For those of us who have been involved in national politics for several decades now, there are few topics more familiar than corruption scandals. They all end up having an air of déjà vuas if it were a stone that we stumble over again and again. It will be said that it is the human condition, the homo corruptibilis as an inevitable trait of our species and, therefore, the practical impossibility of being able to emancipate ourselves from it. It turns out, however, and this emerged again in the Cerdán/Ábalos/Koldo case, that most of them turn out to be the product of rigged public works assignments and influence peddling. In principle, it should not be that difficult to protect against its proliferation by taking the necessary precautions, as has also been done in other cases. Today, the demand for transparency for the vast majority of operations in which any public administration is involved makes it almost impossible for fraudsters to resort to these practices.
Every time the question arises again, and given the greater effectiveness in identifying political venality, it is therefore inevitable to ask why it is still so present in our democratic system. The reason is very simple, because its actors feel unpunished, protected, because the shadow fields in the control of these practices offer them sufficient guarantees. And perhaps because, even if contradictory, unless there is overwhelming evidence, they can always count on the “provisional” support, obviously, of their party. Therefore, the hole they make in the always hyperbolic statements of political ethics with which they like to adorn themselves is immense.
I talk about it because in these moments of remembrance of the Franco regime there is an issue that has just appeared in the debate, being a regime in which corruption proliferated. It won’t be because it hasn’t been studied. There are the works of Ángel Viñas, Paul Preston or Santos Juliá and Juan Pablo Fusi among many others who have revealed the dense web of cronyism and cases of illicit enrichment, without having to focus only on more visible scandals like that of Matesa. As in any dictatorship, the absence of control mechanisms and a free press favored an often squalid and picturesque venality, such as that so well reflected in the film. The national rifle, of Berlanga; or the more serious and structural one, such as that linked to urban planning, to which we owe, among other things, the architectural ugliness of our cities and the coast.
What hurts is that many of these practices have been carried over to the transition period. It is probably its darkest aspect, since there it contributed, as Javier Pradera once studied, to being one of the means of financing the parties. The inertia of Francoism persists in the following era and, as we well know, extends its tentacles to the present day, leaving one of its most viscous residues in corruption. A Berlanga could recycle his old film by now having Koldo and the CIA as protagonists. Even if it wouldn’t be fun anymore. When it premiered The national riflein 1978, we all laughed out loud because we imagined it was a satire of a past we had abandoned. Then the reels appeared and a multiplicity of scandals until we ended up in this mess of whores and commissions.
Of course, there is a big difference between structural corruption and the appearance of specific cases. But if we fear that Francoism will continue to gain a certain legitimacy, we must exorcise with all possible means the fact that we can say “and you more”, now applied to the contrast between political systems. Zero tolerance.
