In one of the dialectical combats with Pedro Sánchez, the president of the Senate investigation commission gave the phrase that the Popular Party feared so much: “You are not going to argue with me. Today's protagonist is you.” He didn't know how right he was. The protagonist was Sánchez and he had a great time. He went from accused to accuser so many times that in the end he no longer attracted attention. The PP tried to make him nervous and take him out of the comfortable zone in which a president operates. He only got noise and anger. And that Sánchez debuted glasses in public to see up close with a slightly retro feel.
Eduard Pujol, Junts senator, called him Houdini before interrogating him. He said it in a critical tone, but it almost seemed like praise for what had been seen so far and what was yet to be seen. Sánchez easily escaped the traps that the UPN senator and the Vox senator tried to set for him. They had not loaded him with chains or put him in a trunk secured with ten locks. He fled easily, because those who asked the questions were limited to copying what they had read in headlines, some closer to hoax than reality.
The president was so exhausted that he allowed himself to shoot at his discretion towards the ranks of the Popular Party and especially towards Isabel Díaz Ayuso for the benefits obtained by his brother in his capacity as a commission agent: “What would the PP say if my brother had received a commission for a direct contract from the Community of Madrid in the pandemic. Remember that they did not ask Ayuso for an account but rather Casado, they removed him, and put the friend of the drug trafficker in his place.”
He also got Rajoy a trip: “They haven't given me cash in cigar boxes.” He said this based on the testimony of treasurer Luis Bárcenas. And a few references to the PP's Gürtel as 'jabs' that he used to use in the ring to wear down his rivals.
At least Houdini didn't start dealing swords to the audience when he came out of the trunk.
Its objective was to discredit the investigative commission that the PP set up in the Senate in order for it to act as an echo chamber for all judicial investigations related to Sánchez and the PSOE. Alberto Núñez Feijóo spent a long time doubting whether it was appropriate for him to call Sánchez to testify. Year and a half. He did it in Congress in a way that seemed like an outburst of fury. From that moment on it seemed like an uncertain bet.
PP senator Francisco Bernabé recorded a selfie video when Sánchez entered the room and commented to the camera: “The most anticipated moment of the year.” Parliamentarians who pose as TikTok stars are funny. I thought I was going to watch a trial movie with the prosecutor cornering and destroying the defendant. Or the PP senator shouting like crazy: did you order the red code for the benefit of Ábalos and Cerdán? It soon became clear that Barnabas and his companions were hallucinating.
Everything that has to do with Ábalos, Cerdán and Koldo is a reason for discredit for Sánchez and the PSOE, and that has not changed. On many occasions, the president limited himself to responding with “I don't know”, a response that always leaves everything under an aura of imprecision. In any case, the idea that he was going to incriminate himself because of the pressure in a session that ended up lasting about five hours turned out to be a pipe dream. The PP played the lottery and their number did not come up.
The strategy of the PP interrogator – Senator Alejo Miranda – consisted of creating a fight from the first minute. He asked several questions in a single intervention. When Sánchez began to respond to the first one, and he was going to do so taking his time, Miranda demanded that he focus on the last one and respond with a 'yes' or a 'no'. This is a custom of dirty play that is sometimes seen on television. You ask something and the interviewee will answer as he sees fit. You are not a Gestapo interrogator who has his victim terrified and who will say anything to get them to stop hitting him.
Sánchez had previously defined the commission as “a circus” or a “defamation commission.” With Miranda, it was more hurtful. The senator interrupted him again and again: “Are you ashamed of Koldo, Ábalos and Cerdán? Yes or no?” I was desperately looking for the headline. “There has been a senator who has said that this is an inquisitorial commission with Torquemada. It seems that we already have it,” he responded. It wasn't that big of a deal. At best, Miranda was just an intern at Torquemada's interrogation school.
Miranda was the senior official in the Ayuso Government who directed the construction of the Zendal Hospital, which was said to cost 50 million euros and which ended up involving an investment of 200 million. To neutralize any attack by an underused health center from day one, he presented himself as a person who had become seriously ill with Covid and who had been admitted to an ICU for it. It is unknown what this had to do with the corruption cases being investigated in court.
That first intervention helped to understand it. The bad thing is that it included a bear trap that he fell into, and it's strange that he hadn't noticed it before. His dramatic phrase: “I would like him when he looks at me to remember that while some of us were dying in the ICU, his party colleagues, his Peugeot teammates, were trying to make gold at the expense of the suffering of many people,” Miranda said.
It is a phrase very similar to the one Pablo Casado used in an interview at COPE against Miranda's boss during the pandemic. “The question is whether it is understandable that on April 1, when 700 people died in Spain, you can contract with your sister and receive 286,000 euros of profit for selling masks.” Once Casado was terminated by the braves, the PP has never admitted that Díaz Ayuso's conduct was reprehensible. Obviously, Sánchez also used this phrase. How not to remember her.
So perhaps the PP chose Miranda because she had been through the ICU. The effect wore off very soon. The senator used several of the allegations made by the accused commission agent Víctor Aldama against the PSOE. Not selectively. Miranda threw plates of spaghetti over the wall, hoping that one of them would stick.
Everything fit there. Even some accusations that have been denied by Aldama himself. Miranda recalled the hoax about the 40 suitcases on Delcy Rodríguez's plane (Aldama denied it with the argument that so much weight would have prevented the plane from taking off). He also referred to “the St. Petersburg meeting” to suggest that Begoña Gómez was involved in the negotiation over the rescue of Air Europa. Aldama denied that this meeting was relevant. It was just a relaxed moment for some Spaniards attending the UNWTO Assembly at the rooftop bar of a Russian hotel, he said.
In the middle of a mud fight, Miranda ended up landing in one of the usual memes in the PP. “Is Venezuela a dictatorship? Yes or no?” The commission had ended up becoming a caricature of the parliamentary duels that have been recurring for years. It was not “the most anticipated moment of the year” that Senator Barnabas spoke of.
A few days earlier in Congress, Feijóo had sold the bear's skin before hunting it and had spent all the money on a party. Sánchez was sunk regardless of what he said: “If he lies he will go to court, and if he tells the truth, too.” Another mistake by the right in thinking that the president is more dead than alive. Then they see him get up so fat and they can't believe it. What happened was that Sánchez returned home smiling. They had not managed to intimidate him or force him to say anything he did not want to say. In the scorched earth strategy to which the PP is accustomed, it was the party's senators who ended up singed and with their faces stained by smoke.