While the gorge through which this newborn legislature runs narrows, with doubts about an agreement with Junts per Catalunya to unravel the Amnesty law that allowed his investiture, the unknowns of a reform of the Criminal Procedure law to shorten the deadlines of the judicial instruction that is very difficult to balance, and the uncertainty surrounding the first general budgets of the State of the mandate, Pedro Sánchez has submitted this Wednesday to the first control session in Congress of this new political course. And the President of the Government has resorted to irony to respond to the attacks of the head of the main opposition party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who has warned him that without Carles Puigdemont “he is nobody.”
Sánchez has taken advantage of a lapse by the leader of the Popular Party, who during his electoral campaign in rural Galicia confused methane with methanol, to blame him for an opposition strategy that he has labeled as a “solvent”, just like this chemical compound. “Stop using methanol to make opposition,” the leader of the PSOE demanded of Feijóo. “The three properties of methanol are: colorless, like its political project for Spain; flammable, like his desire for hyperbole and insult; and toxic, like its economic catastrophism,” said Sánchez, to great applause from the socialist bench.
The Chief Executive added that one of the uses of methanol is as fuel, which has also reproached Feijóo for his offensive over the ongoing negotiations with Puigdemont's party. “Fuel is what they are trying to use in Catalonia to fan a fire that was happily overcome, which was the crisis of 2017,” he criticized the PP. And in this strategy he has encompassed the “dirty war” that he has attributed to the government of Mariano Rajoy, the “permanent 155” that in his opinion the leader of the extreme right of Vox, Santiago Abascal, proposes for Catalonia, or the “illegalization of political parties ” that the PP itself suggested. Also for the “definition they make of the Constitution and terrorism that is always in accordance with their political interests,” he criticized Feijóo.
“The reality is completely different,” Sánchez warned Feijóo. The reality, he has assured, is that the Government works in three fundamental aspects: employment, with 21 million citizens already working; rights, and he recalled that the Council of Ministers approved another increase in the interprofessional minimum wage the day before; and “coexistence in Catalonia”. “Stop using methanol to create opposition,” he demanded from the PP.
In this first parliamentary duel of the year with Sánchez in Congress, Feijóo began by addressing the Junts deputies: “I know perfectly well who is in charge in this Chamber,” he warned, in reference to the Government's dependence on Puigdemont's formation. “Now everyone knows that without Puigdemont you are nobody,” he said. “Now he no longer laughs like he laughed in the fall,” stressed the leader of the PP, given the difficulties that the legislature faces in consolidating itself. And he has asked the president if he is aware of “the reality” in which his Government finds itself.
And Sánchez has begun to brandish Feijóo's lapse with methanol, after ironically saying that the PP leader "has discovered himself as an expert in organic chemistry", amidst the laughter of the PSOE bench. “One of the main uses of methanol is as a solvent, and perhaps that is where the lack of arguments in all these years comes from,” he indicated to the PP bench, which he has criticized since he arrived at the Moncloa. in 2018, denouncing that “Spain is humiliated, Spain is broken and Spain is sinking.” “The reality is completely different,” he said.
“The reality is that the only party that fails to comply with the Constitution is the PP,” he warned, given the persistent blockage in the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary. “The reality is that Catalonia today is infinitely better than in 2017,” she added. “And the reality is that the Spanish economy is going like a motorcycle,” he concluded, given the figures for economic growth and job creation. “It is the only way to govern this country. Either you understand the political pluralism and territorial diversity of Spain, or you don't understand Spain, which is what happens to you,” he warned the popular ones.
Feijóo, however, has emphasized the difficulty of Sánchez's mandate, to make laws, to propose initiatives that are even knocked down "by his partners", and "with no budgets in sight." “This is his reality,” he warned her. “Any European government would fall because of this, I assure you that you will fall too. He has spent six months dedicated body and soul to a single issue: amnesty,” he stressed. And he has called on the leader of the PSOE to understand that "four years like this are unsustainable, four years like this, no one can stand it, not even you, an expert in the decomposition of the Government."
“While he lives obsessed with the news that comes to him from Waterloo, the real Spain feels neglected,” Feijóo reproached Sánchez, and referred to the drought, immigration or the increase in taxes. “Spanish people without criminal records also require the attention of the Government,” he warned. And he has ordered the president to “govern for those who pay him the land, and not for those who have put him in Moncloa,” in reference to Junts. The leader of the PP has also warned that he sees Sánchez “too focused on changing the criteria of the Prosecutor's Office”, in reference to the investigation of Puigdemont for alleged crimes of terrorism, instead of addressing the demands of the countryside and farmers, in the face of the ongoing protests and tractor movements, “because they cannot stand the environmental dogmatism of the Government.”
The one who has had extra work has been the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, who has answered five questions from the PP and one from Vox, all of them referring to the amnesty and the relationship with the independence partners of the Government.
To the general secretary of the Popular Party, Cuca Gamarra, who asked him “how far he is going to give in to remain in the Government”, Bolaños has blurted out that the PP does not understand Spain because “for you to speak and negotiate is to kneel and humiliate yourself” , and they told him that they will continue talking to everyone. And also with them.
He has demanded that the spokesperson for the Popular Group, Miguel Tellado, stop trivializing terrorism and has disfigured his formation that "because of so much trivializing it, the word in the mouth of the PP does not make any sense, and even more so ten years after Spain did so." defeat". "It is a shame that the PP does not know how to oppose without terrorism," denounced the minister. "Stop whitewashing terrorism, because they govern with their heirs," replied Tellado, who has accused the Government of pressuring prosecutors. who see terrorism in Tsunami's actions against the criteria of the Government and the State Attorney General. “Can you tell me why after the elections of July 23 you met with a party that you consider terrorist?”, questioned the minister in reference to the meetings of the PP with Junts. “Or are all those who do not give them the investiture terrorists?” added Bolaños, to lament the “absolute cynicism” of the PP.
Bolaños reminded Rafael Hernando that crimes of treason are excluded from the Amnesty law, after the popular deputy asked him if the Government is going to deactivate the case being instructed by Barcelona judge Joaquín Aguirre regarding the alleged contacts. of Puigdemont's surroundings with the Kremlin. In any case, the minister has defended that it will be the judges who will determine if there was a link with Russia in the process.
The minister has also responded to the vice-secretary of the PP Elías Bendodo, who has reproached him for his acquiescence regarding the appointment of judges by his pro-independence partners, to which Bolaños has reiterated that the magistrates can count on the support of the Government and has put in place Contrast that attitude with that of Feijóo, who in his opinion is leading a campaign against the Constitutional Court. “The rule of law and institutions are respected with this Government,” insisted the minister, who has thus marked differences with the previous PP government.
Deputy Sergio Sayas, who has denounced that the Executive makes a more habitable country only for its members, has been displeased by his "change of jacket", after remembering that in the previous legislature he was part of UPN and has pointed out that "a country less "Livable is when the right passionately embraces the extreme right not only in its policies but also in its methods based on lies."
Finally, before the Vox spokesperson, Pepa Millán, who has also asked him about the attacks on the judges, Bolaños has insisted that he does not accept “any disqualification of the judges and magistrates of this country, wherever they come from, neither from independentists nor from of the right”, while at the same time it has disfigured him that it is the extreme right that coerces the judges by showing a news item that was titled “Vox will take the judges who allow the amnesty to the Prosecutor's Office.” “It is a tragedy that in Spain the right and the extreme right are interchangeable,” the minister concluded.
