What I Want for Christmas

Christmas has arrived early: the festive lights have been switched on. Cities compete to see who can light up first; in this, there is indeed political will. However, when it comes to matters directly affecting citizens' welfare, such as housing, protection of private property, healthcare, and justice, there is less urgency and competition to manage well. Christmas and its lights are the only things that unite agnostic, atheist, and religious politicians.

Christmas prompts us to make wishes: some will come true, others will take time, and some will remain utopian. This is a political opinion piece, but I can also express wishes. My wish is for early general elections. Why? Because we have been deceived, and the country's dignity has been dragged down: first by seeking the support of ETA's party for the no-confidence motion in May 2018; then by negotiating with ERC in prison for the 2019 budget support. That image of Pablo Iglesias, accompanied by Jaume Asens and Lucía Martín, walking through the prison yard of Lledoners... A vast majority of Spaniards thought that image was the worst thing that could happen to a country like Spain: negotiating its stability in a prison. But we were wrong: there would be more, and more humiliating.

The elections of July 23, 2023, revealed a leader who lied to all Spaniards, whether we voted for his party or not. He lied because, to gain power, he broke all his promises: those made to his followers, his party, and those that were unbreakable agreements between the two major parties, PP and PSOE. And it doesn't end here: with lies, concessions against the majority, favouring inequalities between autonomous communities by differentiating them by political sign (as seen in Valencia and how aid was used to harm the regional government). We will always remember the phrase "if they need help, let them ask for it," while people died and works remained unfinished.

We must remember another disgrace: the visit of Yolanda Díaz, Vice President and Minister of Labour, to the fugitive in Belgium, residing in Waterloo. Regarding Yolanda Díaz, aside from her allegiance to PSOE, there is consensus on her clumsiness. But there's more. Levels of poverty, youth unemployment, lack of housing, wages that don't cover the month's end, a voracious tax system, inadvisable internal and external partners, and decisions contrary to the group you belong to, and senseless confrontations. Macroeconomics is booming, that's true, but the day-to-day microeconomics is not. The IX FOESSA Report on exclusion and social development in Spain by Cáritas is damning for this Government: in 1994, the Spanish middle class represented 58%, and in 2024, 43%. The social exclusion rate in 1994 was 16.5%, and in 2024, 19.3%. Severe exclusion: 2007, 6.3%; 2024, 8.8%. A country with a booming macroeconomy that ignores its citizens, all with a Government that claims to be left-wing.

But we continue, not with economic data, but with judicial data. Because corruption, no matter how much the "sanchismo"—this left-wing Government—wants to divert attention, is rampant from its closest collaborators to the President's own family: his wife, his brother, his two former Organisation Secretaries, advisors... it never ends. The Attorney General has been convicted. I will not delve into legal debates or discuss circumstantial evidence or legal hermeneutics because I am not a specialist. I will say that when I read that the Attorney General had been convicted, after all we've endured with corruption cases, an image came to mind: the demolition of a building with explosives. If one watches videos of building demolitions, we often see that the electrical impulse for the detonation of charges reaches one first, and one or two seconds later, the rest, and the building collapses. Here, with that conviction and the history behind it, I humbly believe the current Government is on the brink of collapse; but until it falls, we will still see it standing, albeit with a security cordon to keep us at a distance.

My Christmas wish: for fresh air to enter this country; for friendships to be rekindled; for private property to be respected; for microeconomics to rise so that a worker can sustain themselves with their salary, for healthcare to improve and our professionals to be recognised, for poverty to decrease, for the middle class to rise again, for justice to have the same system as the tax office, for the tax office not to be so insatiable, and for governance to be for the citizens and not for the party.