"I like to win and it hurts me to lose," Pedro Sánchez admitted, three days after the "serious institutional setback" suffered by the PSOE in the municipal and regional elections last Sunday in which it lost most of its territorial power. But, in view of the definitive battle called for next July 23 in the early general elections, the Prime Minister has tried to inject combat morale, and even victory, into the socialist ranks, to prevent them from giving up in the face of the push of the right: “We have to fight. We must give up the battle ”, he demanded. All a touch to rebate, before the blue wave that the 28-M exceeded all the forecasts and expectations of the PSOE.
Sánchez, who has been received and dismissed by loud applause, with the Socialist deputies and senators of this last legislature with whom he has met in Congress standing up, has tried to conjure the image of the end of the political cycle in Spain that they have drawn this Sunday the municipal and regional ballot boxes. With a "winning" speech, as defined by Moncloa. And this is what the leader of the PSOE himself has stated: "We are going to win the elections on July 23!"
The President of the Government has raised this early appointment with the polls as a battle to stop the victory of what he has defined as an "extreme right-wing tandem", in reference to the Popular Party and Vox. "The extreme right and the extreme right are emboldened," he assured after his triumph in the municipal and regional elections. "But in Spain we can stop this reactionary current, for our sons and daughters," he assured. "The PSOE must stop this reactionary current!", he has cried to great applause from the socialist deputies and senators.
The former lehendakari Patxi López, who has been the spokesman for the PSOE in Congress in this legislature, has begun by giving the floor to Pedro Sánchez after also trying to revive some socialist ranks that are still recognized in shock after the electoral earthquake of 28-M : “We are going to give everything to win the next elections, and we are going to win them without a doubt!”. And the President of the Government has thanked the work of the Socialist deputies and senators in the 1,273 days in which, he has specified, this intense legislature has lasted, with the approval of 213 laws - only one last one remains to be validated shortly: the decree against drought - and three general state budgets. "We have provided stability and certainty, in an extraordinarily difficult political and geopolitical context, protecting the social majority and advancing on a sheet of transformations that is as ambitious as it is necessary for Spain to progress", he defended.
But all these advances and conquests, he has warned, are at risk of being repealed if a "coalition of the extreme right and the extreme right" manages to reach Moncloa after the elections on 23-J. "Repealing sanchismo, as the PP and Vox say, means destroying everything built, dismantling everything conquered, ending social advances, repealing everything approved," he highlighted. For example, he has listed the increase in the minimum wage, the labor reform, the minimum vital income, the dignified death law, taxes on large energy and financial companies, scholarships, the reinforcement of public health and education, the climate change law, the increase in pensions or progress in women's rights. "We have made mistakes, we have stumbled, of course, but the successes have been greater than the setbacks," he defended.
The Spaniards will have to decide at the polls, on 23-J, if they want to continue expanding rights or repealing them, "as the coalition of the extreme right and the extreme right claims," he insisted. If they want to have “at the head of the Government a social democratic force committed to Europe or a tandem of extreme right-wingers that copy together the methods and proclamations that we have seen in Washington, Budapest or Brasilia”. "The best thing is that the Spanish take the floor and speak out without delay to define the political course that Spain should take", he has summoned.
Far from throwing in the towel, Sánchez has warned that "for the next four years I need to have strong and resounding support." “I need to have the greatest social support to continue on the path of social advances and transformations that Spain needs and that make Spain a better one”, he reiterated. And he has assured that he is not willing for the PP and Vox to turn the current Spanish presidency of the EU, which starts on July 1, "into a quagmire that once again drags down the image of Spain before Europe and damages the interests of our country." The Spaniards will have to decide at the polls, he has said, "if they want a president of the Government next to Biden or Trump, on the side of Lula or Bolsonaro."
Sánchez has assured the socialist deputies and senators that he made the decision to advance the general elections after seeing, last Sunday, how many regional presidents and socialist mayors will be displaced from their positions: "I could not ignore their fate, I could not continue as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had happened. "I made the decision with my conscience", he has justified. "No leader who deserves to be can look the other way when his own suffer such an undeserved and unfair punishment," he said. And on the chosen date, next July 23 in the middle of summer, the president has admitted that "we are all tired, I know it very well, the holidays are approaching and Spanish society needs to rest and disconnect, I take charge". But he has argued that the decision of the polls on 23-J "will be decisive for Spain, because the result will have effects on the lives of the social majority of the country during the next decade." “The alternative is the PP and Vox, the tandem formed by the extreme right and the extreme right, two political forces already completely similar in form and substance, because it has become clear that there is no distinction between the PP and Vox ”, he has warned.
The PSOE leader has assumed that the new electoral campaign will be much tougher than the one that has just ended: "The storm is going to be tremendous," he has warned. "The appetizer of dirt, insults and lies", was that of the recent campaign of 28-M. And before that of 23-J, he has warned, "they are going to try to tense up to unsuspected limits so that the arguments are not heard, with the only effort that we lower our arms and demobilize the majority." He has also lamented that "from the position of dominance they have in large companies and the media, an even more ferocious campaign of insults and disqualifications will be unleashed, they will invent atrocities and a cascade of lies." They are the same methods, he assured, that Trump and Bolsonaro have already used before the electoral processes in the United States and Brazil. But Sánchez has insisted on encouraging electoral victory: "Last Sunday's elections are not a point of arrival, they are the starting point."
