Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in his first interview as president of the PP with La Vanguardia, reveals a frontal position regarding Pedro Sánchez. The distance that separates them is abysmal.
A week ago, on Friday at this same time, we were in Moncloa interviewing President Pedro Sánchez and he told us that the PP uses territorial confrontation as an instrument of wearing down the Government. His turn...
I understand the difficulties and weaknesses of President Sánchez, but that is not the responsibility of the Popular Party. He has decided to have the government with the weakest parliamentary support in the history of Spain and a Frankenstein government, in the words of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. He is subject to the part of the populism of Podemos and to the part of the independence movement of Bildu and Esquerra. We are always in the same place, defending the Constitution of the Spain of the autonomies.
By this institutional sense it has not been understood that you did not separate the debate from the repeal of the sedition of the pact on the reform of the Judiciary.
There are several reasons. First, the Government knows that it is knowingly unconstitutional when it withdraws its powers from the General Council of the Judiciary. It is the first time that the central government intervenes in a state power. There is also the intervention of the European commissioner (Didier Reynders), who comes to Spain and points out that it is necessary to deepen the role of judges to elect their governing body. From here, the negotiation begins and when this was taking shape, it appeared in the media that the Government is agreeing with Esquerra to eliminate the crime of sedition. We ask the Government if this is true. And the interlocutor, Minister Bolaños, denies it and says that everything is a journalistic speculation.
But the deal was pretty much done, right?
We were advancing in a pact that is based on deepening judicial independence and depoliticizing justice. And we find that in the next room an agreement is being reached to do just the opposite. A pact in which the judgments of the Supreme Court are destroyed and left without effect. And therefore, unfortunately, we have said no, once it was confirmed that we were being deceived. It would be fraudulent to tell citizens that we are drafting a law to protect judicial independence and at the same time amend the Penal Code to annul Supreme Court rulings. After this time I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that interests the Government is control of the Constitutional Court and that it rots in this interim situation. The president has chosen again. And whenever there has been an opportunity, he has agreed with the independence movement and populism and has always despised the PP.
But the reality is that the situation of the governance of justice in Spain has been greatly affected. Couldn't you have closed this deal and now have more moral authority to criticize sedition reform? Do you not give the PSOE arguments to say that the PP is installed in the no to everything?
If you take the volume of bills of decrees and laws that have been sent to the chambers, you will see that there are many that have been approved by the PP. Therefore, first false consideration. I proposed pacts to the president for everything. If you want to modify the Penal Code, we sit at a table and see if it is possible. But he didn't want to. This government has decided that the constitutional pact is broken and that the constitutional unity that has always inspired the PP and the PSOE for 40 years is without effect. I reiterate, is there any government in 44 years of democracy in Spain that has the legislature partners that this government has? Is there any government in Spain that within its legislature partners are two political forces whose objective is to violate the Constitution and self-determination? Does this exist? Not in Spain anymore, in any EU country.
One of the arguments used by the Government to carry out this reform is the normalization of political life in Catalonia. Sánchez recalls that the weather today is better than it was five years ago. Do you agree? And if so, what has influenced it?
What has come to solve the elimination of the crime of sedition are the problems of Sánchez and the independentistas of Esquerra, not the problems of Catalonia. Because in the end they have managed to laugh at the legislation and have managed to make a big cacicada, which is to make an author's Criminal Code, that is, designed by those convicted by a final judgment of the Supreme Court. And Mr. Sánchez has solved the problem of surviving in Moncloa the last stretch of his legislature. What the Catalans are asking for is that if someone commits a crime, they be tried regardless of whether they are a politician or unemployed. Equality before the law has been broken.
He has not answered me about the climate that exists today in Catalonia.
Why is the weather better today than it was five years ago? Because the law was fulfilled. Because the State, the powers of the State, the Judiciary and Catalan society itself warned that we are in a democratic State, where the rule of law is not made à la carte of politicians or the wealthy, but rather affects the entire world. That's why we're better.
Sánchez has a plan for Catalonia, what is yours?
Look, I have come to Catalonia more times than to any other place in Spain. Why? Because I know that Catalonia must have a political offer and alternative so that no one who believes in the rule of law, in the constitutional pact and in the Statute feels orphaned. I try to represent them and defend their rights and freedoms. I'm trying to say that there is no one who has privileges to break the law. I come to Catalonia because it was for many decades the beacon of cosmopolitanism and the avant-garde in Spain and it must be so again. I come to Catalonia because I know that it lacks infrastructure, because I know that it has the highest tax burden in Spain, because the Generalitat has a public debt that does not prove solvency in the markets and in the banks. And I will continue to come to Catalonia to offer the pact for harmony and social and economic reconciliation in Catalonia.
And how does this translate?
I respect an independentist politician. What I ask of you is that you respect me. And that we accept the rules of the game. The independence movement does not accept them. It's not easy to talk to someone who doesn't want to talk. Do you want to talk about independence? Let's talk about it. But you have to accept the rules of the game. You cannot pardon someone who states that he will reoffend the conduct that gave rise to the conviction. You cannot pardon someone against the Supreme Court and against the State Attorney General's Office. When you find yourself with a president who is not trustworthy, that is when the independence movement grows.
