“Today’s Spain,” Pedro Sánchez celebrated yesterday, before the investiture debate of Alberto Núñez Feijóo that begins this noon in Congress, is “an open, modern, tolerant country.” “A plural country, in its ideologies and its cultures, and diverse in its languages, plural in the streets and Parliament,” defended the acting President of the Government, who assumed the endorsement of the polls on July 23 to close the move to the right and face, after the expected failure of the investiture of the leader of the PP, his own re-election.

Sánchez thus drew Spain as “a full democracy, with solid institutions, which translate into government the popular will expressed by all Spaniards every time there are free and equal elections.” It was his response to the bitter protest against his investiture and against a future amnesty for those prosecuted for the process, which the PP held the day before in Madrid. The leader of the PSOE defended “a democracy where the reasoned word deprives insults of meaning.”

The spokesperson for the acting Executive, Isabel Rodríguez, spoke in the same sense after the meeting of the Council of Ministers brought forward to Monday. “We listened to the social majority of Spain, very emphatically, at the polls on July 23,” she replied to put into perspective the effects of the PP street protest. These general elections not only added a million more votes for Sánchez, compared to 2019, but also formed a new parliamentary arithmetic that this week will reject, as planned, Feijóo’s investiture.

Rodríguez conveyed the Government’s “respect” for the PP’s “demonstrations, mobilizations or party acts”, as he did after the Diada independence demonstration. But the minister spokesperson insisted that now “what is relevant” is the investiture that Feijóo will face. In a plenary session of Congress, he warned, “where the important figure is not 30,000, 40,000 or 60,000,” in reference to the supporters who attended the PP protest, “but rather having been able to forge a parliamentary majority that would make that movement viable.” investiture, that is, more than 175 seats.” “And today, Feijóo only has 172,” Rodríguez recalled.

And he thus highlighted that the leader of the PP “is in the place where he started”, without managing to add more support to his investiture than he already had after the scrutiny of the 23-J polls and the King’s order.

The Executive spokesperson urged that “Spain stop wasting time and that as soon as possible we have a fully functioning government.” And she criticized that Feijóo “pretends to talk about other issues,” in reference to the amnesty. Although she assured that if the leader of the PP does not talk about his country’s project or the majority that he needs for the investiture, it is because he lacks both. “After this month, Feijóo would like to close his eyes and have it dawn on September 30,” she said ironically. But first “he has to certify, to see if once and for all he is aware, that he does not have a sufficient majority to govern this country.”

“This country expressed itself at the polls, two months ago, and with absolute clarity sent the message that Spain did not want an alliance of the PP with Vox,” stressed the minister spokesperson. After the failure of her investiture, Rodríguez trusted that the PP leader “is aware that that is what happened on July 23.”

Asked if the Government continues to defend that Carles Puigdemont must be held accountable before Spanish justice, the minister spokesperson sent to citizens “a message of tranquility and full confidence in democratic institutions.” “The discourse of fear and hate is reborn again; “We have been hearing for many years that the wolf is coming and that Spain is breaking up,” she lamented. Messages, she warned, that are only repeated with the PP in opposition.

“The reality is that under progressive governments there is greater tranquility, greater cohesion and greater unity in Spain,” he concluded.