in leader Albert Rivera and the PSOE’s Pedro Sanchez will scoop up votes on looks alone.

De Cospedal was half-right because the gods have sent young kings but they will punish Rajoy, not the populace.

FELIPE GONZALEZ , former president of the Spanish government for nearly 13-and-a-half years, called on the PSOE to support Pedro Sanchez.

Gonzalez admitted he did not vote for Sanchez during the primaries to select the party’s secretary general. He voted for Eduardo Madina, he said, because he knew him but not Sanchez.

And there’s the rub: the party grandees did not know Sanchez either and it rankled that he pipped Susana Diaz, their first choice, at the post.

They and Diaz herself rejected Gonzalez’s advice to cluster round him, preferring to wait until after the elections. They would be wiser to take Felipe’s astute advice now because if Sanchez does well in May he will be unlikely to forget their lack of enthusiasm in April.

Up and away

QUIET, unassuming, outstandingly courageous Pablo Ruz has vacated the Number Five national high court in Madrid.

The judge’s move is routine and in line with Spain’s legal system, but all of the Gurtel corruption network and the politicians mired must rue the day he took over the case. Without wanting to, he has changed Spain forever.

Power-hungry

UPyD, founded by Rosa Diez after she broke from the PSOE in 2007, is crumbling into oblivion.

It failed to secure a seat in the Andalucian parliament last month and is leaching candidates. One of them, Juan Antonio Horrach, prospective head of the party’s Baleares list for May’s local and regional elections resigned because staying “amounted to suicide.”

He was undoubtedly on the way to defeat, but revealed himself as a politician for whom politics are not a way of life, but a matter of life and death.

 

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