The blue bow on the lapel that all the deputies and senators of the PP have recovered as a symbol of the fight against ETA in the 1990s made it possible to venture early on where the intervention that Cuca Gamarra would carry out today in his turn to reply to the President of the Government in the debate on the state of the nation.
But what nobody counted on is that the popular leader in Congress, who yesterday acted as spokesperson for the opposition given the impossibility of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to participate as a senator and not a deputy, would start directly from there. For accusing the Government of wanting to rewrite history by going hand in hand with Bildu, the “heirs of ETA”, to approve various measures such as the recent Democratic Memory Law.
The battery of popular attacks on Sánchez, greased last weekend during the tributes to Miguel Ángel Blanco -assassinated by ETA 25 years ago-, has lasted almost a third of the 30 minutes of Gamarra’s first intervention. Displacing the bad economic omens due to inflation, as well as the consequent popular recipes to combat them, which from Genoa assured that it would be the central axis of his strategy.
For this reason, “in his memory”, he wanted to start his speech “keeping” in his time “a minute of silence” that was seconded by all the parliamentarians who stood up and remained silent. Among them, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist caucus, as well as the five representatives of EH Bildu -which includes those from Sortu, heiress of Batasuna- present in the hemicycle.
Gamarra’s gesture did not cause the intended division of the Lower House and, incidentally, he was reprimanded by the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, who reminded him that he had skipped several points of the regulation since the minutes of silence must be previously considered in the Board of Spokespersons and be approved by consensus.
But Gamarra followed his own. The scope of his strategy for the tributes to the Ermua councilor, and the fear that Vox, the next parliamentary group to intervene, would capitalize on today’s, has been key to structuring the popular leader’s speech. To the point of putting both things – the management of the Government and the fight against ETA – on the same level. Predicting that “that same spirit of civic rebellion that fed the Spanish 25 years ago is what now places us in front of this Government.”
Engaged in economic matters, Gamarra has described Sánchez’s speech as “insulting”, since he does not present any proposal to face the two great problems: inflation and the energy crisis, and has criticized that, in addition to making up the bad data that threaten to Spain, “he delegates the responsibility to the Spaniards”, to whom he asks for an effort that he is not willing to make for governing the country too far from reality.
Gamarra has not made any reference to the specific measures announced by Sánchez this morning and has stuck to the script drawn up from Genoa the day before. Sánchez has noticed this and has asked him on several occasions if he will support his package of measures, including the exceptional tax on large electricity companies and banks. But he has pricked bone. And while Feijóo, without speaking a turn, held his gaze, Gamarra lowered his, immersing himself in his notes.
“The Frankenstein government does not give more of itself, it is exhausted. And it even prevents them from managing 7% of the so-called European funds. It is another lost opportunity. But not theirs but that of the Spanish” Gamarra has sentenced searching with the look at the complicit support of his bench colleagues in a debate that, for the moment, is fleeing from the anger and controversy some plenary sessions not so far away to the point that the president of the Chamber, Meritxell Batet, has only called the order to the deputies.
In his attacks, Gamarra lamented that “today Spain is a more unequal country and Spaniards are more at risk of falling into poverty than when you arrived at Moncloa. Your social policies have failed and the reality is that you are going to leave Spain much worse than he found it,” he predicted.
At this point, he has reproached him for not letting himself be “helped” and not accepting Feijóo’s “outstretched hand” by accepting his measures, such as lowering personal income tax for middle and lower classes, streamlining European funds and reducing his “macrogovernment”. “Excuses are not needed but measures and reforms, and we have been able to see that it has no more than a patch,” he emphasized.
After accusing Sánchez of being the OECD Government that “tax pressure has increased the most”, he assured that they should be “ashamed of asking Spaniards to save on air conditioning while paying the most expensive Government and in history”, with 22 ministers and more than “800 advisers who do not even fit in Moncloa’s offices”.
The one who has fully entered the economic situation has been the president of Vox, who has warned that the situation in Spain is very serious and runs the risk of being dramatic if Pedro Sánchez continues in the Government. Santiago Abascal has stressed that the country already needs an alternative that expels him from the Moncloa, for which he has woven a speech aimed in equal parts at criticizing the PSOE and at attracting the PP to whom he has extended his hand to “repeal all the legislative crap extremism that has been brought to this House and the separatist illegalities”.
In his speech in the debate on the state of the nation, Abascal has accused Sánchez of using the institutions for his personal goals and ideological interests and has reiterated his intention to put an end to all the “legislative crap” of the coalition government.
“We will rebuild everything that they destroy and we will raise everything that they demolish: from the economy to the crosses,” said the leader of Vox, who has announced his intention to appeal the Democratic Memory law to the Constitutional Court, which will be voted on Thursday in Congress.
Directly addressing the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, he has stressed that ideological debates are not sterile and has warned that, as long as they do not want to confront each other, the left advances in its ideological agenda. For this reason, he has stressed that “only from firmness can we establish a real alternative” that, despite the differences, serves to “give the Spaniards what they demand: the expulsion of this government and its policies.”
