For the President of Argentina, nothing has been easier than expropriating Repsol's assets in YPF, result . As easy as eating at the table. For Cristina Kirchner, "His wife", as she likes to call herself, the measure fits perfectly with the national-populist tradition that she inherited from her husband and that Argentina manages in such a sublime way. This call to build a great Argentina that does not allow itself to be intimidated by foreign threats, encouraging the service station workers to continue in their "fighting posts", as if it were a national crusade, reveals the populist aftertaste of Kirchnerism, more refined than the Venezuelan one.

The measure has also meant a wink to which the Argentine business community has not been able to resist: the promise that YPF will be a public limited company "professionally managed", as the President said, has made many economic groups in the country join the nationalist fury and rub their hands together at the possibilities that the national management of the black gold will open up for them. The nationalization of oil, sold as a necessity to sustain the Argentinean countryside with the oil money, even magnetized again the agrarian owners, who had long been disenchanted with their government due to the retentions to their production started by "Her husband".

In my opinion, this has always been the great merit of the populist ideology of which Argentina is the prototypical land: to unite in the same cause workers and businessmen, peasants and foremen, young and mature intellectuals. Populism is the only system capable of seducing with its enthusiasm all social strata, and that is something really difficult. The working class is represented in its rulers and inflamed by its developmentalist slogans. Businessmen know the warmth of the chimney that comes from being close to the caudillo's shadow, from whom they obtain juicy perks as long as they are not too competitive and do not act with total independence of criteria.

In the face of internal instability and social upheaval, the resource to nationalist populism in Argentina never fails. At least at the beginning. And in this specific case of Repsol "the occasion was painted bald": a Spain in crisis was an easy prey for a coup d'effect like this one. The Spanish business already made the necessary investments in its day to discover, exploit, refine and distribute the hidden deposits in the Argentinean soil; it already bet in its time on the Argentinean adventure and conveniently got into debt for it with the Spanish banks. It has already danced and survived the successive regulations and progressive export retentions imposed by its governments. And now, when the machine is working, and even more, when the new reserves in Vaca Muerta have just been discovered, she decides that it is time for the State to manage its own natural resources.

Mrs. K knew that the Spanish government would not have the strength for great reprisals, and that the world is aware that, when it wants to, Argentina does not pay its international debts. It has worked out very well for her. For now.

At least maybe this status will help us to take the pulse of Europe. With this episode starring "His wife", we will be able to find out if Europe is the unity it claims to be, and manages to speak with one voice in the face of an external threat to a member of its team.