PP and PSOE trade corruption scandals in political clash

Gürtel, Púnica, Lezo and Angrois: The legacy the PP cannot erase

Is the PP from Génova street worse than Sánchez's government at Moncloa? This question has haunted every election for a decade and returns with force. The starting point is a simple thesis: the sum of PP corruption and incompetence cases, whether alone or with Vox, places it below the current government. The response from the other side does not dispute the list. It expands it.

Gürtel, Púnica, Lezo, Yakolev 42, Prestige, Angrois and Ayuso's penthouse form a catalog that the right prefers not to review publicly. Added to this are names associated with disaster in collective memory: the Prestige management, the Angrois accident, and contract schemes affecting regions and municipalities. The most repeated defense is temporal: that was twenty years ago, the PP of then is not the PP of now.

"You too" as method and problem

The conversation gets stuck in the exchange of lists. Some bring up the Koldo case, the mediator scheme, Begoña Gómez's name; others respond with GAL, Filesa, reserved funds, Andalusia's EREs, Invercaria, or training courses. The result is a wall of acronyms where no one wins. "You too" has become the only available argument and that, let us admit, says little about everyone.

Some point out that the Gürtel-era PP retained four million votes and that the left has not yet applied the same punishment to its own politicians. That is perhaps the most uncomfortable data point in the exchange: the comparison between what voters forgave then and what they forgive now.

Deaths as a unit of measurement

One of the roughest turns comes when victims are compared. It is argued that the cited cases involve fewer deaths than two train accidents in less than a year, and that this tally should include the DANA storm, the blackout, and elbichito deaths during the March 8th management. The figure is not disputed: it is used as a sarracena benchmark. Counting deaths to decide who to vote for is the kind of calculation that explains why this country has had the same conversation for a decade.

And the alternative? Vox, abstention, or nothing

The question that closes the circle is the simplest: if they are all the same, who do you vote for? Answers range from Vox to abstention, including holding your nose while voting strategically. There is no decent political party, summarizes one intervention, and that phrase serves as an epitaph for any electoral debate.

Meanwhile, the machinery continues. Some wait for the left to punish its politicians as the right punished theirs. Others trust that wear and tear will do the work. And the rest, the silent majority who write nowhere, look at the list of acronyms and decide they will vote when the time comes. If they vote at all.