In the bullring of Pontevedra, full to the brim as they say in bullfighting terminology, Alberto Núñez Feijóo pinned his hopes on achieving a victory like that of former president Felipe González, when he beat UCD in 1982. In these historic elections, the PSOE obtained 202 seats, a number that is far above the expectations of the people, but Feijóo is not talking about seats, but about the political meaning of this victory, the victory of change.
While Pedro Sánchez remained locked up until yesterday with his team preparing for tonight’s face-to-face, the leader of the PP was accompanied to Pontevedra by former president Mariano Rajoy and his political mentor and teacher of a whole generation in the Party Popular, Jose Manuel Romay Beccaria.
According to the president of the PP, the change of 1982 took place because those who led the PSOE at the time were trustworthy. And Sánchez, in his opinion, is not.
Trusting the Spanish Government means, for Feijóo, “recovering the credibility of the word given”. “I want the Spanish to say when he stops being president: you didn’t deceive us, we trusted you, we liked you more or less, but you were an honest, consistent president and you didn’t lie to us”.
Feijóo asked for the vote to “break the blocks” that have been created these years. A vote “to change alliances against, for state pacts”, as he claims to have done in Galicia, attracting votes from all political parties, and thus being able to build a majority that will allow him to govern “with a government of a piece”, that is to say, solo.
He assures that this is what he is pursuing now and he is convinced that “it is possible” because the Spanish, he affirmed, “prefer understanding to confrontation, firmness in principles to extreme intransigence, good management to taxes and more taxes to try to buy wills, the public service to arrogance and commitment and the general interest to Sanchism”. The voters, assured Feijóo “prefer change because they believe that this country is better than it has become during these years”.
