With barely three hours of sleep, Alberto Núñez Feijóo continued his electoral campaign, this time in Ciudad Real, and was able to see what the Spanish people think about what happened in the debate on Monday at Atresmedia. Applause, shouts of “president, president”, congratulations, selfies. It is what he experienced in the Atocha station in Madrid, inside the train, upon his arrival in Ciudad Real and through its streets, before giving a new rally in the open air, under unbearable heat.
There he talked about the debate. Jokingly: “I don’t know why he has 800 advisers”, “I don’t know why he locks himself up for four days in Moncloa”. But also seriously, with a message with which he intends to call the vote useful and warn of the dangers of dividing the vote and that there is not a clear majority. If that happens, the PP leader maintains, the only thing left is new elections, and he has no doubt that Pedro Sánchez will try, that he is playing “blockade.”
For Sánchez, he said, “the only thing left is for the ballot box to allow him to blockade the country.” He says it with the experience of what has already happened: “Do you remember the no is no? Do you remember when we had problems forming a government?” Well, now, he affirmed, the same thing could happen, “that they won’t let us form a government, that they blockade the country, and go to elections”, repeat elections to try to get the polls to benefit Sánchez more than what the polls now predict.
Feijóo also had an informal conversation with the journalists who cover his campaign. He considers that the President of the Government attended the debate “to see if they did not lose so much” but predicted that “they are going to lose by a lot, and we are going to win, and we are going to win by a lot”. But for that he needs “that we vote with enthusiasm, which the government no longer has.” But above all Feijóo needs, he said, “that we vote together”, that is, not to divide the vote. The president of the PP explains it with the example of Ciudad Real, which elects five deputies, and if the right-wing vote is divided, the result can be two, two one, while if it is not divided it would be PP three, PSOE 2. And that happens in five provinces, which represent 36 deputies, the 18 that are won plus the 18 that the other loses.
And for that, the president of the PP believes that the vote has been useful. Feijóo was convinced that the Vox voters who watched the debate are currently evaluating two options, “either they are thinking of changing the vote and voting for the PP”, or they have decided to change it, because they have realized “that Sánchez wants to govern losing”, which in the opinion of the popular leader is “a democratic anomaly, which has never occurred in this country”.
Feijóo did not hide, either during the rally or in the informal talk with the media, his satisfaction with how the debate turned out, “I knew it was going to work out for me, but that it was not going to work out.” And he is satisfied because he can mobilize the party, which was tired of the efforts of the municipal elections, but always with the warning that this is not the time to relax, that there is still a campaign.
In fact, the popular leader considers that only “if the vote is distributed” in the center-right spectrum, “Sánchez will be able to stay.” For this reason, Feijóo also warns about the possibility of staying with the fact that he has won the debate: “The worst is relaxation and euphoria” and the PP and the voters have to be clear “we have won the debate, not the elections.”
For Feijóo, the President of the Government attended the debate “to see if they did not lose so much” but predicted that “they are going to lose by a lot, and we are going to win, and we are going to win by a lot.” But for that he needs “that we vote with enthusiasm, which the government no longer has.” But above all Feijóo needs, he said, “that we vote together”, that is, not to divide the vote.
