The climb is very rough, but after culminating with Junts his round of contacts with all the parliamentary groups except Vox, and despite not yet having the supports to guarantee his re-election, Pedro Sánchez continues to see himself with strength to reach the milestone “Regarding the complexity of the ongoing negotiations, I guarantee you that I trust that there will be a progressive government”, said the leader of the PSOE yesterday before the militants and leaders of the party in Extremadura, gathered in a meeting held in Merida
Without loosening the rope, despite the insistence of former president Carles Puigdemont to keep the unilateral way alive. “We will work so that there is a progressive government, that makes progressive policies and commits to coexistence, always within the framework of the Constitution”, reaffirmed the leader of the PSOE.
“I have the same desire, even more, than the first day, so that there will be a progressive government again”, assured Sánchez, amid great applause. “I have more desire, more strength and more excitement than the first day I had the honor of being elected president of the Government”, he remarked.
In front of 1,500 supporters, Sánchez continued to stage the majority support of the Socialists in the ongoing negotiations to be able to get his investiture.
Yesterday, the support of another federation totally refractory to Catalan or Basque independence such as the PSOE of Extremadura, led by Guillermo Fernández Vara, was made explicit, as previously achieved by Sánchez in his rallies in Granada, Seville and Málaga, among the Andalusian socialists.
Sánchez, together with Vara and the socialist mayor of Mérida, Antonio Rodríguez Osuna, stood up to the rain of insults that were directed at the President of the Spanish Government during the Twelfth of October celebration in Madrid. “The more they insult, the smaller they become”, replied the leader of the PSOE.
And he criticized the right-wing “insult, noise and disqualifications”. They are the result, in his opinion, of the frustration that citizens blocked the way to a PP government with the ultra-right Vox in the 23-J polls.
“They lost and they know it”, warned Sánchez. “But worse than losing the elections is being lost”, he said to Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whom he already criticized in his meeting on Monday for “heating up the street” in front of 12-O, “as it happened”.
Spain is not broken, insisted the leader of the PSOE, but it is the right which, he stressed, broke in two between the PP and Vox. “Since then, they have entered into a competition to see who shouts louder and louder, to see who says it the loudest, to see who paints a much blacker future for our country”, he lamented. But he insisted on asking, at the very least, from the PP, “calm, sanity and respect”.
The acting president of the Spanish Government also took advantage of the intervention to establish a strong position against Hamas’ attacks on Israel. But emphasizing, at the same time, that the Jewish State must conform to international humanitarian law in the Gaza Strip.
Spain, he stressed, is “a lover of peace”. “That’s why we unequivocally condemn the terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel, and also the deaths of Israelis,” he said. “And we demand the urgent release of all Israeli hostages and captives,” he claimed.
“With the same force”, he warned, Sánchez defended that “of course Israel has the right to defend itself, but always within international humanitarian law, which does not materially endorse the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza, as they say the United Nations”.
The acting president insisted that this entangled conflict, “which causes so much suffering, anguish and instability” in the region and throughout the world, can only be resolved when, as the UN itself endorses, “the two states are recognized , Israel and Palestine, so that they can coexist in peace and security”. The UN and the General Courts in Spain, because the PSOE recalled that Congress already approved in November 2014, with the unanimous support of all the groups, a non-law proposal that the government urged, at that time the of Mariano Rajoy, to recognize Palestine as a State.
