The general elections scheduled for December will settle the only government alternative that Spain faces, if a blockade of the investiture or a failed legislature like that of 2016 is not repeated. Or Pedro Sánchez achieves his re-election, at the head of another coalition Executive with the political space to the left of the PSOE, or Alberto Núñez Feijóo culminates the change in the political cycle to which he aspires, and arrives at Moncloa, alone, as he wants, or hand in hand with Vox as predicted by the polls that give him electoral victory . There’s no more.
Sánchez considers that the debate on the motion of censure promoted by Vox that begins today in Congress, still with uncertain effects, is “the best opportunity” for citizens to visualize, before the general elections – and even before the municipal elections and regional elections of May 28–, both alternatives. For this reason, his objective today is to “confront” the antagonistic political projects of a progressive government with those of “a hypothetical government of the right and the extreme right.” The PSOE leader will appear in the debate as the only alternative to the PP and Vox tandem. “Citizens have to see what the alternatives are before the next elections.”
And Sánchez will do it together with his second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who is expected to also intervene today on behalf of the coalition Executive in the aftershocks to confront the right and the ultra-right, despite the fact that in Moncloa they keep under seven keys the strategy that will deploy in the motion of censure, to feed expectations. Precisely yesterday, Díaz announced that it will be next April 2 when she will reveal her candidacy for the next general elections.
Sánchez and Díaz, thus, will rise today in Congress as the only alternative to a possible coalition between Feijóo and Abascal.
Sánchez’s objective in this debate will be Feijóo. The President of the Government will put all the spotlights on the leader of the PP, although he does not even attend the plenary session -despite the fact that as a senator he could do so-, for which reason in Moncloa they warn that “he is not showing courage and does not show his face ”. The announced abstention of the PP in this second motion of no confidence from the extreme right against the leader of the PSOE also charges the batteries of the government’s discourse: “Feijóo is linking his political future to the extreme right.”
This was denounced yesterday by the government spokeswoman, the socialist Isabel Rodríguez. “Instead of opposing the motion of censure, there will be an abstention by the PP. And what Feijóo is going to promote is neither more nor less than tying his political future to the extreme right, ”she warned.
The minister spokesperson insisted that Feijóo assumed the leadership of the PP, almost a year ago now, boasting of being a “moderate” leader, to distinguish himself from his predecessor in office, Pablo Casado. But if Casado voted no to Vox’s first motion of no confidence against Sánchez, in October 2020, now Feijóo’s PP will abstain, already in the run-up to the 28-M elections.
“Feijóo’s first decision in relation to the extreme right was the formation of the Government in Castilla y León, and it seems that he has concluded that he must continue this path, whenever arithmetic allows it, to agree with Vox,” he criticized. Rodriguez. The Executive of the PP in Castilla y León, in fact, was the first autonomous government in Spain – and the only one, for now – to which the extreme right was incorporated. The government spokeswoman insisted that the right and the extreme right “are shaking hands.” “This motion of censure is the marriage capitulations of the right and the extreme right,” she denounced.
In Moncloa they insist on highlighting their utmost respect for the constitutional mechanism of the motion of no confidence, thanks to which Sánchez himself won the presidency of the Government in 2018. But they admit that, on this occasion, it is a “very unique” motion. . To begin with, because Santiago Abascal is not presented as an alternative, despite being the promoter of the initiative. In his place, the veteran Ramón Tamames will do so as “instrumental candidate”. “Vox does not dare to show its face”, they stir up in the Moncloa. But Sánchez, they warn, will show “absolute respect” before his candidacy.
