After the clear victory of Salvador Illa on May 12 in the Catalan elections, which have left a Parliament in which the right has gained weight, Pedro Sánchez returned to Barcelona yesterday to start the campaign for the European elections on June 9. The president extended a common thread between the two disputes and pointed out that his commitment to “coexistence” in Catalonia is what is now needed in Brussels, in the face of the threat of the “far-right international” looming over the European project.
In a meeting with Illa and the socialist candidate, the third vice-president of the Government and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, Sánchez stood up against the ultra current that is gaining ground in Europe and in other parts of the world, and before which he believes that the PP “claudia”.
The president appealed to the progressive voters who gave victory to Illa and who also saved him the furniture in the general elections a year ago, to get “more progressives at the head of the community institutions” and to “not return the scissors of the men in black or the ultra-right with their chainsaw”. His recipe is to “export” Spain’s progress model of “more coexistence and social justice” to Europe.
Yesterday’s occasion was propitious as a result of the visit to Madrid of the Argentine president, Javier Milei, who with other far-right European leaders such as the French Marine Le Pen (the Italian Giorgia Meloni and the Hungarian Viktor Orbán will intervene to videoconference) have been convened by Vox to start the electoral race on 9- J. Sánchez warned that the choice of Spain for the conclave is not accidental and that it responds to the fact that “as a society we represent everything they detest: feminism , social justice, democracy, the strong welfare state…”. The leader of the PSOE linked this ultra convention with the political drift of the PP and denounced the “surrender of the traditional right to the speeches and ideology of the ultra-right” as one of the factors that “breaks democracies and societies”.
Once again with Catalonia as a paradigm, the president remarked that “Spain is not breaking or collapsing”, as the populists advocated as a result of its de-inflammation policy, but rather “it is more prosperous than when the PP ruled”. And he gave proof of the ultra-right-wing sectarianism in which, in his opinion, Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party commits, recalling some of his references: “To say that climate change is dogmatism, that gender violence is a hard divorce or to equate democracy with dictatorship This does break”, and “it is the great risk facing Europe and Spain”, warned the head of the Executive.
Sánchez boasted about the electoral result of Illa. In addition to claiming that “those of us who have always defended that in democracy, as in life, forgiveness is more powerful than rancor, coexistence than confrontation” were right, the president lamented that the PP “mimics with the xenophobic discourse of the ultra-right”. In addition, he drew a “great lesson” from Illa’s victory: “While Catalonia and Spain look with hope to the future, Feijóo and Abascal look longingly at the process”.
The President of the Central Government also vindicated his commitment to coexistence in Catalonia, “to face the problems” instead of “avoiding or exacerbating them”, to justify his position in the conflict between Israel and Palestine , on which he advanced that next Wednesday he will announce in the Courts the date on which Spain will officially recognize the Palestinian State.
In turn, Illa welcomed “a Catalonia that has opened a new stage” and “said she wants to remain committed to this plural and diverse Spain”. But he also warned of the far-right threat looming over Europe: “We have to say it very loudly, we don’t want Meloni, Orbán, Le Pen…, we don’t want hatred, division, or discrimination.” Illa encouraged to “say no to the speech of hate, like on May 12, and yes to the speech of coexistence” on the next 9-J.
For his part, Ribera, who received the praises of Sánchez for his competence and the “pity” that causes him not to be able to count on her from now on in the Council of Ministers, warned of the return to the streets of the “imaginary of fascism” and “aggression and verbal violence” that he attributed to the ultra-right. Also with reference to Milei’s visit to Spain, the candidate regretted that the Argentine leader called social justice an “aberration”. “There are those who come from the other side of the Atlantic to say it, but here there are those who don’t dare, even though they also think so,” he assured.
