“He is going to govern, but he is not going to enjoy his investiture.” It is a way of explaining the opposition that Alberto Núñez Feijóo is preparing against Pedro Sánchez. “The one he deserves,” say sources from the national leadership of the PP, who explain that he will “adapt to his decisions,” but with one thing clear: “we will not be condescending,” they warn. “No one can expect a generous position” from the PP to the Sánchez Government. It will, therefore, be a “very tough” opposition, “without concessions”, “with a dog's face”, because the popular people are not willing to give it “any water”, after how Sánchez has come to the presidency of the Government, and the way in which Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been treated by the PSOE and by the head of the Executive himself.
To make this opposition effective, the PP leadership starts from a premise, “the no to Sánchez bloc is much more consolidated than the yes bloc.” That is to say, from the start, and without it being necessary to make a joint strategy with Vox, the “no to Sánchez bloc” is much more solid than the “yes” block, they explain in the popular leadership, so that every time the President of the Government wants to carry out any initiative, he will have, from the outset, 171 votes against, those of the PP, Vox and UPN, while the Executive will have to negotiate with five parties, which are not going to make it easy for him.
The PP does not only talk about the independentists. “There is a lot of focus on Puigdemont, but Podemos could give him a bigger headache,” warn the sources, convinced that those from Ione Belarra will want to make their mark, represent the most left-wing part of the Government, which will make it difficult that the Executive can combine the positions of the PNV and Podemos, for example, in the budgets. So Sánchez will have to negotiate with Junts, ERC, Bildu, the PNV, but also with Podemos, “who have to come to their senses.”
The popular ones emphasize that although the PSOE wants to compare this legislature with the previous one, it is not even similar. So, remember, the PSOE had a wild card, which was Ciudadanos, and if one of the partners failed, it could resort, as it did on more than one occasion, to Bildu. Not now. He needs the support of all those who voted for his investiture to be able to achieve anything. “Sánchez does not have plan B.” The PP has nothing to do, simply wait, or at most, try to stir up trouble between the coalition members. Then, the warning that Feijóo gave Sánchez, during the investiture, “don't come looking for me,” will make sense. “Here you will not find shelter,” they maintain.
And to carry out this entire strategy, the PP will not have to accept a unity of action with Vox, something that Feijóo does not want but that Santiago Abascal himself has asked for in public and private. “We are not going to let ourselves be dragged by Vox,” they say in the popular leadership, convinced that neither the PSOE's attempt to equate the PP with Vox nor the accusation that Feijóo gives wings to the extreme right have no meaning, because, in their opinion, trial, the facts contradict it. In this sense, from Genoa it is recalled that they have not given in to Vox's request not to admit the amnesty law in the Senate, which they have not approved, despite having the votes, the illegalization of Junts and ERC, as they proposed in the Upper House those of Abascal, who have not gone to "pressure the police at the doors of Ferraz."
The PP, the sources consulted emphasize, has its own strategy, and is an autonomous party that does not need others to carry it out, as it seems that Abascal does. They refer to the fact that the president of Vox appeared at the rally called by the PP against the amnesty in Puerta del Sol, the last mobilization of the popular people, until the one that will be held on the Sunday before Constitution Day. The PP also refers to the fact that Abascal appeared on Wednesday in the plenary session of the European Parliament where the consequences that the PSOE agreements with the independentists for the investiture of Sánchez could have for the rule of law. A plenary session held at initiative of the PP and its partners from the European People's Party, which the leader of Vox, in the opinion of the popular people, has tried to make profitable "with a photo", as if it were his initiative.
Feijóo's people have a very defined strategy, they emphasize, and this does not go through Vox, because the PP is enough on its own, they say. The sources consulted contrast the numbers of one and the other and thus warn that those of Abascal cannot even present an appeal of unconstitutionality to the amnesty law, which the PP can do, and remember that Vox has lost all the legal initiatives that has raised so far. Nor can they request the convening of the Conference of Presidents, nor do they have the territorial power to counter-power Sánchez, they point out.
The popular leadership is clear that it is the PP, and not Vox, that leads the response to the Sánchez Government with regard to the amnesty both on the street, with the massive mobilizations it has called, and in Congress, with the recusal of one of the lawyers who reported on the amnesty bill; or in the Senate, reforming the House regulations to slow down its processing.
The PP seeks to break the socialists' discourse that they are making a big deal out of Vox and that what they have to do is stop them. In the popular leadership they consider that “the best way to deactivate Vox is by beating it”, and that is what the PP is determined to do. Not like the PSOE, they say, which no longer conceives the possibility of going to elections if it is not in tandem with Sumar.
Making coalition governments with Vox profitable is the strategy that the PP plans to follow, as until now. It happened, the popular ones remember, in Madrid or in Andalusia, where Juanma Moreno and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, in their first legislatures, depended on Vox, although it was not in their governments, and after four years they have achieved absolute majorities. The last example, they emphasize in the leadership of the PP, is that of Castilla y León, where the PP has been governing with Vox for the longest time, and where Abascal's party obtained one deputy in the general elections and the PP, 18. "That is true." stop Vox”, they conclude in the PP.
