Esteban González Pons (València, 1964) is part of the “hard core” of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. This Valencian, with an extensive political career and a good connoisseur of European politics, where he has spent almost a decade as an MEP, is the man who advises the president of the PP on issues of Justice and, especially, on Foreign Policy. He is the head of the list for Valencia and it is reasonable to think that in a Feijóo government he could end up occupying a prominent role.
He was in the team that helped Feijóo to prepare the face to face with Sánchez. What advice did he give you?
It is not necessary to advise Feijóo. We negotiated how many debates, where, and the conditions, and Marta Varela organized a team that prepared the material. The strategic direction of the debate was Feijóo himself.
He didn’t give you any special clues or guidance?
Perhaps my great contribution is to say the phrases that one friend says to another.
Feijóo proposed a pact to Sánchez so that he governs the most voted list of 23-J. But this offer has not been made by the PP for the autonomies or for the cities.
There is an immediate response that consists of remembering that we offered him and the PSOE rejected it; but what happened in the debate goes further and goes deeper. The government of Spain has always corresponded to the party with the most votes, and maintaining this constitutional custom means that faith in representative democracy in Spain has not cracked. Perhaps for those of us who aspire for the government of the most voted list to extend to all areas, starting with a pact at the national level would be a beginning.
Was it a way for Feijóo to have an excuse, an argument, to justify a future pact with Vox?
No. I think that with Feijóo’s gesture of putting an agreement on top so that the most voted list governs, three things became clear. The first, that Sánchez does not believe that he can win, because if he believed it immediately, he would have accepted that offer that would allow him to govern without Esquerra and without Bildu. The second, that the will of the PP is to govern alone, that we do not aspire to form a coalition, but to avoid it. And the third, that after the elections the first option of the PP is the abstention of the PSOE and that we will only consider other scenarios if the PSOE refuses to abstain. And with all this, what we can ultimately do is, if the PSOE refuses to abstain, turn to the socialist voters so that they give us what their leaders deny us.
On 28-M a national campaign was set up that favored the PP, with criticism of the pacts with Bildu or the Law of only yes is yes. Are these frameworks maintained or do you think that the agreements with Vox have altered them?
I believe that the framework of the campaign of the regional and municipal governments was “sanchismo”. And that the framework of 23-J is also. What Spain is deciding is Sánchez yes or Sanchez no. The PP’s strategy is for the Spanish to rule on everything that Sanchismo has brought us and that Sanchismo has taken from us. But Sánchez’s boundless vanity, as vast as the Pacific sea, collaborates with our strategy. Any framework that wanted to be imposed is Sánchez himself who has destroyed it. His narcissism causes people to only talk about him and his narcissism.
Why hasn’t there been a general criterion of the PP with the pacts with Vox after 28-M?
The PP tries to form in each place the government that it is possible to form and that is most similar to the needs of each place. In Valencia and Extremadura we have no more votes than the left, and we need to form a coalition. In Murcia, the Balearic Islands or Aragon we have more votes than the left opposition and we believe that it is justified to govern alone. In Barcelona we have facilitated the government for the PSOE and the PNV in Vitoria, we are a transversal party that is capable of dialogue between the left and the right.
Was the Valencian Community Feijóo’s most desired object?
Spain has four electoral motors: Andalusia, Madrid, Catalonia and the Valencian Community. In Catalonia, the PP has more difficulties becoming a majority party, it already is in Madrid and Andalusia, and the Valencian party remains, which usually responds to the national electoral map. In the Valencian Community, the one who wins later in Spain usually wins, which is why this autonomy was a thermometer.
What do you think when Vox exposes these offensives against gender violence, equality policies or against the LGTBI collective?
I don’t understand. Because Vox is a party that arose from a patriotic wound, a reaction of the Spanish right to the growth of the extreme left and the Catalan independence movement. Vox is not a party to fight against individual liberties, and each time it talks less about the unity of Spain and more about intra-family violence and rainbow flags. He lives an ideological evolution that is difficult to understand, like those gestures that he carries out in many places, separating himself from the banner against sexist violence. I think that the reason with which they justified their entry into the Spanish political map has gotten out of hand.
The leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, made it clear in an interview with this newspaper that he does not intend to agree with the ultra-right. What does he think of this position?
They are lucky that the Greens agree with them and the Socialists let them govern; so we could say the same. If Sumar were capable of agreeing with us, as the German Greens do in many federated states with the CDU, or the socialists were capable of abstaining as the SPD does, it is possible to refuse. The PP has the problem that the PSOE does not intend to abstain for the investiture and that we cannot govern with Vox, so the PP cannot govern if it does not have an absolute majority?
There is talk of the possibility that Manfred Weber is proposing to broaden the base of the European right in the EU institutions, giving entry to the pro-Atlantist ultra-rights. Next year there are European elections. Will there be a change of cycle in the historical consensus between social democrats and conservatives in the EU?
I don’t believe it. The EU is a product of the joint work of socialists, democrats and liberals, and those who are not, except the Greens, are anti-Europeans. Faced with growing anti-Europeanism, those of us who are the authors of the European project must continue together. I believe that the next government of the EU will once again be a coalition between socialists, Christian democrats and liberals. And it will be a council and a commission that will defend European values ??against populism and nationalism. We believed that they were defeated after the fall of the Berlin Wall and that they have been reborn with as much danger as in the 1930s in Europe.
So, do you rule out that Weber allows these ultra forces to enter the institutions to corner the socialists?
