There is expectation to know the content of the intervention this afternoon by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the president of the PP, at the annual conference of the Cercle d’Economia. In reality, the interest is focused on knowing which of the different versions that the Galician politician has explained in this same forum in the short period that he has led the PP he will present.
He made his debut at the Cercle as a leader of the right three meetings ago, in May 2022. At that time, it was all good words and as a Galician he defined himself as a peripheral who understood the complaints about the centralization of Spanish public life in Madrid. He charged against the process, but not against the bourgeoisie in front of him. And he flirted with the concept of nationalities and even advanced a certain defense of the use of Catalan. Although just ten days later, from Ceuta, he recanted: “Spain is not a plurinational state.”
Last year, he returned even more conciliatory. He admitted errors by his party in Catalonia and announced that this community would henceforth be his political priority. He gave the ear of the audience – “you are great because you pay more taxes than anyone else” – and avoided saying no to anything, although he skillfully did not commit to any of the demands that the president of the Cercle, Jaume Guardiola, presented to him: a new financing model autonomous; the recovery of state investments in Catalonia and the improvement of self-government.
The atmosphere of this meeting was special. On the eve of the general elections in July, Pedro Sánchez had already called, and Feijóo appeared as the sure winner and the future president of the Government. His visit therefore had the objective of capturing votes for his candidacy among the Catalan economic elites. His words were followed with rapt silence.
Yesterday in his unbridled charge in Congress against the Government, the leader of the PP tiptoed around the economy, beyond some generic and almost paternalistic references to the efforts of the Spanish people to make ends meet due to the rise in prices. .
That is probably why he recovered virulent references to the amnesty, which will return to the Chamber next week for final approval and which his party has kept in the refrigerator during the Catalan campaign.
This afternoon in Barcelona, ??Feijóo would stupefy his audience if he presented the catastrophic diagnosis of the economy that he displayed in his two previous visits. It was not confirmed and now it would clearly be a nonsense.
That is why it is worth wondering if he will resort, like yesterday, to the amnesty as the incarnation of evil and an insurmountable fissure against the equality of the Spanish people. As is known, the audience and Catalan businessmen, in different ways and measures, have supported the grace measures as an appropriate way to overcome the political crisis in Catalonia and Spain. And in fact they are not disgusted, another thing is that it is possible for the party of the amnestied Carles Puigdemont to enter the Government of the Generalitat.
Will he invite them to the demonstration on Sunday at Madrid’s Puerta de Alcalá against the amnesty called by his party?