But excuse me, when the independence movement grew the most it was precisely when the PP governed. Today the independence movement falls in all the polls.
In my opinion, this is not a fair approach. The independence movement stops growing when Catalan society realizes that the process has been bad business, that companies with a turnover of 100,000 million have left, that Catalonia lost its economic leadership. Let's not turn the story backwards. The independence movement falls when the Catalans realize that paradise does not exist and that companies, economic activity, foreign investment no longer have Catalonia as a priority.
Some well-known journalist from Madrid treats him in a derogatory way, saying that he comes from the provinces. When you arrived at the PP there were high hopes placed on you precisely because, being from the provinces, you were not going to be intimidated in Madrid. Today it seems that, rather than changing the PP, it is the PP that has changed you.
Look, I have a traceability as a politician that can no longer be changed. My financial history is on file for the last 29 years. I have less left in politics than I have already been in politics. Therefore, my approach to autonomous Spain is not going to change and is based on cordial bilingualism and the defense of the basic principles of equality before the rule of law. The one that has changed in an absolutely unrecognizable way is the PSOE. With the current PSOE of Mr. Sánchez, the transition would not have been possible, nor the Constitution of 78, nor the Moncloa pacts, nor constitutional unity. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. It is true that Sánchez has defeated the PSOE twice and today it is the Sanchista party.
And you have not changed?
No. I am still a politician who believes in the Spain of the autonomies and I am going to continue defending it. I am not a centralist politician. This is confirmed by my biography.
And this Núñez Feijoo I understand that he cannot agree with a phrase that says that Sánchez treats the opposition as if we were in Nicaragua, an expression used by Díaz Ayuso.
There are hyperboles in current language that I do not use.
Wouldn't you have to get rid of such statements and censor them?
When the Government is dedicated to insulting a regional president or the head of the opposition every day, this cannot be forgotten. If you take the list of disqualifications of the Council of Ministers towards the head of the opposition, you can conclude that the roles are reversed and that the head of the opposition is the president and that the Government is in opposition.
But in this climate of harmony that you are calling for, don't you think that the Madrid president's dialectical excesses are not helping?
The hyperboles can be answered with silence or with hyperbole and the only thing that has been done, in this case, is to answer it with a hyperbole. Because the leader of the opposition has been told that he is an extremist politician or that he is insolvent. When a government dedicates itself to opposing the president of a community and denouncing her in the courts, obviously hyperbole responses are sometimes produced.
And to say that there is a linguistic apartheid in Catalonia, as you said, is it also hyperbole? Do you really believe it?
In Catalonia the linguistic laws are not complied with, there is no linguistic balance. In Catalan schools, Spanish and Catalan do not have the treatment that is legally required, which is that at least 25% of the classes are given in Spanish. And once again, the Government has agreed not to comply with the sentence of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia with the independentistas. Because what he should have done with the Parliamentary law was to suspend it, because it is against the ruling of the High Court, and raise a question of constitutionality. We have, and I am going to defend Catalan because it is a cultural wealth of Spain and because it is an official language in Catalonia. But I am also going to defend Spanish because it is the common language of the State and a language of Catalonia.
I suppose that at least you will not agree with what your predecessor said that in Catalonia children who spoke Spanish were not even allowed to go to the toilet.
I don't know the context of that sentence.
Let's talk about the future. The polls indicate that they can win the elections, but it is one thing to win and another to govern.
Look, when we became president of the party, we were three or four points below the PSOE in the polls, and today we are between four and seven points above. When the Andalusian elections arrived, the Andalusians understood that, if they did not want Sánchez's party to govern with its populist partners, the only alternative was to vote for the PP. And it is what I am going to propose until the last moment of the closure of the polling stations.
To achieve this great result, he also needs to get a great result in Catalonia, which is one of the historical deficits of the PP. How are you going to do it?
Continuing with what I'm doing. Coming here, to talk about Catalonia as part of my political project. Sometimes people identify Catalonia with its politicians. Why? Is it that in Spain we are just as radical as the people of Podemos? Or from Bildu? No. In Spain there have always been pro-independence parties and populist parties. What has mutated is that one of the two major parties that command the majority of electoral confidence has become an umbrella for populism and independence. I do not say it with pride, but with disappointment. Without the PSOE we cannot advance, but the PSOE does not have a project for Spain: it is a project that changes every week and says something different every month.
And what do you think of the controversy over the law of the only yes is yes?
I told you before that the Penal Code is not a set of slogans, it is a legal technique. The Government has been warned from the CGPJ, from the feminist associations or from the PP, but it has ignored it. Now it is going to be proven whether the president has the capacity to remove someone he has not named from the Council of Ministers, such as the Minister of Equality, from United We Can. And we will probably come to the conclusion that the president is not the president of the entire government, but only of one part. And it will also prove if the president is going to remove those responsible for the Ministry of Justice, because the Council of Ministers is a collegiate body. The concrete effect that remains is that there are rapists, people who have committed sexual abuse, who thanks to this law are now more protected because of the President of the Government.
