A few hours after the Basque PP inaugurated the electoral campaign in Bilbao, with Cuca Gamarra sponsoring his candidate for lehendakari, Javier de Andrés, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has taken over in Vitoria-Gasteiz to defend that his party is “the only alternative in front of Sánchez’s satellites.”
“We are the moral alternative in Basque politics. We have the responsibility of being the only alternative to the amalgamation of parties that are presented in Euskadi to be the same,” she solemnly defended.
The popular leader has chosen Vitoria for his first campaign event because Álava is a key territory. Although it has barely 330,000 inhabitants, the same number of parliamentarians is appointed for this territory as in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, 25, so that many fewer votes are needed to gain a seat in the Basque Parliament.
The city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, likewise, has been one of the bastions of the popular party, although today it exemplifies the decline of the Basque PP that Javier de Andrés wants to reverse. It is the only Basque capital in which the Popular Party has governed -for three terms-; However, in the 2019 municipal elections they were the fourth force and in last year’s elections, the third. Vitoria represents, in this sense, the potential that the popular have come to have in the Basque Country, and also their weight loss in recent years.
The popular ones are aware that a PNV far from the sovereign path has eaten up their ground, while at the same time they see how a part of their votes stay at home in municipal, regional and elections to the Basque Parliament. For this reason, Feijóo has appealed to the relatively good result that the Basque Popular Party had in the July general elections (they were fourth, with 11.5% of the votes). “In 2020 we had 60,000 votes in Euskadi, last July there were 130,000,” he noted.
The popular ones, in addition, have been insisting since the pre-campaign that the PNV has leaned to the left. “We have the need to convince, and we have to be direct and clear. There is very little time to waste. On April 21 we are going to decide between many candidacies and only two projects: that of all the parties in Euskadi that are embraced by Sánchez, starting with the PNV, and the other possibility, our project. We are a party that represents different policies and that has a commitment to Euskadi, not to Sánchez. “We are the only alternative to Sánchez’s political satellites,” he indicated.
The president of the Popular Party, has also asked for support from PNV voters “tired of their party being a mere appendix of Sánchez” and who “do not want their votes to endorse the left-wing and extreme-left policies of the populist Government.” in Madrid”.
“I also ask for the vote of PSOE voters who are tired of whitewashing Bildu and that the Socialist Party has had to renounce the Constitution, equality and the rule of law to keep Sánchez in the Government of Spain” , has continued.
From there, Feijóo has appealed to the rejection and fear of EH Bildu, a dangerous argument for the popular ones, since, in a context of struggle between the PNV and the nationalist coalition, the jeltzales can be seen as the useful vote.
“We have given a word and that is that we do not want Bildu to govern this land. And we have fulfilled it. At the Vitoria City Council we have prevented Bildu from governing; That’s why we are a party of words. We have also given our word that Bildu will not govern in the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, and we have given the Provincial Council to the PNV. That is keeping your word. We are a party of words. And now we hear in Congress from the PNV and the PSOE that an agreement cannot be reached with the PP. What a joke! ”He expressed.
In this sense, he has criticized that the PNV candidate, Imanol Pradales, has now warned that the PSE can agree with Bildu on a “pamplonada” – that is, agree on a government coalition with the Abertzale coalition – when it was they who gave him the Mayor’s Office of Pamplona to the nationalist coalition, thus holding them responsible for the decision of Geroa Bai, who supported the motion of censure.
Finally, the popular leader, who began the event by remembering the popular victims of ETA, demanded that EH Bildu “apologize to the victims, the Basques and all Spaniards.”
