Pedro Sánchez (Madrid, 1972) arrives at the spectacular Royal Collections Gallery in Madrid with the conviction and security that he always denotes. He is convinced that the Spanish will end up giving him victory and ignores the polls. This is his state of mind in the final stretch of the campaign.
How do you feel when every morning you see in the polls that everyone gives you as a loser?
Well, the first thing is that we are in open elections and the PSOE is growing in support daily. We are naturally concentrating the vote on all those voters who are not only progressive, but also those who share something fundamental and that is that Spain does not go backwards and continues to advance. With which, I am convinced that the PSOE is going to be the first political force and that we are going to win the elections and that there will be four more years of policies of progress.
Are all the polls wrong?
No, no, the polls must be analyzed, but we do see a dynamic, an orientation that sees a drop in the PP and a rise in the PSOE. We are facing very open elections and I am convinced that we are going to win them for three fundamental reasons. First of all, good management: we are leading economic growth and inflation control in Europe, and today we have a job like we have never had in our country. Secondly, because I believe that we have to complete many of the advances made in recent years, such as protecting pensions. And third, the only alternative option for my government with Yolanda Díaz is a government of Mr. Feijóo and Mr. Abascal. And we are already seeing that in many town halls and communities, it represents a period of involution, of entering a black tunnel of time.
Don’t you think that you didn’t know how to explain all this in the debate on Monday? Did he lose his great opportunity there?
Well, it was a heated debate. And indeed, when you are faced with someone who does not stop lying, who says that he has approved the revaluation of pensions, when he has not, when he says that the Iberian solution is going to be repealed and what we have achieved has been its extension, one cannot remain impassive before the lie and is indignant.
Would the strategy change, if given the chance, if I did the debate again?
No, it’s that I think it’s not so much the strategy or not, but how one behaves in the face of lies or the blatant use of terrorism or the laundering that is done to Vox pacts in everything that has to do with gender equality or the protection of the LGTBI collective. The PP is muddling politics, generating disaffection, among other things, so that this electorate does not mobilize far beyond the progressive one, which allows us to have a much more resounding victory.
In the debate, Mr. Feijóo gave you a contract for you to commit to supporting the list with the most votes. If an addendum were added to that contract by which Mr. Feijóo promised to allow the most voted list to govern in Extremadura and in those municipalities in which the PSOE has won, but which today are governed by PP and Vox, would you would you sign the document?
I understand that you ask me that question, but I honestly believe that reality goes another way. The reality is that on May 28, the PP decided emphatically on government formulations with the extreme right. He already did it before in Castilla y León. It has done it being first force, being second, even being third, as in the Canary Islands. That is to say, the ambition of the PP is always to govern and that the PSOE never govern. This already happened to me in 2019, with two electoral repetitions where I actually had the vote against the PP. And I am also convinced that I will not count on the abstention of the PP.
Regarding support or not for the most voted list, there is much talk about the risk of blocking. There are those who say that if you lose you will prevent the PP from governing in order to provoke new elections.
It is that the Spanish have not yet spoken and we are in an electoral process in which we have to explain what balance we have made and also what proposal we are making for the next four years. My resounding proposal is to move forward. I mean, we’re not going to do 200 renovations like we’ve done over the last four years. What we want is to complete and consolidate these reforms. And the agenda that the PP has, let alone Vox, in case they govern, is a setback, a regression in all these advances. In short, here we are not talking about alternation, as has happened in other electoral processes. Here we are at stake if Spain continues advancing, as it has done for the last 40 years, sometimes to the right, other times to the left, or we enter, I insist, into a dark time tunnel that we do not know exactly where it will take us.
In this sense, there are citizens who compare Vox with Podemos, who say that it is the same to agree with the extreme left as with the right.
Well, look, I would answer you with something that happens in Brussels. In the European Parliament, Mrs. Von der Leyen meets with all the parliamentary groups, including the one to which Yolanda Díaz’s party belongs, and she does not meet with a single parliamentary group, which is that of the extreme right of Vox. I agree and I do not have the same political project as Sumar, but we make social progress, gain rights and freedoms. The PP with Vox agrees on an agenda of setbacks, an impudent exchange between rights and votes, between principles and armchairs.
Do you think that the policy that you have followed towards Catalonia could make you lose votes?
I did not find a pacified Spain five years ago. First, a Spain with a high degree of disaffection towards politics due to the cases of corruption that the PP was experiencing. Two, a unilateral declaration of independence, a ruling by the Supreme Court and obviously a burning Barcelona. And three, a situation of social inequality and a lack of opportunity creation in terms of obvious employment. Well, these three things are what we have reconstructed. In Catalonia, I have had to make risky decisions to guarantee coexistence. I know that there are people who have not understood the decisions I have made in Catalonia, who have not shared them, but my duty is not to think about the next elections, but to think about the next generations. And today Catalonia is infinitely better than it was in 2017.