I don’t even think it’s Weber’s will, Our will is to form a coalition government with socialists and liberals. Another thing is how parties to our right can be redirected to Europeanism, as in the case of Giorgia Meloni. The immigration and asylum pact carries the vote against Vox or the Polish and Hungarian governments, but the vote in favor of the Italian executive. Perhaps the idea is to attract Meloni to the moderate right, but that does not alter the European coalition between socialists, conservatives and liberals.
Would the PP change substantially if Spain governs the policy with Morocco?
Let’s go back to the relationship with Morocco that we had before the famous letter that nobody knows why it was written, or who wrote it, or for what purpose. We are going to return to a policy with Morocco in accordance with the resolution of the UN Security Council and agreed upon in the Spanish Parliament, and we are going to restore relations with Algeria.
Would the decision be consulted with the US?
Spanish policy with regard to Morocco is Spanish and does not need to be consulted except with the Spanish parliament. What I do not think that the turn that Pedro Sánchez has taken with foreign policy with Morocco has to do with Biden, it has more to do with the theft of information from his mobile phone by Pegasus. We will consult with the parliamentary opposition, what we will not do is make important decisions in international politics without consensus with the opposition, because we are talking about State policy.
Have you started contacts with Algeria?
No. We are an opposition party that respects the initiative that the Government must have and therefore as long as we are in the opposition we will not do anything different from what Spanish diplomats do, but as we are the Government our relationship with Morocco must be privileged, special, brother countries, but without ceasing to have a normal relationship with Algeria.
You recently said that Sánchez has not consulted anything about the European presidency or the sending of troops to hot areas like Ukraine now.
Nothing. Sánchez does not tell us anything about Defense policy or Foreign policy; nor the Minister of Defense or the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Regarding the European presidency, we have held zero meetings, and zero meetings between the foreign and defense ministers with me when troops are sent. It is not communicated to us, and when we ask permission to visit troops abroad, we are denied. There is no dialogue between the PP and the PSOE for State policies, it is something unprecedented in the EU countries, because the Government does not want to. In Europe they are surprised with this attitude of Sánchez. I will tell you more, knowing that the next presidency was Spanish, the Swedish prime minister invited Feijóo and me to visit him, and we went there and he informed us about the Swedish presidency and what he expected for the Spanish presidency. We know more from him than from the Spanish Government.
José Manuel Albares said in an interview in this newspaper that the PP only conceives the policy with Latin America with the countries with which they have ideological affinity.
Albares is the best foreign minister that Morocco has had in many years. He does the Spanish foreign policy that a Moroccan minister would do if we allowed him to have an office in Madrid. He has left Latin America, and is a minister those countries know nothing about. We have a very fluid relationship, and Feijóo, who was president of Galicia, has a frequent relationship with the Spanish communities in Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Cuba and Brazil. We have visited many countries and I have had close contacts with Lula’s executive in anticipation of the change of government in Spain. Spanish politics must be above political parties, but the defense of freedom and democracy in Latin America must also be above us and fighting for democracy in Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua must not separate us Spaniards. The strange thing is that Albares is not together with me defending the Venezuelan opposition and pointing out the Maduro government as a persecutor of freedom that must be tried in the International Criminal Court.
What do you think when Vox asks to outlaw Bildu or Esquerra Republicana?
I don’t share it at all. I believe that criminals convicted of terrorism, as long as they do not repent and collaborate in clarifying crimes and ask for forgiveness, should not be candidates. Which does not mean that all ideas do not have the right to be defended, even those with which we do not share anything.
What would Feijóo’s policy be like as president of the Government with Catalonia?
Feijóo has been president of Galicia for many years, a bilingual community, a historical community, with its own personality, and in that sense very similar to Catalonia. There are differences, but they are similar in the way of integrating into Spain. More autonomist sensitivity than Feijóo, of course he does not have any president who has preceded him in Spain. It is a great opportunity for those of us who believe in an integrated Catalonia without giving up its personality. Feijóo offers a great opportunity to Catalanism to return to constitutionalism, I don’t know when we made a mistake and separated Catalanism and constitutionalism, when the Spanish Constitution is also the daughter of Catalanism. In some sections he is even the daughter of the Catalanists.
Are the bridges that were blown up under the government of Mariano Rajoy and the main Catalan political actors being rebuilt?
We are rebuilding many bridges with Catalonia, we are talking to many people, we are offering ourselves as a solution in Catalonia, because we are a solution, and our attitude in the Barcelona City Council confirms this.
Will there be a change in the financing model if the PP governs?
It is a lie that the PSOE or the PP can solve it. Feijóo wants to resolve it, but he will need the PSOE, as is also the case with the Valencian Civil Law. They are examples of victims of the lack of dialogue between the PSOE and the PP. We need to recover the diallgo and in this sense I want to express my appreciation to Ximo Puig, who has been a good Valencian president, and who yesterday offered five pacts; he made the government of Carlos Mazón the most transversal.
You, who are a man of culture and also a writer, what do you feel when you see Vox’s decisions to censor shows, cancel magazines or limit the reading of certain books?
Well, very sad. Censorship is the death of intelligence. But make no mistake, Vox censorship is an ant with the censorship of political correctness that is corroding our freedom to think. We live in a world where the censors outnumber the censored. During the dictatorship there were a few censors and many censored, but now, the Woke movement of political correctness and the reaction from the other extreme is causing the number of censors to exceed the number of censors. We live in bad times for freedom of thought.
Would you like to be Foreign Minister?
I would like Feijóo to be president of the Government. I was based in Brussels, I had a reasonable political position, many contacts, and I have left everything to return to the arena of electoral competition at the age of 58 because I believe that Feijóo is the president my country needs.
