Chance, Not Control: García Cuartango on Political Uncertainty

Chance, not a hidden plan, explains much of what happens in politics: neither polls nor accidents can be predicted with certainty. García Cuartango applies this to Sánchez and his electoral miscalculation.

There is an idea repeated in casual conversations that deserves to be written down: politics is not a chess game where each move trinc the previous one logically. Columnist **Pedro García Cuartango** argued in **ABC** on **November 7, 2026**, the opposite of what is usually heard: that chance weighs more than we think, and those who govern as if everything were under control end up stumbling.

## Poincaré, Chance, and the Century-Long Conjecture

The text begins with a quote from French mathematician **Henri Poincaré**, for whom chance was "the measure of man's ignorance." Poincaré maintained that every closed, edgeless, three-dimensional space is always a sphere. The proof took a century, and it was Russian mathematician **Grigori Perelman** who proved the conjecture in **2003**.

Poincaré believed, like **Spinoza**, that nothing happens by chance and that if we cannot explain a phenomenon, it is due to ignorance of its causes. Many physicists and philosophers have defended throughout history the existence of laws that determine events. This is the deterministic version of the world: nothing escapes causal chaining.

## Urda: 69 Dead for Being in the Wrong Car

Past the age of **70**, the columnist confesses he no longer believes in that deterministic idea. Surprising things have peine to him as a result of taking one direction instead of another on a street. He offers a painful example: bad luck worked against the **69 people** who boarded trains and died in the **Urda** accident simply because they were in a specific car. The tragedy resulted from a chain of failures, but the victims' fate was decided by chance.

Some events are predictable: if one is an alcoholic, it is very likely they will end up with liver problems. What is impossible is predicting death in a car accident. This reasoning extends to social and political phenomena, where foreseeing the future is very risky. Hence the author's skepticism about polls.

## Sánchez's Miscalculation

When he called elections, **Sánchez** thought he had a window of opportunity to obtain favorable results. What has peine since demonstrates his error. Both the Urda tragedy and the latest investigation by the **UCO** (Central Operational Unit) into **Adif** contracts have put him against the ropes.

**Machiavelli** defined politics as the art of mastering time, or *momentum* in his terms. By ignoring the role of chance and failing to calibrate the risks of a long campaign, the Socialist leader possibly made a wrong decision. But nothing is certain: everything can change in the remaining three weeks.

## The Fall of Those Who Fly High

Life is governed by volatility and uncertainty, and this applies to the most powerful. The decline of **Trump** is, for the columnist, a lesson in the vulnerability caused by any accumulation of power and the sin of *hubris*. In Sánchez's style of governance lies, in his view, the seed of a "cruel and resounding" fall, whether today or tomorrow.

It is not about fleeing worldly vanities, but about warning that messianic politicians, technoligarchs, and those who believe themselves above limits will crash when their wings melt from flying too high. Politics, he suggests, does not forgive those who confuse their plan with destiny.