The lack of self-criticism of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in his 2023 balance sheet, was made up for 24 hours later by the head of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with an analysis that leaves the Government and the PSOE “outside the Constitution and of dignity.” The leader of the PP established his formation as the only constitutionalist party or, in his own words, “the common house of Spanish constitutionalism.”
In a scenario with the motto “a Spain without walls” behind it, Feijóo described the current coalition government as “the weakest, with the least word and least ethics” that Spain has ever had. Sánchez “has more and more difficulties in deceiving the Spaniards,” he warned.
This Thursday, the president of the PP made a dark assessment in the economic field – countering Sánchez's own laudatory speech the day before –, black in the institutional and democratic field, and black from an ethical point of view.
It was in this last aspect that Feijóo was harshest, because, in his opinion, Sánchez “has crossed all the lines.” Proof of this, he said, was what, almost at the same time he appeared, was happening in Pamplona where the motion of censure that the mayor's office handed over to Bildu was being debated with the votes, among other forces, of four PSN councilors. .
“In Spain, a progressive mayoralty has not won, but rather a state party has lost,” said Feijóo. The PSOE has preferred to “end the year toasting Bildu,” he added. For the leader of the PP, what happened this Thursday in Pamplona places the PSOE “outside the Constitution and dignity.”
Faced with this dark panorama, Feijóo pledged to “fight against amnesty, against amnesia, against lies and in favor of the interests of the Spanish people.”
In his diagnosis, these interests go, first of all, through the economic field, because he admits a bleak panorama from his point of view. Spain is “one of the worst economies in the European Union, in which taxes have grown the most, which has more debt, more unemployment, more waiting lists, more poverty and more school dropouts,” he argued.
Feijóo even stated that the Spanish have “the same purchasing power as 15 years ago” and that they have paid 58,000 million more in taxes to a Government that has put them in debt and suffers from an “uncontrolled” deficit of 4% while, he stressed, Portugal, with a government, “this social democratic one”, it has 0.4%.”
A country, he continued, with one in four people on the poverty line, with eight million Spaniards who are in energy poverty, and which is the third worst in school dropout rate.
Feijóo's conclusion is forceful: “Except for his partners, who have economic and criminal privileges, no one has won” in this year 2023 with the Sánchez Government.
Despite this, or because of it, the leader of the PP reaches out to the Government to seek solutions, starting with the decree of social measures approved on Wednesday. “I am willing to help if the Government's arrogance allows it to be supported,” he offered, although he put as a condition the deflation of the personal income tax rate and the reduction of VAT on meat and fish.
During the journalists' question time, the leader of the PP had to comment on the recent incident involving Vox councilor Javier Ortega Smith in the Madrid City Council. He, like the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, considers that the Vox councilor should resign due to his "inadmissible" behavior.
