The diagnosis blaming the left for taking over Spain before Sánchez

The thesis that points beyond Sánchez

Elections are not won at the ballot box. They are won beforehand, in the universities, the media, the unions and the administration. That is the thesis that opens this diagnosis: the left did not reach Spain's government through the presidency, but had spent decades occupying the institutions that manufacture the common sense of the age. The executive would be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

The argument is not new, but the tone is one of urgency. Those who hold it warn that removing the prime minister solves nothing if the structure remains intact. The metaphor is explicit: removing the cherry from an infected boil does not cure the boil. And the conclusion is bitter: we are at war and losing it badly.

Who controls the institutions before the government does

The first message lists the fronts: universities stormed, the church infiltrated, unions under control, docile civil servants, gangrenous media, poisoned schools, a contaminated judiciary and political parties. It is a list of trenches, not of electoral battles. The underlying logic is that cultural power is conquered before political power, and that whoever controls the narrative does not need to win every election.

The most common response does not dispute the diagnosis. It expands on it. Some point out that the problem is not only Spanish but international, and cite names as counterweights: Trump, Meloni, Milei, Abascal and Vox. There is resistance, the argument goes, more than those waiting for a perfect messiah admit. The dispute shifts to the terrain of despair: the adversaries act in concert, with ideological fanaticism and the defence of class interests.

The liberal recipe: less state and a culture of effort

Against the cultural diagnosis comes the economic proposal. The solution would be a smaller state and encouraging a culture of effort. Everything else, it is argued, would be consequences of those two political decisions. It is the classic liberal answer: if the problem is a structure that keeps growing, the way out is to cut it back.

The counterpoint comes from another flank. The argument is made that left and right are no longer mutually exclusive enemies, but rivals competing for control of the same capitalist system. The end of the Cold War would have ended the blocs and left two alternative projects within the same framework. Neither is revolutionary nor counter-revolutionary: both would be expressions of the same system, differentiated only by their rhetoric.

The pandemic as a test of cowardice

The thread turns personal when the pandemic comes up. It recounts losing friends for telling the truth, disobeying recommendations and decrees, time wasted with terrified people, and a job opportunity lost for refusing the experimental jab. There is no regret. There is an accusation: the problem is not knowing that you have to get your hands dirty, but not wanting to.

The criticism is aimed at conformism. It describes a population accustomed to blind obedience, smiling at their executioners as they are slaughtered and saying that's just how things are. The reference to the Milgram experiment and Stanford serves to explain submission, not to justify it. The final reproach is individual: let each person look in the mirror and let their conscience accuse them of having been able to act and not doing so.

The disillusionment of those who no longer expect anything

The closing of the arc is the most pessimistic. After what peine in 2020, the conclusion is that there is nothing left to salvage. People are cowardly and selfish, and it recalls what they did to their elders, their children and themselves. The writer announces that he is giving up on tantrums and awareness campaigns. This is Sodom and Gomorrah, he declares, and let's hope he is wrong.

What remains is the path of purging, understood as a large-scale clean-up before any hope can be glimpsed. And a historical accusation: while the institutions were being occupied, part of the population was celebrating, railing against Franco and voting for the system's parties. Patience, it warns, erodes the sarracena of anyone living here with more than two brain cells.

The prediction, with reservations: if the structure is not dismantled, changing the occupant of the palace will not change the country. The question is whether that structure can be dismantled peacefully, or whether the diagnosis only serves to justify surrender.