MARIANO RAJOY, leader of the conservative Partido Popular, has long been said by his colleagues to have “the skin of a rhinoceros”.
Were they Irish, they might compare his neck to a certain part of a jockey’s anatomy.
He presents a public image of impenetrable guile, or retranca, for which his native Galicia is perhaps unfairly famous, rather like the association of Kerry with cuteness. He adds to it, however, a unique brand of personal chutzpah.
His performance over last weekend, the most crucial of his long career, when Spain finally appealed to the EU for help to save its banking sector, epitomises his style. It was, depending on your inclination, a canny way of putting a brave face on disaster, or a bare-faced manipulation of night into day.
Only last Friday, his deputy prime minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, still insisted that no aid application would be made, at least until two independent agencies had completed their evaluation of the banking sector in two weeks’ time.
Yet on Saturday. his economy minister, Luis de Guindos, made just such an application. Then, for 24 hours, Rajoy stonewalled, refusing to comment, a tactic which has already become a hallmark of his six months in office.
But on Sunday he was back to chutzpah: in a rare press conference he presented capitulation as triumph.
The total reversal of his oft-stated conviction that no EU money was needed by the Spanish banks became the vindication of his strategic abilities.
Flying in the face of well-documented alternative accounts of events, he insisted that it was he who had persuaded his European colleagues to adopt his ideas, and not the other way around.
He was quite explicit to journalists about the need for subterfuge in democracy. “That is how these things are done,” he said.
“Negotiations are not broadcast or televised. You sometimes ask us things we cannot tell you.”
The bluster was oddly reminiscent of the tone of Brian Cowen’s government at a similarly grim moment in Irish politics. Rajoy even borrowed a very familiar phrase: “We are where we are.”
This prompted a leading Spanish political blogger, Fernando Garea, to comment: “These are empty, senseless phrases, an abuse of language. They are impossible to contradict. You cannot say, for example, ‘We are where we aren’t.’”
As Garea reminds his readers, the recent history of Spanish democracy is unhappily rich in prime ministers of all political stripes, from Felipe González through José María Aznar to Rajoy’s predecessor, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who have been demonstrably economical with the truth.
In these circumstances, it is unsurprising that citizens are cynical about a government that refuses to set up a parliamentary investigation into the affairs of Bankia, the financial entity that was recently nationalised at a cost of €23 billion to the taxpayer, while slashing health and welfare budgets.
Faith in politics has never been more necessary in Spain. It is unfortunate that, once again and at a time of great crisis, open and transparent leadership seems patently lacking.