"The extreme right and the extreme right are emboldened," Pedro Sánchez warned yesterday after a huge blue wave overflowed the containment dam that for the Socialists should have been the municipal and regional elections. “But in Spain we can stop this reactionary current, for our sons and daughters. The PSOE must stop this reactionary current!”, he cried out before the last dam raised in the race –the general elections on July 23–, to prevent Alberto Núñez Feijóo from disembarking in Moncloa.
The PSOE leader warned that the war will be total in the new campaign: "The storm is going to be tremendous." That of 28-M was only an "aperitif of dirt, insults and lies", and before that of 23-J, the President of the Government warned that the right-wing "are going to try to tense up to unsuspected limits so that the arguments, with the sole determination that we lower our arms and demobilize the majority”.
But Sánchez has already hardened his speech, with a strong ideological attack against the right and the denunciation of the use of Trumpist strategies and all his media power. "From the position of dominance they have in large companies and the media, an even more ferocious campaign of insults and disqualifications is going to be unleashed, they are going to invent atrocities and a cascade of lies." The same methods, he assured, of Trump and Bolsonaro.
Sánchez displayed a class speech against the right and to try to concentrate all the left vote around the PSOE. "Our party was not founded by seven ex-ministers of a dictatorship with the financing of a few bankers," he denounced, alluding to the PP. But some workers, in a tavern. "Those are the people we represent, whom we defend and who we depend on to win the PP and Vox." And he pointed out that, despite the powers that seek to overthrow him, the vote equalizes everyone: “The vote of a bus driver is worth the same as that of the owner of a television channel, the vote of a supermarket cashier counts the same than that of the president of a bank”.
Sánchez defended his government work, to protect the social majority and advance transformations. "We have made mistakes and stumbled, but the successes have been greater," he claimed. And he warned that the gains made are at risk if the "coalition of the extreme right and the extreme right" reaches Moncloa. "Repealing sanchismo, as the PP and Vox say, means destroying everything that has been built, dismantling everything that has been conquered and ending social progress," he warned.
"I like to win and it hurts me to lose," he admitted, three days after the "serious institutional setback" of the PSOE, which on 28-M lost most of its territorial power. "Such an undeserved and unfair punishment" suffered by so many regional presidents and socialist mayors, he lamented.
But, before the final battle of the generals on 23-J, he tried to inject combat morale, and even victory, into the socialist ranks, to prevent them from giving up before the push of the right: "We have to fight . We must put up a fight,” he demanded. A whole touch of rebuttal before the Socialist deputies and senators of this last legislature –many of them still in a state of shock–, whom he met yesterday in Congress. "Last Sunday's elections are not a point of arrival, they are the starting point," he warned. And, despite the dark forecasts, he assured that they will win the elections.
The president raised the new appointment with the polls as the definitive battle to try to stop the push of the "extreme right-wing tandem, because there is no distinction between the PP and Vox."
And, far from throwing in the towel, he demanded more support than ever: "For the next four years I need to have strong and resounding support, with the greatest social support to continue on the path of progress and transformations that make Spain better."
