The clock was slow in favor of the President of the Government, without a time limit to intervene, in front of an opposition leader who was very constrained by the short turn dictated by the regulations, like the rest of the spokespersons. But the almost three hours of the very hard duel that Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo staged yesterday in the Senate revealed the lack of understanding and the impossibility of reaching any state consensus between the two major parties in Spain, despite the energy crisis, inflationary and economic that hovers over the country. The parliamentary debate, between mutual reproaches and crossed accusations, thus became a kind of starting signal for the very long electoral campaign that the PSOE and the PP will settle until its final culmination in the general elections scheduled for December next year.
Sánchez warned that he was never in favor of a government of concentration between the two main forces in the country, considering it a "dangerous formula" because it annuls political alternation in democracy and "pushes discontent outside the limits of the system." The head of the Executive, however, declared himself in favor of the State agreements between the Government and the opposition. Thus, he said, the Moncloa pacts were forged in 1977 or the 1978 Constitution itself. Sánchez recalled that he himself, as head of the opposition, reinforced the anti-terrorist pact with Mariano Rajoy, after the jihadist attacks in Barcelona, or supported the application of article 155 of the Constitution in Catalonia, “in defense of territorial integrity and national sovereignty”. Now, on the other hand, he regretted that Feijóo is still installed, like his predecessor at the head of the PP, Pablo Casado, in the "no, no and no" to everything. "The opposition cannot ignore the fate of the country," he reproached her.
“Spain has a lot at stake, the moment deserves high-mindedness and willingness to agree”, defended Feijóo. “I am not losing hope, I am still open to agreements with the main opposition party,” agreed Sánchez. But the PP leader did not give in and regretted Sánchez's attempt to overwhelm him: “His intervention is not typical of a president. To oppose, you just have to wait for the next elections, ”he summoned.
Sánchez wanted to take advantage of the debate to "unmask" Feijóo, and began by warning him that "a public official cannot behave like a shaman or a healer." "And what a political leader should never do is play with the fear of the population," he stressed. The head of the Executive urged to choose, given the complex situation that the country is going through, between "fear or hope", between "being part of the problem or the solution". Sánchez defended hope and a solution, and wanted to convey a message of calm to the public. "As long as he is President of the Government, the State and all its financial resources will be at the service of citizens, and not the other way around," he promised. All the power of the State to protect people from the energy, inflationary and economic crisis, and not "at the service of some powerful groups", as Sánchez reproached the PP for dealing with the financial crisis of the past decade, which caused “mass layoffs”.
The situation is "devilish," Sánchez acknowledged. "The immediate future of Spain is dominated by uncertainty," he assumed, as has been the case in Europe and the world as a whole since Vladimir Putin began his war in Ukraine. “Prices are through the roof”, he admitted, without wanting to put “hot cloths” on the situation. "We don't know what's going to happen, because we're talking about an authoritarian state, where dissidents mysteriously fall out of windows," he warned, referring to Putin's Russia.
The uncertainty is absolute, therefore, in terms of energy, the rise in prices and the economy as a whole. But Sánchez warned that "we are preparing for the worst" in the event that Putin opts for the total closure of gas supplies to Europe. And, as for the new energy saving and efficiency measures that the Government is preparing, the president did assure something forcefully: “They will not be dramatic measures, there will be no electricity blackouts, no rationing of butane cylinders, nor any of those apocalyptic scenes that evoke the benches of the right and the extreme right together with the media that cheer those messages”. “Citizens can rest easy,” he assured. And he insisted that he will do "everything in our power and more to bend the inflation curve." But always putting the protection of the families of the middle and working classes and the companies, without reproducing "the obscene neoliberal script" that he attributed to the PP or submitting to "a few groups in Madrid."
Already in his reply to Feijóo, Sánchez went directly to kill, after regretting that he cannot reach any agreement with the main opposition party, neither in the face of the pandemic nor now in the face of a war. And he denounced the blocking of the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, which continues without signs of a solution. The president criticized that the only interest of the PP, before, now and always, is "trying to undermine and bring down the Government of Spain." “It seems that any occasion is a good one to bury the government,” he lamented. Feijóo, on the other hand, insisted on denouncing Sánchez's alliances in the Executive and in Parliament: "Break with your allies, dismiss the ministers you did not name and seek support in the Government alternative," he summoned him.
But Sánchez wanted to focus on the alleged insolvency of a Feijóo whose proposals, he criticized, "lack technical rigor." "The things he says do not support the image of a good manager that you claim to have," he stoked the PP leader. And he repeated the message that he wanted to underline throughout the afternoon: "Is it insolvency or pure bad faith?"
The claim of the leader of the PP to "push him to the precipice every time he has an opportunity," Sánchez insisted, will fail no matter how much the polls give wings to the change in the political cycle. “His only project for his country is to throw out the evil Sánchez,” he ironically. “But it is going to fail as Casado failed in his attempt to break the government,” he settled.
