The great achievement of national reconciliation consists in the elimination of the two Spains and their replacement by Spain in two halves. The split simplified the emerging art of survey invention. Half of the headlines about the polls begin by announcing that “Half of Spaniards” support/disparage Sánchez’s pardon for Puigdemont or prefer/reject his call for new elections. If the media insists on the seriousness of informing, it will at most admit that its decision affects “nearly half of the citizens”.
The two halves of Spain work with such precision that they veil the mystery of the forced harmony between the rivals to ensure a perfect harmony that seems to have been agreed upon. If Sánchez completes the appointment, it will be true that “half of the Spanish MPs want it that way.” Specifically, hypothetical approval would receive 50.9 percent of the votes in Congress compared to 49.1 percent. This would confirm that democracy is based not on electoral victory but on the resigned acceptance of minimal margins of defeat. First of all, it is admirable that one in a hundred people decides on the relations between the two halves, and therein lies the real Spanish miracle.
We must abandon the image of a collective proliferating in two Machadian Spains to focus on the statistical certainty of a half-baked country under construction. Conventional consensuses start with sixty percent support, but give way to millimeter equalization of conflicting positions on immigration or the Eurovision Song Contest candidacy. Our search for the romantic root of the other half is simplified because it is there, solid and exciting. The constant transfer between both equal blocks does not prevent the maintenance of the magical balance that persists in every question. There is no way to build a whole country when the Spaniards have so many halves.