The plenary sessions of the Senate, which according to Alberto Núñez Feijóo himself are a “training” -he ironized suggesting that the president gives him control-, do not improve the balance of what was seen in those of Congress, a mutual challenge. The opposition leader’s offensive consisted yesterday of highlighting the disagreements within the coalition government and charging against what he considers the main waterway of the Executive: the legislative production of the Ministry of Equality. Again, as in previous sessions, he stepped on a tile with a sneaky puddle and got lost.
The timer was running out when he lashed out at the trans law, predicting that it would be “a botch” like the only yes is yes, asking Sánchez about the hormonal treatment of minors, the surgeries – giving rise to the hoax that is circulating these days about it– and accelerated against the timer exclaiming: “Mr. Sánchez, stop bothering good people, stop interfering in people’s lives.” Soon “good people” became a meme beyond the Plaza de la Marina Española. Sánchez saw the soft ball coming and returned it with a one-handed backhand and his best smile: “I never imagined, ladies and gentlemen, that recognizing rights would bother good people.”
It was the viral moment of an exchange that again focused on the denial of the other. Feijóo had begun by hoisting the largest: “Mr. Sánchez, Spain is tired of its Government and it is tired of you.” A recitation of the disagreements between the different ministries and a malevolent arrow followed: the resignations in the Ministry of Transport in the absence of dismissals in Equality prove “its weakness”, because “it cannot dismiss any high position of Podemos”. He accused Sánchez of sheltering himself in the Government and therefore of preferring to “protect the coalition than Spanish women.”
The president, who strives to convey the image that these exchanges entertain him more than worry him, recited, as an endorsement of the functioning and stability of his Executive, the three approved budgets, the hundreds of laws or the agreements with the social agents to the labor reform or the rise in pensions. But above all, he disputed socialist feminism to reproach the PP for trying to equip itself in the defense of women. He recalled the popular rejection of the 2010 abortion law shouting “Zapatero, butcher!” And he saved for the end a moment for the defenestration of Pablo Casado. He read one of Javier Maroto’s messages to the former popular leader, changing “Pablo” to “Alberto”: “Alberto, you always win when you speak with your heart as well as with your head, today you did it.” And he pressed: “Mr. Feijóo, when you get up, look to see if you feel anything in your back.”
