“If we have never wanted war… how can we not bet on peace?” Pedro Sánchez defended yesterday from the Brdo castle, in the Slovenian town of Kranj, on the final scale of his first preparatory tour for the semester of the Spanish rotating presidency of the European Union.
At the same time, from Madrid, Minister Ione Belarra, general secretary of Podemos, encouraged the clash in the government coalition by reproaching the PSOE for the “mistake” of having contributed to the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
The head of the Executive, without expressly alluding to the dispute that he is settling with United We Can for the shipment of Spanish weapons to combat the invasion of Russia, within the framework of the strategy of NATO and the EU itself, emphatically rejected any equidistance in the face of a war which, shortly, celebrates its first anniversary. And he urged to remember its origin, which he attributed to “pure imperialism”.
“Nobody here wanted a war, except one person,” he warned, referring to Vladimir Putin. The Ukraine, he assured, never had any urge to conquer any territory from Russia. “It is important not to be equidistant. In no facet of life can you be equidistant between the aggressor and the attacked. Here there is an aggressor and a victim, and we are with the victim”, stressed the Spanish president, during an appearance with the Prime Minister of Slovenia, Robert Golob.
What lies behind this war, warned Sánchez, is that “the terms of European and therefore global security are being redefined.” Thus, European principles and values ??such as “respect for human rights, an international order based on rules, the freedom of peoples to decide their future or their territorial integrity” are at stake, as they are violated, he warned. “We want peace,” she reiterated. “But the basis of that peace has to be defined around the proposals made by the person being attacked, which is President Zelenski and his country,” he argued. It is the only way, hand in hand with the international community, to “walk towards peace and the end of war”. “Of course we are committed to peace,” he insisted.
Among the expectations that Sánchez has for the semester of the Spanish presidency of the European Union, which begins on July 1, there is even the desire for this war to come to an end before the end of the year, not without large doses, also of diplomatic persuasion.
Sánchez, however, wanted to publicly reduce yesterday the escalation of tension that in recent weeks has confronted the PSOE and Unidas Podemos within the government coalition, also due to the reform of the law of only yes is yes. “Despite the discrepancies, which obviously exist, the important thing is to vindicate everything that has been done, which has been a lot and very important, by the progressive coalition government,” he defended. Just the day before, he recalled, Congress definitively approved the LGTBI law and the reform of the abortion law, which he assured places Spain “at the forefront in the recognition of women’s rights and freedoms.” And, in addition to what has already been done by the coalition government, “everything we have left to do.”
Faced with the struggle with the formation purple by the reform of the law on sexual freedom, Sánchez assured that “maintaining consent at the heart of the law is perfectly compatible with resolving the social alarm caused”, he justified, referring to the reductions in sentences to sexual offenders that is causing the judicial application of the new norm.
“I am proud of the work that all the government ministers do,” he stressed. “And we still have a lot to do,” he reiterated. There are still ten months left for the next general elections.
The Slovenian prime minister, at his side, threw a good cape at Sánchez in this regard. “Spanish politics, in the field of women’s rights and also of the LGTBI community, is an example at a European level,” Golob highlighted. “Maybe they are not sufficiently aware in Spain, but they are a progressive force in this area in Europe. I would be very satisfied if in Slovenia we were able to reach this level of rights as they have in Spain, ”said the Slovenian president, who congratulated Sánchez for his“ courageous attitude ”by him.