Delaying tactics delayed

HAVING lost two general elections, Rajoy wasn’t prepared to set out on a hiding to nothing

AS the most-voted candidate in the December general elections, acting president Mariano Rajoy was invited by the King to form a government as custom demands. 

Rajoy declined, aware that he wouldn’t survive an investiture debate.  Having lost two general elections before his 2011 triumph, he wasn’t prepared to set out on a hiding to nothing.

What Rajoy neither wanted nor expected was the King’s decision to ask Pedro Sanchez, the PSOE candidate, to give it his best shot or for Sanchez to accept.  Political sources hint that discreet pressure was put on the Zarzuela Palace not to do so.

Until now Rajoy’s ‘wait and see and do as little as possible’ strategy has stood him in good stead on the home front. This time he overestimated its value and he definitely underestimated Felipe VI.

Time to say goodbye

ROSA DIEZ resigned from Union, Progreso y Democracia (UPyD) which she co-founded in 2007 after leaving the PSOE in disgust. The party won five seats in the national parliament in 2011, but since then it was downhill all the way until last December when, upstaged by Ciudadanos, UPyD won no seats at all.

Diez has now requested a “dignified end” for the party although sadly everyone else assumed that it had already gone to the great polling station in the sky long ago.

Plus ça change…  

RICHARD FORD was an English gentleman who lived in Sevilla between1830 and 1833. Whilst there he travelled extensively throughout Spain and wrote in great detail about his experiences.  Discussing the bandits and bandoleers supposedly rife on Spanish roads he claimed never to have encountered one. “They are more easily found in government offices and ministries,” he maintained.  That’s something that hasn’t changed, then.

Namesakes

IT is agreed that there are only eight authentically Basque surnames and a recent study by the ex-rector of the Universidad del Pais Vasco claimed that they were “excessively represented” in Basque politics. That’s a bit like complaining that blue sea is product placement for the Partido Popular.