From Madrid a lesson that complicates the games in Rome – Corriere.it

The “Spanish syndrome” is a sort of mirror of the Italian contradictions. And in reading the results of the vote in Spain by the parties, there is a temptation to turn them in their favor rather than to analyze them. With a certain courage and coherence, Giorgia Meloni called the great loser, the head of the ultra-right of Vox, Santiago Abascal, to offer him solidarity. On the other hand, she had exposed herself in supporting him, sure as many that the right would have overwhelmed the socialist government; and formed an alliance between Vox and Popolari who have received the most support.

The backlash is paradoxical: both in terms of the identity and coalitions that FdI is trying to build in Europe, still in the balance, and in terms of the reactions of its allies, even before their opponents. The project of a center-right axis in the future institutions of Brussels appears more problematic since yesterday. A training like FI, fighting for survival, clings to the victory of the EPP to mark the centrality of the moderate forces: a way to claim one’s role with respect to the winning right of Meloni, and of the Northern League Matteo Salvini. The latter’s reaction, however, appears even more interested. Forgetting the collapse of Vox, Salvini uses the Spanish result to criticize the premier and Berlusconi. Attack their “no” to an agreement with right-wing extremism in Strasbourg: in particular with that of the French Marine Le Pen and with the German AfD, which belong to the same group as Salvini. “Whoever puts vetoes,” warns the Northern League leader, “doesn’t work for a common house of the entire center-right.” To be more explicit: “In the perspective of 2024 we do not need vetoes but a center-right capable of keeping the left out”. Salvini does not see or does not want to see that the socialist estate was favored precisely by the electorate’s fear of seeing a coalition conditioned by the ultra-right govern; that the key to a result that leaves Spain divided in two and without a clear majority also and perhaps above all reflects a rejection of extremism. But this reading ends up calling into question the same oppositions in Italy, however.

The secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein underlines that “the black wave can be stopped”. The problem is with which left. The embrace of outgoing premier Pedro Sanchez measures not the similarity but the differences between Spanish socialism and a Pd and a M5S prone to radicalism; and by the admission of some of his own exponents. For this reason, the unscrupulous approach to the Spanish reality ends up re-proposing, intact, an “Italian syndrome” characterized by ambiguity that next year’s European vote is intended to underline, not hide.

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