The Minister of Science and Innovation and head of the PSOE list in Valencia, Diana Morant, receives La Vanguardia at the Socialist headquarters on Calle Hospital. She does it just a few hours before the left loses the Valencia Provincial Council, the last spring that she aspired to maintain after the institutional debacle of 28-M. Despite this, Morant is convinced that the first measures and announcements of the new PP and Vox governments will awaken progressive citizens.
Has there been a lack of self-criticism in the PSPV after the 28-M elections?
I don’t think so. Ximo Puig obtained a better result than in 2019 and 2015. You have to get the diagnosis right to be able to hit the recipe. PP and Ciudadanos have been unified and what has failed is our vote to the left: either due to demobilization or because they were fractured. Now, in the general elections, we are at stake if we continue advancing or going backwards in the conquest of rights and freedoms; the PSOE is the tool of all progressives, but also of the moderate voter, who does not like to look back.
Ximo Puig himself gave as reasons for the institutional debacle that the campaign had a very national framework. Do you agree with this criterion?
Yes. I would say that more than the national framework, what has happened is that a bubble of insidiousness and dehumanization had been generated around the figure of Pedro Sánchez and they were not talking about the increase in pensions, the SMI, the record employment figures, inflation. They were not talking about national issues either, but about what the right and the ultra-right want to talk about. We were not able to detect that the bubble was so big and to fight it. Now, in this campaign we do get to talk about everything. We can talk about everything. We thought that this message of resuscitating ETA was not going to sink in, but it has. If we have to explain that ETA ended in 2012, let’s explain it, but let’s also talk about the things that affect the daily life of citizens.
It is true that the right wing managed to impose some campaign frameworks, but there were also particular issues. There are many who consider that Sánchez did not have enough sensitivity to respond to Valencian demands such as the reform of the financing system.
The system expired in 2013 when the PP governed with an absolute majority and González Pons (head of the list in these PP elections for Valencia) was a deputy in Congress. Here Fabra governed with an absolute majority and they did not solve the problem. The PSOE has governed, but without that parliamentary majority, we need the PP to change the system and we have not been able to. What we have done has been to treat the Valencian Community with its specific weight with the Covid or Next Generation funds. We have also recognized its population weight in state investments. We still have the pending issue of financing, but the main enemy is the PP -because Feijóo does not believe in the population criterion- and Vox, which seeks the suppression of autonomies. The PSOE does want to change the system.
Ximo Puig said a few days ago that he regretted that the Government had not made at least one proposal.
There has been a proposal.
On the distribution criteria, but not a model proposal or a debate with the autonomies. Why haven’t they?
The proposal of the criterion was the beginning of the debate. It is true that the Government of Spain has not promoted any law that could be lost in the Congress of Deputies. We have approved all the laws that the Government has promoted. When we have considered that something does not have the maturity to advance, we have not promoted it.
It is also difficult to understand that the government of Pedro Sánchez increased the ecological flow without seeking consensus when the Valencian government was against this issue. Why didn’t you wait?
The issue of water is a sensitive issue and, with climate change, we are going to have to look for alternatives in a situation of drought and lack of water. Europe requires us to have ecological flows for an environmental issue. This requirement arises from an EU ruling against the plan of Minister Tejerina of the PP that obliges to put ecological flow in the Tagus and that the current Government has been forced to apply. The PP always uses water as a reason for conflict. The PSOE is in the real solution that involves undertaking water infrastructures that help us guarantee water forever. Apart from the fact that we have transferred more water than the PP, we are undertaking works worth 600 million euros.
You spoke of the frameworks that marked the autonomic ones, but the certain thing is that in this campaign the PSOE has not just escaped from these debates. What fails the campaign strategy?
The best poll is on 23-J. Let’s see what happens. I run into many people who are really surprised by the decisions that Vox is making and that the PP is embracing. There is a social majority that does not understand that we deviate from the minutes of silence for the victims of sexist violence or that Disney movies are censored because two girls kiss each other. We are seeing what a PP slave to Vox ruling means. And what the polls also say is that the PP will govern hand in hand with Abascal if they are given the numbers. I believe that the public will stand up to this scenario.
And the option for the PSOE to abstain so that Vox does not have that power of influence?
It is that Mr. Feijóo has not considered, for example, that the first force govern in Extremadura or in Elche. Feijóo’s law, which has no exception, is that, whether he has won or lost the elections, if they give him the numbers with Vox, he will govern.
He says that people are realizing the consequences of these pacts, but it seems that the left is not sufficiently mobilized to turn the polls around.
People have to go vote. We play a lot. They are not just any elections. The first decisions that are being taken by the new governments after 28-M are authentic setbacks that even affect democracy itself. We played something that seemed totally outdated in our country. We have to convince people that their vote is important.
Carlos Mazón is already president of the Generalitat and one of the things in his speech that drew the most attention was his proposal to maintain the rank of vice-president for the Department of Equality. What do you think?
Sounds like cynicism to me. Like when I heard Feijóo say in an interview that he was going to personally carry Equality when he called a harsh divorce for a conviction for sexist violence; he gives me very few guarantees. The problem is not Vox, it is a PP that buys all of Vox’s ideology. I don’t care who carries the portfolio if, in the end, what they are going to do is surrender to Vox’s values ??and principles.
Do you have the feeling that there is a sector of the population that has lost its fear of the extreme right?
The vast majority of citizens who vote for Vox do not know what Vox consists of. Now that we have moved from the vague and the abstract to the concrete issues, they are beginning to know it. Those of us who have had more contact, because our parents or our grandparents have told us, what Francoist Spain meant, we identify in Vox’s speech that desire to return to that Spain in black and white. Maybe younger people don’t identify what it really means. But we’ve had these long days since May 28 to find out. The more the Vox project materializes, the more citizens will move away from it.
Minister, you know that it is not a uniquely Spanish issue that the extreme right is growing throughout Europe and governing in many countries. There is an acceptance of the extreme right that has not been seen since the 1930s.
Yes, we see it in general, but the moderate right in Europe does not agree with the extreme right.
Well, only in Germany because in other countries it does agree.
Well, it seems to me a transfer that is going to take its toll on all of us.
One of the arguments used by the PP against Sánchez is that he has agreed with Bildu and the independentistas to approve laws in the Spanish Parliament. Has it been a mistake?
Has it been a mistake to approve a rise in pensions that the PP voted against? Has it been a mistake to approve the labor reform where Bildu and the independentistas voted with the PP? We do not have government agreements with Bildu or with ERC. Agreeing on a government is what the PP is doing here with Vox. What the PSOE does is collect the votes of the political forces in the chamber to support the laws that we consider good for the people. The PP and Vox agree to the contrary, to cut the rights of citizens.
After the defeat on 28-M, the PSPV has begun a journey into the desert and internal tensions are already taking place that may question the leadership of Ximo Puig. What opinion does he have?
I do not see a journey in the desert. We have to recover from the loss of the Consell and Ximo Puig has already said that we are working on an alternative and in the position that, four years from now, we can recover the Generalitat Valenciana.
What role do you see yourself playing in the PSPV in the coming years?
At the moment, as a deputy and voting for Pedro Sánchez to become president again.
