Alberto Núñez Feijóo is clear about it: Pedro Sánchez is late in adopting measures against the crisis, the ones you take are bad and even “harmful for the Spanish”, he has chosen ERC and Bildu as partners, “the worst possible”, and has as main objective is to isolate the PP. After inaugurating the political course of the PP last Saturday in the Pontevedra municipality of Cotobade, the president of the party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has made this diagnosis about how the Executive acts, of which he has complained that “he has renounced the votes of the PP”, to ask them or to negotiate with this party, as he has said. “Not even a strategic decision in Spain has been consulted with the first opposition party”, he has complained. “They only called us to [renovar] the Judiciary”, he specified later. What’s more: he has said that, since he assumed the leadership of the Popular Party in April, President Sánchez has never called him to deal with Spain’s problems. “Nothing at all, except an SMS that I answered in real time.”
Feijóo has insisted on asking Sánchez to appear in the Senate (first he said in Congress, but he corrected himself), “calm, calm and broad” so that he explains “what the Government’s plans are and what the rest of us have to do”. Feijóo has sent a message to the citizens that is not very reassuring: “Our duty is to tell the Spaniards that if they are worried, they are doing the right thing; They have cause for concern.”
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Feijóo showed muscle on Saturday surrounded by barons to exhibit the institutional power of the PP and start a long journey of 16 months until the general elections of 2023, with the aim of snatching the presidency of the Government from Pedro Sánchez. He now he wants to mark the first days of the course. In today’s appearance, he has not only asked the president to go to Congress to explain “medium-term economic planning.” And he also from the beginning he has demanded to modify the energy saving decree, a tax cut and that “the most expensive Government in the history of Spain” sets an example with a cut in the Executive’s own expenses.
After projecting that image of unity, Feijóo also outlined in his speech the main lines of his strategy to defeat the PSOE. And from his words, instilling fear about the economic situation, it was clear that he wants the socialist president to lose the government because of the economy. “All Spaniards are worried. Many scared. In the short term, all this is still likely to get worse,” Feijóo warned after warning that, although they call him a doomsayer, he will not “sweeten reality.”
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This morning he has insisted on this line, stressing that citizens have every reason to be concerned about the coming autumn. Among other reasons, he has said, because the Government has decided that “all the sacrifice of inflation has to be assumed by citizens, the self-employed and companies.” The leader of the PP, as an example of the poor choice of policies that Sánchez blames, has recalled that other countries have lowered taxes on people with the lowest incomes to cushion the impact of high inflation, and has demanded that it be applied in Spain.
After making several calls to unity to combat the economic crisis and the inflation crisis resulting from the war in Ukraine, Feijóo has specified that he has not spoken to the Prime Minister again “since the courtesy visit in April”. “I told him that if he wants something from the opposition, I am at your disposal. But since then nothing at all, except for an SMS about the Judiciary, which I answered in real time”, he said. He had previously complained that “not a single strategic decision for Spain, not a single vote has been consulted with the first opposition party.” In his opinion, “the news” is that Sánchez cannot talk to the PP because he “is kidnapped” by Bildu and ERC, he has said. “It is the first time that the government cannot talk to the main opposition party”, he concluded.
Feijóo has insisted on the thesis that the so-called Iberian exception (the mechanism to lower electricity prices applied by Spain and Portugal) supposes subsidizing electricity to France. “The president does not explain why we are giving away millions of euros in savings to French consumers, bordering on the 400 million euros that we Spaniards are subsidizing French consumers, that we finance the gas ceiling to the French and then they charge us in the bill,” he said.
The leader of the PP has insisted that he was never aware of the pact to renew the General Council of the Judiciary that his predecessor, Pablo Casado, reached with the PSOE. “I cannot speak of any agreement that I am not aware of”, he stressed.