On the occasion of Book Day, Demócrata proposes a journey through nine works to better know and understand Spanish politics from within: the parliamentary machinery, the balances of power, the protagonists and also the unwritten codes that govern life in Congress and around it. From the chronicles of the Transition to the most recent accounts of the new politics.
With nostalgia
Parliamentary Notes, Víctor Márquez Reviriego. During the constituent legislature, the historic chronicler published weekly in Triunfo a portrait of parliamentary life with a sharp and ironic gaze. Gestures, anecdotes, and routines, full of contemporary references that transport the reader to the mid-seventies when everything was yet to be premiered. From the description of the voting system as a "parliamentary kamasutra," to a fiction about what happened at Ramón Tamames's house when the professor had a whim. Reading it today allows us to see that everything is already in the session records, that the debates are cyclical, and that we are always facing the "most serious crisis."
Living Memory of the Transition, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo. In this autobiographical work, the former president recalls his time in the governments of Adolfo Suárez and his own presidency. He reveals himself to be ironic, demystifies Moncloa and what happens in its corridors, and portrays his colleagues from the Council of Ministers in a "bestiary" of the political fauna and flora of 1980s Spain.
In perspective
Presidents, Victoria Prego. An essential for knowing what, how, and when the first four Prime Ministers faced. From Suárez to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, passing through Felipe González and José María Aznar. It offers a chronological and detailed reconstruction of Spain and the agenda that each president had to face. A guide to political life between 1976 and 2011.
On the track chair, Miguel Ángel Aguilar. The journalist, who continues to walk the halls of Congress, reviews his life in this work. Part of which he has seen pass from the press gallery of the hemicycle. In addition, by narrating a multitude of anecdotes throughout all the legislatures, putting names and surnames to their protagonists, he recognizes himself as the inventor of the "applause-meter". A decibel meter, with which he was able to "establish for the first time the acoustic diagram of the applause of the session", faced with the usual ambiguity of expressions such as "applause", "great applause", "very numerous and prolonged applause", "ovation" or "standing ovation".
Journalists were there to tell it, Fernando Jauregui. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Constitution, the Congress and 150 journalists coordinated by Fernando Jauregui, compiled hundreds of anecdotes about the profession in the last four decades. Many of them take place in the corridors of the Lower House and the Senate, leaving headlines such as "when they used to smoke joints in Congress".
Between crisis and new politics
Under the carpets of Congress, Ketty Garat. The journalist narrates her arrival in Madrid and her beginnings in political and parliamentary journalism coinciding with the end of the Zapatero Government and the doubts within the PSOE regarding its succession. Intrigues in Moncloa, meetings in the corridors of Congress and other centers of power through which political life passes, recalling how the beginning of the end of bipartisanship was.
You'll finally settle down, Ignacio Peyró. The book acts as the author's diary between 2006 and 2011: personal life, professional life, sentimental life... Peyró approached politics as a journalist, but in those years he also flirted with the other side from Génova 13 (he later became part of Mariano Rajoy's cabinet as a speechwriter). Details, anecdotes, and conspiracies about a Madrid that never stopped and over which the shadow of the crisis loomed, although the terraces remained full. Politics and journalism, over after-dinner conversation.
The Spain That Came
Juego de escaños, María Rey. Based on her experience as a parliamentary correspondent, Rey unravels how majorities are built, how laws are negotiated, and what role the different political actors play inside and outside the hemicycle. The book not only brings the formal rules of the institution closer to the reader, but also the informal keys that condition Spanish politics on a daily basis: the custom and parliamentary tradition that has made us what we are.
The motion, Lucía Gómez Lobato. In this "untold chronicle of the ten days that changed the history of Spain," the last great 'shock' of national politics is reconstructed: the arrival of Pedro Sánchez at Moncloa after the triumph of the first motion of no confidence. A review of frenetic days, whose protagonists still remember them hazily today, in which the author contrasts the versions of the key players who were, without knowing it, playing several games at once.