We are in an electoral campaign, but for the municipal and regional elections on May 28, not for a hypothetical general election. And the Senate experienced the first face-to-face between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo of that electoral campaign, the prelude to the European ones. There are 11 months left in the legislature, and in that time the Government has many things to do, "rebuild the welfare state." With this statement, Pedro Sánchez, cleared up any doubt about a possible electoral advance, which has flown over in recent days, after the umpteenth internal crisis in the Government, this time, due to the discrepancies between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos on the reform of the Law of yes is yes.
But once the doubts about the generals were cleared up, the President of the Government and the leader of the opposition got involved in a debate about the models that each one has, and both established themselves as the representatives of the problems of the citizens, not like the other, that each one sees him absorbed in himself, and locked in a personal plan that has nothing to do with the problems of citizens.
It was Pedro Sánchez who started this debate, based on a finding defended by the President of the Government, that neoliberalism has put the "welfare state in decline in many territories", with veiled attacks on many regional governments, and especially that of Madrid , although he did not mention it, more than on one occasion, to remember the health strike, in his reply. "The degradation of public services is not accidental" for the President of the Government, who assured that there is no anti-democratic plan on the part of the Government to establish "a Bolivarian collectivist dictatorship", contrary to what the right has said on the street .
But Sánchez is convinced that there is "a plan to weaken, if not cut, the welfare state." A plan that is "designed - said Sánchez - by the economic elites and that the political right has executed in their territories." Deterioration in health, education and assistance to dependency, with a single objective, in his opinion: "That public services deteriorate and have to go to the private sector." It responds, then, "to a model that the right and the ultra-right would like to apply" throughout Spain
The Prime Minister assured, however, that he has no problem with public-private collaboration, "but we are not going to allow there to be public health for the poor and private health for the rich", and the same thing to happen with education, or that "the difference between being healthy or sick" is having private insurance. For this reason, he defended his management against what "the prophets of the apocalypse" say and predict "the prophets of disaster" who have spoken of "economic collapse, recession or unemployment."
Sánchez made it clear that his model is the German one: "Our path is that of Germany", and not to offer investors "a country of cheap labor". A model that has meant that the Spanish Government has already mobilized "45,000 million euros to protect the middle classes", and that has raised the Minimum Interprofessional Wage and will now do so to 1080, as the president announced after the meeting this morning of Vice President Yolanda Díaz with the unions, but not with the employers, who did not attend the meeting.
