The Gospel According to Pedro

It was Moses who descended from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the law, not Saint Peter who wrote them. The first received the commandments; the second guarded the keys to the Kingdom. But in Spanish politics revelations do not require theological precision, only discipline of faith. It is enough for someone to claim possession of the keys. And here too it is Pedro who holds them. Spain is not merely living through a tense legislature. It is witnessing the consolidation of a doctrine. Sanchism has ceased to be a tactic and has become a catechism. It does not merely govern: it interprets. It does not administer: it moralizes. And like any coherent system of belief, it requires guiding principles. Commandments.

Pedro’s first commandment might be formulated as follows: “Thou shalt love power above all things.” Not as a tool, but as an end in itself. Power is no longer a means to implement a program; the program is reconfigured in order to sustain power. Convictions may evolve, alliances may mutate, promises may be reinterpreted. The only immutable element is permanence. “Thou shalt not take thy word as a permanent bond.” Thus the second would be proclaimed, always without embarrassment. The archives are comparative literature, not sacred scripture. What yesterday was unacceptable today becomes indispensable. In this gospel, coherence does not consist in sustaining what was said, but in sustaining the majority. The third elevates method to a theological category: “Thou shalt sanctify the narrative.” Before the facts was the narrative. And the narrative was with Pedro. Reality is not denied; it is framed. If a fact proves inconvenient, it is contextualized. If the context proves troubling, it is redefined. Governing consists, above all, in deciding how events must be understood. The fourth, inseparable from the previous one, proclaims: “Thou shalt honor thy partners, even when they deny what thou art.” Parliamentary arithmetic is the new Trinity. Ideological distance and incompatible visions of the country do not matter. The sum does. Geometry replaces philosophy. And as long as the scoreboard reads 176, every pact is virtuous.

The Past as a Strategic Resource

“Thou shalt never resign.” The fifth commandment is perhaps the most transparent. Resignation implies a limit, and limits are heresy. Every crisis becomes a test of endurance; every attack a confirmation of destiny. To step back would be to admit fallibility. And fallibility does not belong to the creed. The sixth introduces the moral dimension of the adversary: “Thou shalt turn every criticism into persecution.” There is no legitimate disagreement, only conspiracy. There is no institutional oversight, only lawfare. The adversary does not err; he threatens. Thus pluralism is reduced to a duel between the enlightened and the reactionary, between progress and darkness. The seventh celebrates the liturgy of the apparatus: “Thou shalt multiply ministries and decrees.” Institutional expansion is a sign of action. More structures, more announcements, more regulatory frameworks. Like the loaves and fishes, the state is distributed among the faithful and the allies. Where there is an office, there is loyalty; where there is a decree, there is narrative. “Thou shalt rewrite memory whenever convenient.” Pedro’s eighth commandment revises the past without hesitation: to make pacts with those who were unacceptable yesterday becomes historical responsibility. To pardon what was previously condemned becomes coexistence. The past is no fixed reference; it is a strategic resource. The ninth introduces modern indulgence: “Thou shalt pardon in order to save the legislature.” Amnesty ceases to be an exception and becomes a tool. The point is not to close wounds but to secure majorities. Justice enters the parliamentary equation. Redemption is political. And the tenth, the most revealing, synthesizes them all: “Upon this stone thou shalt build thy permanence.” Not the party. Not the country. Permanence. The project does not transcend the leader; the leader absorbs the project. The organization adapts to his figure, not the other way around.

The Sacralization of Power

Enough of irony. The phenomenon deserves something more than sarcasm. Politics has always been negotiation, calculation, and adaptation. What is new is not flexibility but the sacralization of power. When every decision is presented as morally superior, when every turn is wrapped in historical inevitability, politics ceases to be imperfect management and becomes revealed doctrine. Faith has one advantage: it requires no empirical demonstration. It is enough to believe. And Sanchism has managed to make every contradiction appear as evolution, every concession interpreted as boldness, every institutional tension presented as courageous reform. Everything fits within the same framework, because the framework does not allow revision. But a democracy is not a church. It is not organized around the infallibility of a leader but around constant debate over his decisions. When politics becomes creed, the adversary ceases to be necessary and becomes suspect. And when dissent is treated as heresy, criticism ceases to improve the system: it begins to threaten it. Saint Peter guarded, according to tradition, the keys to heaven. This Pedro administers other keys: those of the narrative that absolves, those of the pardon that reconstructs parliamentary majorities, those of parliamentary survival. He does not open celestial gates; he keeps closed the doors of retreat.

The Gospel according to Pedro is not troubling because it contains commandments—the biblical Gospel does not enumerate them, while Exodus does—it is troubling because it admits no alternative tablets. Because it turns politics—which should be imperfect and temporary deliberation—into revealed and permanent truth. The tablets of stone were, at least, visible. They could be broken. Political commandments, by contrast, are written in the air and survive only as long as no one dares to question them aloud.