Pedro Sánchez signaled the beginning of a long preliminary campaign this Wednesday in a parliamentary debate with a distinctly electoral tone. The strategy of placing ministers in front of regional candidates has not brought the desired results, and the president of the government … decided to directly take on the task of opposing the PP government. This task, which is usually carried out from the seat of the Council of Ministers, was presented to Congress this Wednesday, where he proposed an amendment on the control of the popular presidency, in which he unapologetically accused the president of attacking the welfare state, the “soul” of Spain.
The Chief Executive was asked to appear because of the corruption surrounding the government, party and family environment, as well as the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the parliament after Jantz’s door was closed and he lost the majority of the parliament he was sworn in as president. By law, he was also required to explain Spain’s position at the last European Council meeting, but at his own request he added the last item: “Situation of public services in Spain.” Quite a euphemism for a section that could easily be titled “Criticism of the PP Government.”
The president spoke quickly about each topic of the appearance, one by one, as if he had completed the formalities. The Council of Europe boasted of taking the housing debate to other parts of the continent and called on the United States to potentially bet on ecological transition and sustaining economic growth. In passing, he recalled Palestine, briefly announcing 46 million euros in social and economic aid that he would approve next week. While a few months ago Santos Cerdan’s arrest was a great wild card to hide the crisis that had posed within the party, this Wednesday it was just a note from his speech.
When it comes to corruption, he is not self-critical and speaks little about the “suspected cases of bribery and embezzlement” that affected two former organizational secretaries, none other than Cerdan and José Luis Ábalos, in the face of “more than 30 corruption cases being investigated by the PP.” That was the first clue as to where the rest of his speech was going. A series of accusations against the PP in general and Alberto Núñez Feijó and Isabel Díaz Ayuso in particular, as if he were in the Madrid Congress and the regional president would answer to him. Not a single word was mentioned about the state attorney general, his brother and his wife.
just a little crisis
The script was pre-established by Moncloa, as ABC announced on its website this Wednesday. But the cards were so conspicuous that Feijot spared no sarcasm as soon as he took to the speaker’s podium. “Ladies and gentlemen, the leader of the opposition in the People’s Party is over, now it’s my turn.” But Mr. Sánchez was ready this time to take off the glasses he so deftly donned in the Senate two weeks ago to change the public conversation, and to transform his appearance as a would-be leader of the government into a rally against the opposition. The scent of elections permeated during the session, which lasted about seven hours, spoiling not only Jantz but even the executive’s conviction partners like the PNV.
Mr. Sánchez encouraged Miriam Nogueras to return to the path of agreement to avoid falling into the hands of a “destructive opposition.” Does that mean he can’t approve budgets or new laws? Little or nothing seemed to matter to him. The aim this Wednesday was to exhaust the PP with the breast cancer screening crisis in Andalusia, the privatization of healthcare in the Madrid region, the devastation in the Valencia region, the fires in Castilla and León… Strangely enough, the public service had nothing to do with the railways, nor with the disruption of the AVE dependent on Minister Óscar Puente, nor with the incident on the Cercanias train in Catalonia with the participation of socialists. Ruled by Salvador Illa.
Mr. Sánchez began by criticizing the causes of corruption in the PP in the past – the typical “and more” – and the handling of the financial crisis by the Mariano Rajoy government, and went on to attack what he called another form of “corruption”, legal but “immoral”: privatizing public services in exchange for “favors for friends”. In a left-wing mood, the prime minister accused the PP of legislating for the “rich” and particularly attacked Ayuso’s health policy, which is based on agreements with private companies, saying: “You have turned my land into a casino, where Chiron always wins and the people always lose.”
The President claimed that since 2018, the government has transferred 300 million euros more to autonomous societies than Prime Minister Rajoy gave them in the same period. According to him, the funds do not influence social policies that improve the welfare of the people. “At the moment, 848,787 Andalusians are waiting for a diagnosis and 200,000 are waiting for an operation, of which 43,000 have been waiting for more than a year,” Sánchez listed, handing a hot potato to Juanma Moreno. Of course, Carlos Mazon and the Dana management from which he resigned were also added to the list of grievances expressed by the socialists.
He asked Feijo to explain what he said and when he recommended not declaring a national emergency. In an unusual appeal, he demanded that Santiago Abascal stop supporting the right wing and allow Valencians to vote. It’s the same thing he denies to the Spaniards.
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