When an Aragonese feels offended in intelligence, warned Javier Lambán yesterday, the reaction can be “literally scorching and devastating.” Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s electoral strategy hit the bone yesterday.

The leader of the Popular Party has been directly alluding to the socialist president of Aragon to encourage his clash with Pedro Sánchez, taking advantage of his rejection of any agreement with EH Bildu, after the controversial decision of the nationalist coalition to incorporate exetarras into their electoral lists. Big mistake.

A black beast of independence, Lambán is one of the regional presidents of the PSOE – along with the Castilian-La Mancha Emiliano García-Page – more distant from Sánchez and more critical of some of his initiatives and alliances with EH Bildu or ERC. And he never hides it.

But seeing himself used by Feijóo in the middle of the campaign caused his forceful reaction yesterday, during the rally that he starred in together with Sánchez in Zaragoza.

When the controversy over Bildu’s lists broke out, Lambán thundered. “The PSOE must break any relationship with a party that includes murderers on its lists,” he demanded last Thursday. A week later he is still thinking exactly the same thing. And so he reiterated it yesterday in front of Sánchez. “The vast majority of Aragonese, with me at the head, think that there should be no relationship with the heirs of the terrorist band,” Lambán defended.

Having said which, he directed all his verbal artillery against the PP. “The use that the PP makes of terrorism and of the victims of ETA is absolutely abject, miserable, obscene and immoral,” cried Lambán, to loud applause from the 1,800 socialist sympathizers gathered in the Zaragoza Auditorium.

Above all, he insisted, on the part of a party that “sometimes has agreed with the heirs of the terrorist group.” He even recalled that José María Aznar called ETA “national liberation battalion, Basque liberation movement, or something similar”. “The cynicism of the PP has no limits,” denounced Lambán.

“And that cynicism, that miserable, obscene and absolutely perverse use of the victims of terrorism, is not only immoral but also divisive, it divides society,” he warned. “The PP will have to make a thorough rectification,” he demanded.

The president of Aragon, in office since 2015 and who is running for re-election on 28-M, gave Sánchez a warm welcome in any case. “Dear Pedro, here is your house”, he received him at the rally. And he assured that his government is the one that “has suited the Aragonese best”, due to his investments in this community and the infrastructure projects underway.

In addition, Lambán celebrated Sánchez’s social policies, and especially housing, together with the increase in the minimum wage or an update of pensions according to the CPI that he defined as “simply and literally historical.” He also celebrated how Sánchez defends Spain throughout the world: “We Aragonese feel frankly proud of our president.” “I applaud you, fellow president,” he settled.