The three-way debate, between Pedro Sánchez, Yolanda Díaz and Santiago Abascal, was almost impeccable in manners. Few outbursts and interruptions. It seemed that all three had conspired to leave the great absentee from the set of public television, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Nothing to do with the harshness of the face-to-face held nine days ago between the socialist candidate and the leader of the PP on Atresmedia channels.
The confrontation between the three on TVE has shown that this Sunday the fight is between two blocs, the right – which nowadays has the advantage in the polls – and the left.
The coordination between the president of the Spanish Government and socialist candidate and his vice-president and leader of the Sumar platform was obvious. A distribution of tasks. The leader of Sumar faced Santiago Abascal, who she described as “the representative of Mr. Feijóo”, with more vehemence than Sánchez, who was in a more temperate zone.
The objective of both was clear: to strengthen the left-wing bloc. Yolanda Díaz, for her part, had to use the confrontation to secure her position in the polls that place her, in most cases, a little ahead of Vox in their vote expectations. The aim is to reach third place on Sunday night. However, this goal has a not insignificant handicap, to ensure that the useful vote of the left bloc does not end up in the PSOE and sink the expectations of Díaz’s platform.
And in this sense, it must be said that the candidate did not look, against what could be predicted, to mark the differences with Sánchez almost at no time. In fact, they both ended up being about you. Díaz promised that he will govern with Sánchez “to continue advancing rights”. It is not clear that this much will be profitable for him electorally on Sunday.
Sánchez, for his part, remained in the meditative background to the clash with the ultra-nationalist leader, which did not prevent him from once again calling into question – he already did it face to face with Feijóo – the constitutional convictions of Vox and the eventual coalition with the Popular Party already put into practice in several autonomous communities and numerous town halls. Sánchez, facing the right-wing coalition to get the central government, placed the voter in the following dilemma: “The citizen must decide on Sunday if he wants to move to 2023 or 1973 on Monday”.
Despite this and other invectives, Sánchez was restrained, because in this debate he had to try to persuade the most focused part of the electorate, which today still does not know whether to opt for the bloc of the right or the left in Sunday’s elections.
In this coordinated game, Feijóo was mentioned several times. Yolanda Díaz – who went so far as to mention the well-known image of the PP leader sailing with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado – presented Abascal as Feijóo’s representative on the set.
Santiago Abascal had a difficult role in this situation. He tried to make use of his tougher argument by questioning gender violence – by the way, at this point Sánchez affirmed that the law of only yes is yes is a good law – or the policies against climate change when he pointed out that the central government’s green agenda “is paid for by the farmers and the middle class of this country”. However, the ultra-nationalist leader failed to place his messages clearly. It was a difficult task that Yolanda Díaz, who occupied the lectern to his left, undertook to avoid. Curiously, in the same way that Díaz barely tried to separate himself from Sánchez, Santiago Abascal also did not do so from his future ally, the leader of the PP. During the confrontation, the president of the Spanish Government replied to Abascal his recent statements about Catalonia: “We believe in the unity of Spain, but not in slaps like you.”
