The campaign for the general elections on July 23rd will not be like the one on the 28th- M. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, after the triumph in the municipal and regional elections, now wants to give an image of a presidential candidate and offer proposals, program and measures that he can put underway if he manages to reach Moncloa. For this reason, also, at his events, at least during the pre-campaign – during the campaign it is more difficult to abstain from the meetings –, he prefers his public presence to be in more sectoral events, with fewer but more influential people, and to create, therefore, a network of trust in his figure.
Yesterday, the president of the PP went, thinking about these objectives, to the South Summit 2023 that is held in Madrid, and to the Santander WomenNOW, where he spoke about politics and equality, with messages aimed at two very specific groups, the feminine that rejects radical approaches, and entrepreneurs.
In the interventions, Feijóo made it clear that his intention is to make the economy the axis of the discourse. Therefore, the first thing he offers is management, the same credential with which he reached the presidency of the PP a year ago. Then he bet everything on the reputation of a good manager, with the passage through Insalud, Correos, the Xunta de Galicia, until Pedro Sánchez tried to destroy that vision, with a phrase that he repeated until he got tired at first face to face with the leader of the PP, with the attribution of all his actions to "incompetence or bad faith".
The law of only yes is yes, the presence of members of the defunct ETA on Bildu's lists and the agreements of the Spanish Government with the Abertzale coalition distracted the president of the PP from that path, in which he feels comfortable and that now try to resume.
To do this, there is nothing better than the South Summit, an event that connects entrepreneurs with investors and companies that want to improve their competitiveness. In front of them, Feijóo wanted to make himself known: "I am an aspirant to change my country", he told them, with a speech in the key of president, rather than leader of the opposition, in which he explained to them what offers
"I believe in management", said the leader of the PP. "I like the rigor, the cooperation, the union, the commitment", he said. Its claim is that "the economy grows, with solid and healthy growth, that is not sustained only by public spending", and that employment does not grow only because of public employment.
Feijóo proposed an economic policy based "on realism and reforms"; to control the public accounts and not to continue with an “exorbitant public debt” that will make Spain pay up to 44,000 million euros in interest in 2026.
The president of the PP offered entrepreneurs "a better orientation of public expenditure", tax incentives "for those who really take risks" and that the tax system should be oriented towards employment and the attraction of investments. Feijóo undertakes to reduce bureaucracy, to give more dynamism to companies and that education already focuses on the "values of innovating, creating, taking risks and contributing to society".
The PP leader's program will aim, he said, to place Spain again among the ten best economies in the world; that in the horizon of 2030 unemployment is at a technical level; that Spain "be a leader in energy, technology and good places to live".
But above all, Feijóo believes that his government, if it wins the elections, must "generate certainties, prove legal security and dedicate itself to growing, creating and believing", as he argued.
To do all this, Feijóo believes that a good diagnosis of the economic situation must first be made, and, in his opinion, the Sánchez Government is not doing this because "unjustified triumphalism is a bad diagnosis". "It is not true that the Spanish economy is going like a motorcycle", he said, because "the clinical history is not good". Feijóo considers that there is a "stagnation", which results in the fact that the GDP of 2019 has not recovered, when the other European countries have indeed done so, and that, out of every four unemployed Europeans, one is Spanish . Without forgetting, he stressed, that the Spanish have lost purchasing power, that the central government is not able to balance the accounts and that the deficit reaches 4.8%. So, the main objective remains "for the economy to grow", but for it to be a "healthy" growth. And this is what Feijóo will be dedicated to.
And in equality policy, already during the visit to Santander WomenNOW, Feijóo defended "real and effective equality, without labels", with measures that allow women to develop their professional careers, which are often slowed down by motherhood. What it offers: free education from zero to three years "to promote conciliation". Feijóo sets itself the challenge of equalizing the rate of female activity with that of males, when it is now ten points below. "More women with jobs means more independent women in the economic field and, therefore, more free women", she stressed, and stressed that "this is working for real equality".
