They called this Tuesday’s appearance in the European Parliament Super Tuesday. He “hearing of the Comissioner designate Teresa Ribera”, indicated the posters distributed throughout the corridors of the Brussels building, with a photo of: executive vice president for a Clean, Fair and Competitive Transition and Commissioner for Competition and Green Transition. Let’s see which business card can withstand all this.
Before his intervention, which lasted three hours and in which he alternated between English and Spanish, they had warned us that the atmosphere was tense, that polarization and noise, what Brussels seemed immune to, is no longer. That the result, much more complex. That here strategy, pacts and interests also matter, as in any reality show worth it.
“Here they are more concerned about [Donald] Trump that for [Carlos] Mazón”, they told us from the European Parliament team. “How many questions are there going to be about Dana and how many about Trump, the electric car or China?” they added. In short, more Google than the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation. And it may ring true, that what is happening in the European capital has a different story, that there is concern about decarbonization, water resilience, a European industrial pact and the goal of net zero emissions by 2050. But on the other side of the ocean, Whoever has won the elections shouts “drill, baby, drill” and has very little interest in knowing whether or not the glass goes in a yellow garbage bag.
Around two in the afternoon, at the door of the Ginette restaurant, where Rocío Monasterio was eating at one of the tables, someone from Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s communications team said that not with (this) Ribera. That it cannot be agreed to include in Ursula von der Leyen’s Government a person whose management “may have criminal implications in the management of the dana.”
And after some chaos and a lot of confusion, some of the journalists who traveled from Madrid wondered why they had come to Brussels if things looked the same as in the San Jerónimo race. Until in one of the Parliament’s meeting rooms – all minimalist, walkways, huge windows, carpet with infinite possibilities of mites, not very sustainable -, another member of the European Parliament team turned to Enalapril, a medication prescribed to lower blood pressure. arterial. “I would be very surprised if it didn’t happen. It would give a terrible image of Europe, facing a Trump who has not yet taken office, but who is already making appointments,” he said.
And everything seemed like a super afternoon on a Super Tuesday until they appeared, surrounded by their teams, the popular Dolors Montserrat, the socialist Javier López and the Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé, to tell us A reason for hope that these three acronyms share oxygen in the same way. room. The tone started out somewhat institutional, solemn, but the seams of what happened next quickly became apparent. A Dolors Montserrat who immediately made it clear that the order of the interventions in the meeting went “from more to less [representación parlamentaria]like the hearing”, making it clear that he does not like the proposed candidate and it seems like a minor matter to him. He pulled name-dropping The president of the European Commission already called her “Ursula.” Phenomenal. De Ribera says that he has a curriculum that includes “the criminalization of the primary sector,” and a vision of things full of “ideological sectarianism.” A tone that he later transferred to his speech, although this time with glasses.
Javier López, with a certain gesture of boredom, compared the appearance to “a game of ping-pong” and to “Factor X” and visually with an “exam.” So that they later say that in Brussels language is a thing for technocrats. And Buxadé arrived, who was eager to speak because he made it clear that the objective of his table companions – and, therefore, of his parties – was to “look good”; when he and his formation have been very clear, for a long time, against Ribera. Hence, he considered that giving his vote to Ribera makes them “accomplices of the criminal Government.” He also transferred that tone to the appearance. Lots of laughter when he said that all this smells like nonsense to him, and that it is “tonight, pero tomorrow we’ll see”.
It was an appearance in which Ribera heard people ask questions very loudly, where the presidents of the commissions ordered silence and asked for respect when he played, where attacks on the countryside were talked about, denialist messages regarding climate change were launched and people heard the name of José Luis Ábalos. The smell of Madrid reached Brussels. We’ll see.
