The PP in Malaga and Vox in Madrid yesterday mobilized their militants and sympathizers against the amnesty for those accused of the process, a day after the first secretary of the socialist party and acting president openly defended this measure.
Neither of the two events had been called in the wake of Sánchez’s statements last Saturday in the federal committee and in fact they were scheduled weeks ago but, after the acting president’s speech, both concentrations acquired special relevance.
The PP managed to gather around 20,000 people in Malaga – a city not very inclined to take to the streets to protest. In Madrid there were around 100,000 that Vox gathered in the Plaza de Colón. This last figure comes from official sources since the organizers claimed that they exceeded 200,000.
The Popular Party is determined to mobilize its sympathizers and militants on the streets. Next Saturday, when the voting of socialist militancy will end, the PP plans to hold a rally, similar to yesterday’s, in Valencia.
Yesterday had a special significance, a day after listening to Sánchez’s speech. Feijóo got to the point: “You have to have little shame and no sense of state to say that you are negotiating in the name of Spain. No. It is negotiated on behalf of Mr. Sánchez. You have to have little shame to say that you are doing it for Spain. “It is done against Spain and against the majority of Spaniards.”
Once Sánchez has put his cards on the table, the president of the PP raises the tone of his protest. And he did it by trying to dismantle the socialist candidate’s speech. If Pedro Sánchez assured that he negotiated the amnesty “in the name of Spain, in the interest of Spain, in defense of coexistence between Spaniards,” Feijóo replied: “Don’t say that he is doing it for Spain. He does it against Spain.” If Sánchez “makes necessity a virtue,” he answers: “It is one’s need. Because of his need, he causes a problem for all Spaniards.”
And if the acting president assures that he is brave in doing so, the popular leader replies that “there is no courage in approving the amnesty by submitting it to a vote of those you have appointed and those whose position depends on saying yes” and therefore That is why he asked that “the Spaniards be asked at the polls.” The result of a vote like the one he demands, he predicted, “will be overwhelming,” because the majority of Spaniards, he is sure, “are not going to allow the judiciary or the head of state to be humiliated.”
But in the meantime, Alberto Núñez Feijóo focuses on the socialists who do not agree, but remain silent, and on those who speak but do not go further. He addressed a warning to them: “The few who pretend to raise their voices, without doing anything, will be just as complicit,” in clear reference to the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page.
The PP was yesterday in Andalusia, in Malaga, saying “no to the amnesty” from the Plaza de la Constitución, with two large flags, that of Spain and Andalusia, and singing two anthems, that of Andalusia and that of Spain, to make it clear that the PP represents autonomous Spain, and therefore the defense of equality between Spaniards.
The Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno, assured that he will defend the interests of the Andalusians, and asked the socialists what they felt “when they saw their representatives in the federal committee stand up – in reference to the leader of the Andalusian PSOE, Juan Espadas -, and applaud that the amnesty was going to be conceded.” He, he said, was “embarrassed because they are not able to raise their voices for the benefit of Andalusia and Spain.”
For this reason, he assured that Andalusia will be “the containment dam for the drift of Mr. Sánchez, who intends to break equality between Spaniards, the constitutional framework and the statutory framework.”
