“We will need four votes for the investiture in Congress, but we have the support of the street.” It is the reflection of a PP leader after the event called in Madrid by the PP against the amnesty, in which 40,000 people participated, according to the Police, and more than 65,000, according to the organizers. The largest mobilization that the PP has ever carried out, according to party sources, exceeding the 55,000 that gathered at the Mestalla stadium, in Valencia, on the eve of the 1996 elections that José María Aznar won.
A demonstration of force by the PP, 48 hours before the investiture that a priori Feijóo will lose and that will give Pedro Sánchez the opportunity to repeat as president, if he finally gets the votes of Junts and the rest of the forces in exchange for a law of amnesty.
However, the support of citizens and supporters will not give Feijóo the presidency of the government. The popular ones have assumed this, which is why the investiture has become a secondary issue and they focus on defending “the dignity of the nation.” Yesterday's rally served the president of the PP and his base to raise the low spirits when the victory in the July 23 elections proved insufficient to form a government.
The PP also wanted to demonstrate with this act that the party values the figures of its former presidents. For this reason, Mariano Rajoy and José María Aznar carried the weight of the rally that the first president of the PP demanded fifteen days ago, when he called for a “civic and institutional mobilization against the amnesty.”
This time, the protagonist was not Isabel Díaz Ayuso, chanted by the PP of Madrid, but not shouting president, but "Ayuso, Ayuso." The president's cheer was reserved for Feijóo. The president welcomed the attendees, who arrived by coach from all over Spain, although the bulk of the participants came from the capital of Madrid. Among those present, all the regional presidents, from Juanma Moreno (Andalusia) and Alfonso Rueda (Galicia), to those of Ceuta and Melilla.
Ayuso had prepared a war cry: “No way!” “To say amnesty is to say that there was never a crime, that it did not exist. That is to say, that the Spanish judges are prevaricators, that the blow was well delivered, that it was fair, and I say: no way!" Ayuso protested.
Together with the Madrid president, the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez Almeida, joined the complaint: “Let Sánchez and his henchmen Puigdemont, Otegi, Rufián and Junqueras be clear: we are not going to resign, we are not going to give in. We will win, because we are on the side of reason, common sense, the Constitution and equality. We will win".
With each harangue, a tsunami-like scream started from Plaza Colón, from Narváez Street and ran through the entire Felipe II Avenue: “Puigdemont to prison!”, a scream that was silenced when Aznar, Rajoy or Feijóo intervened.
“We are willing to mobilize all efforts to prevent an unprecedented attack on the framework of coexistence of all Spaniards,” said Aznar. “An unprecedented attack because it does not come from the enemies of the Constitution, but from a party that has the responsibility of defending it and does not do so.”
For former president Aznar, “the amnesty that they are willing to grant will not be an expression of reunion, but of infamy, because it will mean accepting that those who in 2017 broke the Constitution, the Statute of Catalonia and the laws, did well and had the right To do it". Aznar expressed the conviction that “as a party and as a society,” “we will use all legitimate, legal and democratic means to prevent an infamy of these dimensions from being consummated.”
The former president issued a clarification regarding the claim of the historic agreement that the independentists demand: “The only historical debt is the one that the secessionists have with Spanish democracy, which they have not paid and which they have to pay,” he demanded.
For his part, Rajoy launched arguments against the amnesty that were very similar to those used in recent weeks by some veteran socialist leaders, such as Felipe González or Alfonso Guerra. The former president considered the amnesty “a fraud” because the PSOE did not include it in its electoral program and the Government itself always defended the opposite until just before the elections. A fraud, he stressed, which represents “an amendment to the entire Constitution and democracy.”
For Rajoy, who was president of the government when the referendum took place on October 1, 2017, the amnesty would be "recognizing before Europe and the world that our rule of law depends on the needs of the government in power and that conspiring and embezzling is something legitimate". That is why he defended his management, which the PSOE now intends to challenge, which allowed the promoters of the process to end up in jail, with the exception of expatriates like Puigdemont.
Rajoy was the one who promoted article 155 of the Constitution with which Catalonia intervened and dismissed the former president, an application that he defended yesterday, against the measures applied by the Sánchez Government, such as pardons or the repeal of the crime of sedition, which The current president maintains that they have served to improve coexistence in Catalonia. Given Sánchez's theses, Rajoy is clear: "The only thing that really helped coexistence was the application of 155" because "from that moment on we all, including them, understood that democracy has instruments to defend itself."
The event was closed by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was able to see how the party has recovered from the blow of winning elections but not being able to govern. Despite this, he said he was prepared for the next opportunity. “Even if it costs me the presidency of the government, I will defend that Spain is a group of free and equal citizens,” he said.
For the presidential candidate, “this is not about parties or blocs or territories or legality. This is about principles and rights. “No one can be more than anyone else in constitutional Spain,” he warned. Feijóo also rejected the Government's argument about the existence of a progressive majority to govern, because “it is neither progressive nor socialist nor majority,” he said. In his opinion, it is not progressive to have to fight again for the rights that Spaniards have enjoyed for more than 45 years. Nor is it socialist “because they intend to establish privileges for an elite,” and it is not a majority because 94% of Spaniards voted on July 23 to maintain the Constitution, he pointed out.
Feijóo had a crowd bath yesterday, but tomorrow he will come face to face with another reality, that of Congress. Now it is time for his investiture, and then it will be seen if Sánchez manages to put together an agreement and carry out his investiture. Or on the contrary, there are other choices.
