Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo have finally agreed to hold their first and long-awaited meeting tomorrow, Friday, before the end of the current year. Just on the day that the traditional Christmas Lottery draw will be held, while half of Spain will be more concerned about whether they won the jackpot or, at least, a refund to face the January slope.
After a week of persecution like a dog and a cat, and after the cabinets of the two leaders got in touch to talk about the meeting, the agreement between Sánchez and Feijóo came, however, between notable tugs on both sides, and in a climate of total hostility and absolute lack of understanding, as both demonstrated during the long hours they shared in the plenary session that was held early in the morning in the Congress of Deputies.
The mistrust and mutual distrust between Sánchez and Feijóo is absolute, and equally extendable and shared by their respective chiefs of staff, Óscar López and Marta Varela, as both confirmed in this difficult tug-of-war to achieve a simple meeting between the President of the Government and the head of the opposition. It is not usual for a political representative not to respond to the call of the President of the Government, at least, he has not been so until now.
All of which leads us to predict that this meeting, the first between the two after Sánchez’s new investiture as President of the Government, will end with a confirmation of their respective and antagonistic positions on all the issues under debate, and without any possibility in sight. to seal any great State pact of the many pending between the leaders of the two main political forces in Spain.
And even more so after the PSOE partners, especially Junts, have pointed out magistrates and have announced their intention – which the President of the Government has flatly rejected – to have some judges who intervened in the most controversial cases of the ‘procés’ appear. ‘ in the investigative commissions approved by Congress in this legislature.
In this climate, Sánchez and Feijóo, in the plenary session of Congress held yesterday, seemed to do everything possible to prevent tomorrow’s meeting from taking place. Fifteen days after learning from the press of the president’s intention to summon him and nine days after the chiefs of staff of both held a first conversation, in which the PP requested in writing an agenda, Feijóo sent him on Tuesday by the night a letter in which he accepted, among the three proposed by the president, the date of December 22, this Friday, for the appointment.
The leader of the PP listed in his letter a long list of issues that he wants to address and that, a priori, were not in the issues that, at least publicly, the President of the Government has raised. The leader of the opposition wants to talk about the law of amnesty; of institutional deterioration, in reference to the Council of State and the Prosecutor’s Office; of the “depoliticization of the public media”, in reference to RTVE and the Efe Agency; of the “position regarding the judicial prevarication denounced by PSOE, Junts and ERC and the defense of the Judiciary against “harassment” by the allies of the majority of the investiture. Also, however, Feijóo offers to address, according to this letter, the measures “to guarantee judicial independence”, that is, of the governing body of the judges. At least on one point, the agenda of the meeting between Sánchez and Feijóo coincides although, in all likelihood, what one demands and what the other offers has nothing to do with it.
In the letter, the opposition leader also wants to bring to the meeting the negotiations held in Geneva between the PSOE and Junts, in addition to the tax increases agreed with Sumar and the aid plans for citizens to face the effects of inflation. .
Finally, the leader of the PP, who left nothing in the pipeline, also demands in his letter the paralysis of the motion of censure in Pamplona with Bildu, as well as the debate of the bill that, according to the PP, “intends decriminalize the glorification of terrorism and the attack on national symbols.”
Sánchez insisted that, with four years of term ahead of him, the leader of the PP “cannot continue to settle into permanent anger and tantrums.” And he reiterated his willingness to seal state pacts with Feijóo. “Spain needs agreements,” he claimed. And he highlighted the three points on which he wants to seal agreements, in reference to the renewal of the CGPJ, the updating of the regional financing system and the reform of article 49 of the Constitution.
“It seems that he has rectified his efforts to stand me down,” Sánchez congratulated himself, in response to the letter sent by Feijóo.
The president warned him that the meeting could be held “however, wherever, and whenever.” And, in his turn to reply, Feijóo picked up the glove. “How, without a mediator; where, not in Geneva, in Congress.” And as for when, the leader of the PP accepted the date of December 22.
Feijóo’s response, for the event to take place in Congress, disconcerted Sánchez, who intended to hold it in the Moncloa. But, finally, the president accepted it: “For you, the fat bitch: we’ll see you on Friday in Congress, and we’ll talk about whatever you want.”