I was asking him because I get the feeling that he seems like he wants to hide it. You do not demand pardons, for example.
No, mind you, I think the opposite. I think that Catalonia was, along with corruption and employment, logically, the three main concerns that came out in all the surveys in 2018. Today if you pick one. What are the main concerns of citizens? We are talking about employment, health, attention to public services. Catalonia and corruption, fortunately, have moved to a completely different level.
Despite saying that it is not on the agenda, Yolanda Díaz told La Vanguardia that she wanted to hold a consultation so that Catalonia would vote for a new political agreement in 2024.
I believe this process is going to require a lot of time, determination, patience and generosity. What the Catalan citizens need is to turn the page, live together and also channel the greater desire for self-government that a part of Catalonia may legitimately have, but always towards possibilist positions. But the positions today are far apart. The independence movement is in a self-determination referendum. And that is not going to happen because there is no constitution in the world, not even the Spanish one, that allows a segregation of a certain territory. In addition, I have always defended that a consultation in those terms would open up a greater division, when all I have done has been to build coexistence. And finally, because I believe that within the Constitution there is enough space for us to move forward and give a definitive solution to the situation that we found ourselves in 2017.
He says that he is convinced that he will win, but in the event that the PP wins, how do you think the Catalan issue will evolve?
Let’s see, I am convinced that Catalonia is going to be decisive in the socialist victory on July 23rd. When they ask me on many occasions: why are you so convinced that you are going to win? I say: there are many reasons, but one of them is that I am convinced that Catalonia is going to be the vanguard of that Spain that is advancing for the next four years. Spain needs four more years of progress, and if we talk about Catalonia, multiplied by 40. That is why I insist, I believe that Catalonia is going to give victory to the PSOE.
Now that we are in Madrid and we are neither in Brussels nor in Vilnius, what do you think of the file that the central electoral board has opened for you?
It’s strange, because the truth is that, let’s see, I can only abide by what the board says, although I have to say that I do not share it. A politician appears at a press conference or an interview and has to answer questions.
In this campaign, former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has turned in a very clear way to support him. Have you missed the same support from Felipe González?
I am very grateful for the commitment of José Luis. I have a good relationship with Felipe and whatever he thinks should be involved will be involved in the campaign. Felipe, José Luis and I, in my case, had to transform the party and thanks to this renovation we were later able to transform politics in Spain. And today I am a victim of the same strategy that they suffered when they were in government. I am amused because Mr. Feijóo tries to distance himself from Abascal, but, after all, they copy his own strategies to make opposition. And he raises false dilemmas that are also, by the way, very dangerous. Because what does it mean? That whoever does not vote for the PP and Vox is not Spain? The truth is that they have a rather peculiar way of uniting Spain.
What has been the experience of these last weeks giving interviews to media to which you had not granted interviews?
Let’s see, it is evident that there are media powers, also economic powers, for whom a clean and autonomous left-wing politician generates discomfort. I know that I have been uncomfortable for those powers. And I have tried to question the absolute disproportion between a published opinion deeply tilted towards conservative theses that do not correspond to what the public thinks on the street. So broadly speaking, there will be 50 percent of people who are conservative and 50 percent of people who are progressive. Therefore, there is a disproportion. Well, every moment has its desire, and I understood that now was the time to deflate the balloon of sanchismo, based on lies, manipulation and evil.
What do you regret the most about your management?
Let’s see, this government has approved 200 laws. It has faced a pandemic. We have had to deal seamlessly with rising prices and a war in the Ukraine. Therefore, we have not had a simple legislature. I think that clearly an error was those unwanted effects of the law of only yes is yes, but as I blurted out to Mr. Feijóo, one thing is a legal error that can be corrected, and another thing is to give in to machismo, as the PP has assumed .
Tell me one good thing that you recognize in Mr. Feijóo.
Well, well… Anyway, I think I would say that it is, that it is tough, right? He suddenly tells 20 lies and he tells them, anyway, and he doesn’t bat an eyelash. That’s to his credit.
What does Spain dream of?
Well, I would say that of full employment, 8 percent structural unemployment, a reference in ecological transition and digital transformation, and that we be the vanguard in gender equality rights and also in rights in favor of diversity. I think we have the best country in the world. We are a country that is admired abroad, modern, European, and I believe that we have to walk down that path.
