Having just inaugurated his new coalition Executive between the PSOE and Sumar, whose ministers took office on November 21, Pedro Sánchez announced this Wednesday, in his traditional year-end review appearance from the Moncloa palace, that this same Friday, December 29, the first Government crisis of the mandate will take place, to relieve Nadia Calviño, first vice president and Minister of Economy, who will take over the presidency of the European Bank of Investments (EIB).
“The Government crisis I have already announced will be this Friday,” Sánchez responded to the question of when he will appoint Calviño’s successor. Without wanting to reveal any names or if this replacement will imply a restructuring of the Executive. “They will meet the protagonists next Friday,” the Chief Executive concluded, without wanting to give any clues.
During his appearance, Sánchez announced the new package of anti-crisis measures that the Council of Ministers approved this Wednesday, in its last meeting of the year, and made a very positive assessment of Spain’s economic situation. But he has also taken the opportunity to once again denounce the “asymmetric polarization” that in his opinion the public debate suffers in the political scene, given the offensive that he has attributed to both the Popular Party and the far-right Vox.
“There are people here who insult, and people who are insulted. “Political parties that are besieged, and political forces or leaders that urge the siege,” Sánchez criticized, to regret that, on many occasions, the entire political class is put in the same bag of anger and disqualifications of the adversary. And he has assured that his commitment is that “we are not going to engage in any of these disqualifications, in any of these insults, nor are we going to respond to anger with more anger, or to noise with more noise.” On the contrary, he has stressed: “We are going to work for the good of the citizens and we are going to make respect and civility, as I told the head of the opposition in the last control session, our way of doing politics.”
“I understand what the logic of the right and the extreme right is, which is to demobilize and create disaffection in all citizens towards politics, to ensure that when the electoral contests come there will be demobilization and discontent among citizens,” he warned. Only in next year 2024 are the regional elections scheduled in Galicia and Euskadi, in addition to the European elections. “But that is not a political project for our country,” the president reproached the right.
“We already know what the political project of the right and the extreme right is: anger, insult and frustration over electoral objectives that were not met,” he highlighted. “But we are going to respond with a country project,” he stressed.
In these first weeks of management of the new coalition Government, Sánchez has lamented that “in front of us we have an opposition that has decided to demonstrate, which is legitimate in democracy, there would be more to do, but what is not acceptable is the level of disqualifications and insults that the opposition has reached.”
Sánchez has veiledly referred to the insult directed at him by the president of the Community of Madrid, the popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso, from the guest gallery of the Congress of Deputies. “It should be absolutely reprehensible, if not condemnable, that a leader of another political party jokes saying ‘I like fruit.’ It seems absolutely despicable to me, and demonstrates the low level to which politics has reached, in this case by the opposition,” she argued. Ayuso called the President of the Government a ‘son of a bitch’.
“This is something that must always be condemned, until those who do it recant. And, unfortunately, that is not seen, nor is it demanded by many of the media, nor is forgiveness or apologies assumed by those who have uttered that type of insults,” he criticized. “There are people who insult, and people who are insulted,” Sánchez reiterated.
Asked about the end-of-year speech given the day before by Pere Aragonès, in which the president of the Generalitat placed 2024 as the year in which negotiations for a self-determination referendum in Catalonia will begin, Sánchez replied: “The We know the proposals of the independence movement, nothing new under the sun.”
The President of the Government has insisted on betting on “opening a new phase of dialogue, of normalization of the political situation in Catalonia.” And this new phase, in his opinion, involves “the measures we are taking, at the level of legislative power, with the amnesty law”, in addition to “finding a meeting point between those maximalist proposals of the independence movement, which is to celebrate a self-determination referendum, which is not shared or accepted by the coalition government or the political forces that support it”, and also a new regional financing system, which has been waiting to be updated for ten years. On this issue, he assured, “we will speak with Catalonia and with each and every one of the autonomous communities of our country.”
