Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is attempting to recover in six months all the time he has wasted during the three years of his term in office. The agonizing crisis of his Administration has served to remind everyone in Spain that, in spite of all his failures, for the moment he still is the head of the Executive branch – and it also serves, incidentally, as a warning for his party not to forget that he continues being the ringmaster.

 

Besides, Zapatero has no compunction about using the Treasury’s money – as he did in the State of the Nation debate with his improvised offer to pay families 2.500 euros for every child born in Spain – in an attempt to cover up his errors with Spanish taxpayers footing the bill. The problem is not that it might be too late to salvage this failed term, but the worst is that the current occupant of the presidential complex, known as the Moncloa Palace, is already running against time.

 

Zapatero based his entire political project on three great challenges. The first one was a negotiation with the Basque terrorist organization ETA that would allow him to take political advantage of the group’s weakness. This botched process has become a spectacular failure because the price exacted by the terrorists was beyond Zapatero’s means to pay. The process has only served to strengthen the terrorists’ hand: in their moment of extreme weakness, ETA has been able to open political negotiations with state representatives, the Zapatero Administration has made important concessions to the terrorists, and ETA has also taken advantage of the created goodwill policy to rebuild their battered criminal organization.

 

In spite of his failure, Zapatero might possibly try to go back to the negotiating table with the ETA terrorists at some point in the future, but the Prime Minister also knows that this avenue is suicidal for his own political party’s interests right before the elections. Zapatero’s strategy for what’s left of his term in office is that we simply become unable to recall his colossal failure negotiating with the terrorists, and that no one speaks about ETA, even though terrorism is back in the polls as the number one problem worrying Spanish citizens.

 

The second one was a territorial reform of the country to meet the needs of his independentist partners in government. The reform, whose flagship feature was the plan known as the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, has also been taken up by other autonomous regions of the country, generating an increasing conflict among them; it has also weakened the power of the state to dangerous levels, and in turn all this has generated growing disaffection among citizens, one important reason for low voter turnout in the referendums held in Catalonia and Andalusia. Not even Zapatero was able to fulfill the demands of his most radical parliamentary partners, which is why they left the government and now are demanding in the most imperative of ways the independence of their territories. And all of this is happening now at the same time that the nation awaits the ruling of the Spanish Constitutional Court that could largely demolish a building constructed outside the constitutional lot. 

 

The third one has been a policy to isolate and annihilate politically Spain’s main opposition party, the Popular Party (PP), by discrediting it as a democratic alternative. In order to attain this objective, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) had no qualms about destroying all the previous constitutional agreements with the PP, keeping the party out of all the big issues, from terrorism to territorial reform to education. The PSOE has engaged in a process of historical revisionism – an attempt to break away in a decisive manner from the spirit of reconciliation born during Spain's transition to democracy – in order to discredit the political adversaries and instigating a radical confrontation among Spaniards. A policy that started with an agreement known as the Tinell Pact, which prohibits all of the political forces in Spain that are in partnership with the Zapatero Administration to reach any kind of agreement on any issue with the Popular Party – and whose continued objective throughout Zapatero’s term has been the exclusion from political life of the millions of Spaniards that voted for the Popular Party.

 

Without question, too many mistakes have been made by the Zapatero Administration as to be able to recuperate in just six months – until the next round of elections – all the time it wasted. But here, the real problem is that, as a matter of fact, time is running against Zapatero’s own political interests. Thus, in spite of all the head of the Executive’s efforts to avoid talking about the ETA negotiations, the latest polls show that terrorism is an increasing worry among citizens.

 

Not before long, we might be able to see the parliamentary weakness of this Administration when the budget debate takes place; the PSOE could be in the minority this time around if the people of CiU (Convergence and Union Party) do not allow Zapatero to deceive them one more time. The territorial reform is pending upon a messy heap of appeals lodged with the Constitutional Court. The anti-PP front is cracking due to the growing disenchantment inside the pro-government forces as well as for the good level of communication reached by Mariano Rajoy, current leader of the Popular Party, with moderate nationalists. Even the macroeconomic figures that the Administration promotes so triumphally clash with the crude reality families have to face – higher mortgage rates and consumption costs that make them struggle to make ends meet.

 

In the coming months, the Socialist Administration will try to replace Zapatero’s failed agenda with a series of initiatives looking to obtain political support by using the taxpayer’s money. But the most interesting part will be to know the alternatives proposed by the Popular Party in its electoral program, something that will mark a stark contrast with the government’s failed proposals, improvised and often-counterproductive measures that we will undoubtedly see from now on until Election Day. It is already too late to salvage success in what’s left of Zapatero’s term in office, a term that has shown that all of the Prime Minister’s main proposals were nothing but a house of cards.

 

©2007 Translated by Miryam Lindberg 

 

Ignacio Cosidó is a member of the conservative Popular Party (PP) and senator for the city of Palencia. He is also a founding member of the Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group (GEES).