With the first one more measured and the second more belligerent, Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz synchronized their watches and this was evidenced in their respective replies to the speech by Ramón Tamames, the alternative candidate in the vote of no confidence promoted by Vox that yesterday It began to be debated and that today it will end with a vote in Congress.
This harmony between the President of the Government and the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, which is expected to be staged again today, wanted to convey yesterday an image of the potential that the alliance of the entire political space of the left in Spain would have to avoid the change of political cycle that at the head of the Popular Party encourages Alberto Núñez Feijóo –the great absentee in the debate– with the concurrence of the extreme right.
In Moncloa they highlighted this strategic synchronization between Sánchez and Díaz, essential for an eventual reissue of the progressive coalition government after the general elections scheduled for next December. Meanwhile, from the PSOE they continued to demand that Podemos bury a tomahawk that, in their opinion, only serves to divide and demobilize the left, in addition to allowing Vox to maintain a parliamentary representation that makes it easier for Feijóo to be the next president. of the government.
“This is only the beginning, the coalition government remains for a long time,” warned Yolanda Díaz, singularly, to the PP bench. The vice president – ??who will confirm her candidacy for the general elections on April 2 and yesterday arrived in Congress escorted by Joan Subirats and Alberto Garzón – displayed a forceful defense of the management of the coalition government between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos. With express thanks both to Sánchez himself and to the majority of the members of the Council of Ministers, from the vice president Nadia Calviño to the ministers of the purple formation, Irene Montero and Ione Belarra, all of them very significant. “We govern humbly better than those who have preceded us in the government of Spain,” she assured.
The session began with the defense of the motion of censure against the Government by its promoter, Santiago Abascal, in front of the 52 Vox deputies. With a harsh drawing of the consequences of a mandate by Sánchez that, in his opinion, leads Spain to ruin after trampling on all rights and freedoms, and destroying the reconciliation that the Spanish achieved in the transition. An ostensibly ruder speech than the one the candidate, Ramón Tamames, had planned.
Sánchez jumped in to refute all the “angry expressions” that he blamed on Abascal. The leader of the PSOE and that of Vox starred in the true clash of censorship, while Tamames waited for his turn to intervene. He couldn’t do it until two and a half hours after the start of the session. The head of the Executive put all the spotlights on Feijóo, despite his absence, for opting to abstain from the ultra-right initiative: “The PP is as responsible as Vox for the immense damage that this delusional motion of censure does to Spanish democracy ”.
The President of the Government warned that this announced abstention of the PP before this second motion of censure promoted by Vox in this legislature “is a deferred payment”, which hinted that it will end up costing Feijóo dearly. “Be careful: this business is one of those that leave a stain,” he warned the PP bench.
Sánchez denounced “the strategy of criminalization and hatred” of the extreme right, as a PP gone crazy, with a cascade of “messages harmful to democracy.” “Vox is to Spanish politics like ultra-processed food is to the Mediterranean diet,” the PSOE leader ironized. “Vox is the glutamate of the right, just a radical and extreme flavor enhancer,” he charged.
After the tough duel between Sánchez and Abascal, it was finally Tamames’ turn. At the last minute of his speech, the veteran economist, assuming that the motion will not progress, asked that “at least” the supposed “overrepresentation” of the pro-independence forces be put an end to – and the autonomous or regionalist parties, which in a sense strict, they would enjoy the same presumed advantage – as a way of correcting the course of the country.
Tamames showed so much interest in this issue, to which he referred at the beginning and end of his speech, that he forgot to commit to calling early general elections in the event that this vote of no confidence wins, despite the fact that this was the alleged mission of the initiative promoted by Vox, open the polls.
Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz then alternated to replicate Tamames in turns. “Honestly, I don’t think this was the best idea he ever had in his life,” warned the Prime Minister. “Vox is not just another party,” he pointed out. It is not what the PCE or the CDS represented in their day, where Tamames himself was a member. “Vox is something else,” Sánchez insisted. “Those who are promoting his candidacy are the successors of Blas Piñar,” he stressed, referring to the former leader of the extreme right-wing formation Fuerza Nueva during the Spanish transition to democracy. Sánchez thus regretted that Tamames “contributes to whitening” now to the extreme right.
The veteran professor grew impatient at Sánchez’s long reply, and even interrupted his speech to reproach him “for coming with a bill of 20 pages” to answer him. But then Yolanda Díaz took over, and also reproached the former communist for offering to be the ultra-right candidate: “Democracy is deteriorating,” she reproached him, in a content tone speech -especially economic and Labor – much more severe with the professor.
In the afternoon session, the spokespersons, among others, of the investiture bloc groups took the floor. Among them, the PNV spokesman, Aitor Esteban, rescued the fabulous true story of a Tamames methane tanker, which ran into fifty flying saucers, an allegory that served him to provide an aggressive corrective to the ex-communist, whom he called a “peacock”. . And he rebuked him: “No wonder he was one of the ministries of the coup leader General Armada.” Gabriel Rufián, ERC spokesman, was not much more compassionate, although his tone was more lamenting than reprimanding: “Those around him are the grandchildren of those who put him in jail. But that is not reconciliation. It’s a surrender.”
