I am not explaining anything new to them if I tell them that they cannot stand each other and that they are both equally lazy to see each other, but the spirit of Christmas (or perhaps the sense of the ridiculous) allowed Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo to finally meet. Not in Moncloa, as would be logical, but on neutral ground, like an impersonal Congress room. Both in a marengo gray dress, suitable for going to funerals. It was difficult to bring them together: the PP did not see it clearly. The popular ones are warriors and they didn’t want the meeting to look like a concession. Sánchez is feared in Genoa and they were worried that he insisted so much. What if it was a cheating meeting? The president of the Spanish government had to remind Brussels that the leader of the opposition must work for the general interest. In the end, they sat down to talk, with a ponsetia as their witness.
The truth is that it seemed unheard of for the president of the PP to try to avoid the meeting. In the previous hours, the Socialists were dispatched with a video of Feijóo’s insults towards Sánchez of the last three months (caudillista, despot, fellon, Adamist, corrupt, immoral, egotist) and of his collaborators such as Elías Bendodo, Miguel Tellado, Cuca Gamarra or Susana Mozo, who came to describe him as a “coup”. The populists leaked their memorial of grievances with the socialists before the meeting. The last, having made a Bildu militant mayor of Pamplona.
At least, the meeting resulted in the desire for the European Commission to act as a mediator in the negotiations to renew the Council of the Judiciary, whose mandate ended five years ago and has not been renewed because the PP has converted its composition in a counterweight to the Executive. We will have to wait and see how it turns out, but it seems like good news.
In the time that lasts a film or a football match, Sánchez and Feijóo had to dialogue and look into each other’s eyes. The PP wants to make a fierce opposition, but it cannot turn the next four years into the legislature of Doctor No. Another thing is that, beyond yesterday’s good words, one or both politicians thought what Churchill said to Lord Lonsdale: “If I valued the honorable gentleman’s opinion, I might be angry.”
