With one day left for Pedro Sánchez to announce if he is leaving Moncloa, and with the PP studying and analyzing all possible scenarios, Alberto Núñez Feijóo chose yesterday from Lleida to give a key message for the future. The popular leader, campaigning in Catalonia, tried to close the door on the president’s possible departures. “It doesn’t matter what he says. Sánchez will forever be marked by the decadence he has brought to our country, he will be able to prolong the agony more or less, but he already represents the past”, he stressed.
The PP, therefore, tries that the period that Sánchez has been given for reflection since Wednesday, when it was known that Manos Limpias had filed a complaint against his wife, Begoña Gómez, does not serve as a rearmament for the Socialist Party or of strategic leverage. Núñez Feijóo described Saturday’s demonstration in Carrer Ferraz in support of the president as a “self-organized” event. And he emphasized that it is the PP that represents “the political future of Spain”. For this reason, he pointed out that it is up to him to ensure this future of the country “with the help of all”.
With this allusion to “whatever he says”, the popular leader tries to push towards a new stage with no options to go back. In this scenario of the near future is where Feijóo wanted to place himself and pointed out, on the one hand, what Sánchez’s “maneuver” wants is to separate the Spanish. And he presented, on the other hand, the PP project as the only one capable of “bringing down the walls and returning to the fraternal embrace”. The PP wants to protect itself from the accusations of the socialists, who accuse it of being behind the campaign against Begoña Gómez.
For this reason, the popular president is focusing on denouncing the “personalism” of Sánchez and his decisions, and pointed out yesterday that Spain, “this country of more than 500 years”, is much more than “a president who has only brought division and fracture”.
The PP and Feijóo have maintained the rhythm of the Catalan campaign during this weekend, over which the shadow of Sánchez’s decision hangs, and from Lleida the candidate Alejandro Fernández also accused the President of the Spanish Government of abandoning to “low passions and political polarization”. The head of the Executive and Carles Puigdemont were once again presented as politicians who only look at their “navels”, with “personalistic” projects and incapable of making a reading that welcomes the whole of society.
Feijóo’s references to independence were also extensive, pointing out that both they and the socialists are “decadent” projects. With independence, he pointed out, Catalonia has lost leadership, wealth, security, with a project based almost exclusively on talking about itself and not the Catalans. And above all, he wanted to emphasize that, when the Catalans had already decided to bury the process, Pedro Sánchez has come to “reopen it”.
The PP wants to present itself as the “only option” capable of relaunching Catalonia and, as pointed out by both Feijóo and Fernández, they accused the socialists of having abandoned the constitutionalist project.
The popular Catalans held a meeting in Lleida with 600 people, a mobilization that they had not achieved for a decade and with which they are trying to regain representation in Parliament. In this context, Núñez Feijóo specifically addressed all the Catalans who in 2017 voted for Ciutadans – which won 36 seats – to support the PP, in a “committed reformist project, and for it to be a common house”.
The president of the PP spoke of unifying citizens around the defense of the Statute, in this “constitutionalist” project as a way out of the “melancholic loop” in which independence has plunged Catalonia.
As usual since the beginning of the pre-campaign, the popular people give these elections a double reading in Catalan and Spanish terms. And even yesterday – while we were waiting for Sánchez’s decision and its impact -, we were warned of the need for the socialists to keep independence in power in order to guarantee their permanence in Moncloa. Today it will be known if there is a new stage or not.
