The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has to continue giving explanations about his relationship with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado, after first Yolanda Díaz and then Pedro Sánchez, re-launched the image published in 2013, during the Galician election campaign, which the current leader of the PP won, for the second time, with an absolute majority.
In an interview this Friday, the closing of the campaign, on Cadena COPE, the president of the PP explained again that when he met Marcial Dorado it was known that he had had problems with the Justice for his dedication to tobacco smuggling, although he had no pending issues with the Justice. His arrests for drug trafficking were later.
Feijóo affirms that his photo with Marcial Dorado “is a classic”, that already in the Galician elections of 2009 the PSOE suggested to the PP that if he did not lower his tone, he was going to take some photos of him with a drug trafficker. “When I met him, it was known that he had been a smuggler, never a drug trafficker,” and his response was “let them take what they want.”
In 2012 they threatened him with it again and in 2013, in a new electoral campaign, it was published, after which he held a press conference to give public explanations and appeared in the Galician Parliament, “where I clarified exactly what had happened. I met him when he had nothing to do with this matter, it can be verified and it is in a summary of the National Court, which makes it clear that there are many photos of this man with photos of all political parties, and no politician was even called to testify in matters that I had pending”.
The president of the PP recalled that Yolanda Díaz did the same in 2016, when she ran for president of the Xunta, “she did the paripé that she has done now”, and it was repeated in 2020 and now in 2023, when they used a photo from 30 years ago against him again. “The truth is that I did not expect it, she said.”
Feijóo does not understand that this photo is given such importance and nothing is said about photos of politicians who use it in the newspaper library, both “with dictators and people accused of drug trafficking.” The president of the PP recalled that a vice president of a government that was prohibited from entering the European Union was accepted in Spain. He refers to Delsy Rodríguez, and stressed that a few days ago, Pedro Sánchez received her in Brussels with kisses in public.
He says he is not worried: “Really, after 30 years of politics, the Galicians, who differentiate knowing a person and having a commercial or complicit relationship, have judged me, but I admit my surprise because Sánchez” has removed it. He considers that if the President of the Government takes that photo at this point, it is so as not to have to talk about other issues, such as tolls on the highways, even more so after the Commission confirmed on Thursday that there is such a commitment, which it will have to implement in 2024.
Feijóo, asked if it will be he who has to put those tolls, says that he is not very optimistic about the possibility of being able to reverse this “commitment signed by Spain”, which commits the prime minister who signs it and his successor. What he does emphasize is that “I am not in favor of putting a toll per kilometer”, because that, he said, “destroys the periphery”.
The popular leader is beginning to give notice regarding what will have to be done in this matter and in others, given the “enormous deficit” that Spain has, and the European Union is already warning that Spain, he said, will have to make an adjustment of 12,000 million euros. What he will do is talk to the European authorities “who have looked the other way during these years of increased spending and deficits”, to tell them that “if they have given up, now they will have to find a slippery path towards the fiscal consolidation that Europe demands”.
Regarding his possibilities of government and the need for pacts, as has happened in Valencia or Extremadura, Feijóo stresses that he is in favor of the model “of Andalusia, Madrid or Galicia”, that is, the absolute majority, but makes it clear that if he does not obtain it “I will not give up being able to govern alone, because it is the best for my country”.
He knows that it is difficult, he says, because “the PSOE and Vox share the same interest, that it cannot govern alone”, but now, he stresses the decision “is in the hands of the citizens”, who will be the ones who decide if the PP can govern alone or not.
