After a week of disappearing in combat due to his latest positive for covid, Pedro Sánchez reappeared yesterday to stand up to the unusual planetary conjunction that aligns Felipe González and José María Aznar to try to dynamite his possible investiture as President of the Government. “I will dedicate myself body and soul to achieving an authentic investiture, and not waste time on empty gestures”, said the leader of the PSOE in front of the Spanish business community at the headquarters of the CEOE.
This is what he will do, he assured, when the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo fails – as the candidate himself already takes for granted” – if he receives the task of the head of state. And he revealed his weapons to try and win this new battle. “I will dedicate myself to dialogue with the rest of the political forces, and with civil society, to weave alliances and launch a positive political project”, he assured.
“A project of progress and coexistence, which guarantees the stability of the country and which is fully consistent with the letter and spirit of our Constitution. A project, consequently, conciliatory. Based on our values ??and principles, on the needs and aspirations of the social majority”, he promised.
Sánchez’s firm message was aimed at all of society. But it also had three political recipients. On the one hand, the right-wing, at the same time that, in another event in Madrid, Feijóo and Aznar were looking for the image of a common front against the claim they attribute to him, once again, of wanting to break Spain and the Constitution.
On the other hand, Sánchez thus replicated the veteran former socialist leaders who, with Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra at the helm, warn against the course of the PSOE leader and also see the Magna Carta in danger.
Finally, Sánchez explains to Catalan independence what it offers – conciliation – but also what its limit is – the Constitution – in order to win a new investiture.
Sánchez reiterated that his purpose is to open a legislature that will not be a one-day flower – as many fear if they are left in the hands of Carles Puigdemont -, but that will last a long time. He thus assured that his project “will look at the coming months, but it also has the ambition to respond to the challenges of the coming decades”. With a “coherent strategy”, he emphasized that he obtained the endorsement of the polls on 23- J. “A real project for Spain to continue moving forward and not retreat into dark times”, he finished.
Not without first launching a hard attack against Feijóo for the required parenthesis until he faces an investiture doomed to failure due to the lack of support. “We do not understand the enormous waste of time of a candidate who, knowing his inability to build a parliamentary majority, subjects the country to a period of paralysis”, he said.
Sánchez criticized that Feijóo “seems more stubborn to prevent another investiture than to achieve his”. “He completely disregards his investiture and concentrates on avoiding any other.”
Meanwhile, the expulsion of Nicolás Redondo from the PSOE – revealed the day before, just as the veteran former Basque socialist leader was having lunch with Joaquín Leguina and José María Aznar – continued to stir the waters outside Ferraz’s walls. The deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, justified the decision for his “lack of respect” for the party, in a “clear and repeated” way.
Felipe González, who on Thursday in Seville was already questioned by some militants from his quinta – “what you say hurts us” – criticized Redondo’s expulsion. “His father gave me a general strike and it never occurred to me to think that this was penalized with expulsion”, he alleged.
Leguina also criticized it – “it’s a bigotry” – as did Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra. And Elena Valenciano, former deputy general secretary of the PSOE, regretted that the party is “in the hands of the supremacist independence right”. But with the exception of Emiliano García-Page and Javier Lambán, the presidents and socialist territorial leaders support Sánchez. “The PSOE is a united and cohesive party”, insisted Montero.
