“It seems that they have become afraid, a lot.” After long months on the defensive, due to the negotiations with the Catalan independence movement to approve an Amnesty law for those accused of the process that allowed the new investiture of Pedro Sánchez and on which the course of the legislature now depends, in the Government and the PSOE leadership sees the time to turn the tables and go on the offensive, given some “confessions” by Alberto Núñez Feijóo in which the leader of the Popular Party opened the door to pardoning Carles Puigdemont, weighed the amnesty or questioned whether it could be no crime of terrorism can be attributed to the former president of the Generalitat.
In this new offensive strategy, also in the final stretch of the Galician electoral campaign, the first vice president of the Government and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, made some statements this Monday from Ferraz, in which she demanded that Feijóo “give explanations” about the meetings and negotiations of the PP with Junts per Catalunya, and also that “apologize for having lied to the Spaniards, for having fomented tension with the sole desire to destabilize the Government and make noise, noise and noise from lies.” ”. “Explanations are urgently needed,” Montero stated.
For the socialists, these “confessions” by Feijóo, away from the spotlights and microphones, represent an amendment to the entire fierce opposition strategy of the PP against pardons and amnesty, and by linking the Catalan independence movement with terrorism. And, at the same time, they assure that they are right about their reunion agenda to defuse the political conflict in Catalonia.
Montero has highlighted that all of Spain has been able to “expose the lies and hypocrisy of the PP in relation to Catalonia”, after long months in which the socialists have had to endure “insults, harassment at our headquarters and even attacks on some of our militants”, on the part of the extreme right, but encouraged with “a complicit silence” on the part of Feijóo. “The opposition of the PP has been so serious that, although they fundamentally agree with our policy, they have opted for an irresponsible strategy of tension,” denounced the vice president. “Everything, exclusively, for a partisan interest,” she lamented.
“We have heard everything these months, that we were breaking up Spain, that we were betraying the Constitution, that we were attacking the equality of Spaniards, opening a dismissal process or turning the Cortes into a forum for blackmail,” Montero lamented. “And now we have discovered that Feijóo blatantly lied to all Spaniards, with cynicism and hypocrisy. Now we discover that when the lights go off, the PP recognizes that our policy of reunion and overcoming the drama that they caused in 2017 is correct,” he highlighted.
The socialist leader has criticized that “the hypocrisy of the PP has reached incredible levels.” Because, as she has stressed, “it was during her government that the greatest territorial crisis of democracy arose,” which the PSOE later had to manage, “with high doses of generosity to ensure that coexistence can open up.” passed”. First, with the pardons, and now with the amnesty. But the PP, instead of collaborating in normalizing the situation, “has worked every day for destabilization, and there is no greater display of antipatriotism.” “The lie,” Montero has assured, is the only “conducting thread” of Feijóo’s opposition.
The vice president has assured that Feijóo has now acknowledged “that he would have no problem pardoning Puigdemont, that he was considering granting the amnesty, and that he does not see terrorism attributable to Puigdemont.” But she recalled that the pardons for the independence leaders condemned by the process “were harshly criticized by the PP, they literally said that they were a betrayal of Spain”, and she encouraged the demonstrations in the streets against the pardon measure. “Why have they lied that way to so many people who believed them in good faith?” she asked.
“Now we know that it was intended to grant and legislate in favor of amnesty,” Montero insisted. And he has pointed out that it would be interesting to know if during the 24 hours in which Feijóo considered it, the PP consulted with the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal. “Did he say no out of conviction or because he knew that his Vox partner would never support that measure?” he questioned. “He has acknowledged that he thought about it,” Montero said about Feijóo. “He thought about it at the same time that he encouraged citizens to demonstrate against the amnesty,” he criticized. “I don’t remember a greater example of hypocrisy,” he stressed.
“The reality is that the amnesty is the way to turn the page, definitively, and facilitate, for example, that all the officials who in some way were involved in the process can leave behind a stage of confrontation, starting from scratch,” he said. defended Montero.
The socialist leader has also stressed that now “Feijóo does not see terrorism in Puigdemont’s actions.” “Why then does he continue to exploit terrorism to muddy the playing field?” she asked. “Not even he believes what he says,” she said.
“This is something unprecedented, we are perplexed,” acknowledged Montero, who has denounced Feijóo’s “political ruin.” “It is time for Feijóo to now tell the truth to the Spanish people, and recognize what he spoke about with Junts and Puigdemont,” he demanded. And he has demanded to know if even the leader of the PP had “direct conversations” with Puigdemont himself. “Why is the PP so afraid of what Junts might say, what are they hiding, what do they not want to be told?” he demanded. “Feijóo’s three confessions leave a thousand questions in the air,” he said. But he has pointed out that it may be a “panic reaction” to Puigdemont’s warning that everything will be known. “It seems that they have become very afraid,” he concluded.
Montero has once again seen Feijóo’s leadership in the PP on the wire. “It looks much more like an interim position than a permanent position,” he said. “That’s why Feijóo is nervous, and he is looking askance at those who promoted him to that position,” he noted, in a veiled reference to Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
