Pedro Sánchez wanted to surprise and displace Alberto Núñez Feijóo with the unexpected challenge he threw at him yesterday: deliver six televised confrontations between "the only two possible presidents". One per week until the general elections on July 23, both alone, face to face, and in prime time. Those who don't risk don't win, warn Moncloa.
But the leader of the Popular Party does not want to take unnecessary risks on his route to the presidency of the Government, and immediately rejected the unusual proposal. "Spain is not for eccentricities", dismissed Borja Sémper, spokesman for the PP campaign.
"Debating is never an eccentricity, it is an obligation, a duty of all democrats, because what is at stake is very important", retorted Sánchez in an appearance in Moncloa with the prime minister of Sweden, the liberal conservative Ulf Kristersson. "These elections must be the result of democratic debates", alleged the Spanish president, who precisely pointed to the example of the last elections in a "consolidated democracy" like the Swedish one, in which seven debates were held, also expensive face-to-face, among the main candidates, and five more from sectors.
But the second vice-president, Yolanda Díaz, now Sumar's candidate, also did not like Sánchez's proposal of the face-to-face with Feijóo, which she attributed to an attempt to strengthen bipartisanship between the PSOE and the PP. Precisely when the first vice-president, Nadia Calviño, warns that "it is a fact that the two political parties that emerged with the financial crisis, Citizens and Podemos, have disappeared". "Whoever believes that the future of Spain is summed up in a photo of Sánchez and Feijóo is out of touch with reality, bipartisanship is the past", replied Díaz. "Spain is more than a debate between two men", he concluded.
And Podemos, while waging its battle with Díaz to configure the electoral space to the left of the PSOE, also ruled. "Bipartisanship brought corruption, austerity, deindustrialization, the scrapping of strategic companies, the bank bailout, the express abdication of the emeritus and political disaffection," cried Pablo Echenique.
The president, in any case, warned that the disjunctive raised by Feijóo in the face of the elections - "Either Sánchez or Spain" - is a "dangerous slogan", in line with those of Trump in the United States, Orbán in Hungary or Meloni in Italy "We are not anti-Spain", he alleged. "They won't beat us in love for Spain", he stressed. The dichotomy expressed by the leader of the PP is, as he said, "false and deceitful". "The choice is very clear: Sánchez or Feijóo. Feijóo or Sánchez. This is, in reality, the election, because there are only two possible presidents", he pointed out.
And he said the best way to contrast the two candidates and their projects is to confront them in face-to-face debates. Sánchez thus accepted the invitations sent by four media groups – Mediaset, Atresmedia, Prisa and RTVE – and asked for another two, one a week and six in total, until the 23rd, without wasting time: "I'm waiting for Feijóo next monday".
Then, the secretary of organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, sent letters of acceptance to these communication groups, and urged the general coordinator of the PP, Elías Bendodo, to meet "as soon as possible" to negotiate this first debate.
Sánchez assured that this would avoid a bitter electoral campaign filled with "blasphemy, insults and lies". And he gave the example of his alleged aspiration to be the next secretary general of NATO, replacing the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, who is awaiting his replacement. "It's all nonsense", he concluded.
And in response to Díaz, Sánchez warned that his proposal is not only to hold these weekly debates with Feijóo, but also others with Sumar and Vox, on four sides. "I will gladly go there", he insisted. And in addition, other sectoral ones, between the parties, to compare the respective projects on the economy, climate change, social policies, pensions...
Borja Sémper, on behalf of the PP, wanted to stop the president. It is not Spain, he justified, that needs this succession of debates. "Who needs them is Sánchez", he said. But he assured that his "anxiety" will not mark the agenda of the leader of the opposition. Feijóo already sees himself with one foot in Moncloa, and he is not prepared for Sánchez to impose the strategy on him. "Feijóo's legs have trembled", criticized the socialists.
Beyond the debate about the debates, the head of the Executive sent a harsh warning about the economic consequences that a change of Government could have for Spain. "Any alteration of the current economic policy, taking steps backwards in the ecological transition, the digital transformation or the labor reform, will not only slow down important industrial projects and relevant investments, but will slow down the present and future economic growth of Spain and, with this, the intense job creation we are registering", he said. If his reforms are repealed, as Feijóo promises, he warned that "the damage would be extraordinarily serious".
"The Spanish economy goes like a motorcycle", emphasized Sánchez in his speech at a conference on European recovery funds organized by elDiario.es. "If someone has an alternative economic policy that raises their hand and explains how they will improve these data and who will be the person responsible for this task", he said, referring to the leader of the PP.
