With a more measured tone the first and more belligerent the second, Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz synchronized the clocks and left it in evidence in their respective replies to the speech of Ramón Tamames, the alternative candidate in the motion of no confidence by Vox which started to be debated yesterday and which will end up being voted on in Congress today.
This harmony between the President of the Spanish Government and the Second Vice-President and Minister of Labour, which is scheduled to be staged again today, wanted to transmit yesterday an image of the potential that the alliance would have of the entire political space of the left in Spain to avoid the change in the political cycle that Alberto Núñez Feijóo - the great absentee from the debate - is promoting at the head of the PP with the concurrence of the ultra-right.
In Moncloa they highlighted this strategic synchronization between Sánchez and Díaz, essential for an eventual re-election of the progressive coalition Government after the general elections scheduled for December. Meanwhile, the PSOE continued to ask Podemos to bury a hatchet that, in their opinion, only serves to divide and demobilize the left, as well as allowing Vox to maintain a parliamentary representation that would make it easier for Feijóo to be the next president of the government
"This is only the beginning, there is a coalition government for a long time", warned Yolanda Díaz, singularly, to the PP group. The vice-president – who will confirm her candidacy for the general elections on April 2 and yesterday arrived at Congress escorted by Joan Subirats and Alberto Garzón – launched a forceful defense of the management of the coalition government between the PSOE and Unides Podem. With express thanks both to Sánchez himself and to the majority of the members of the Council of Ministers, from Vice-President Nadia Calviño to the ministers of the purple formation, Irene Montero and Ione Belarra, all very significant. "We humbly govern better than those who have preceded us in the government of Spain", he assured.
The session began with the defense of the motion of censure against the Spanish Government by its promoter, Santiago Abascal, at the head of the 52 deputies of Vox. With a harsh drawing of the consequences of a mandate from Sánchez that, in his opinion, is leading Spain to ruin, after trampling on all rights and freedoms, and destroying the reconciliation that the Spanish achieved during the transition. A speech ostensibly ruder than the one planned by the candidate, Ramón Tamames.
Sánchez jumped in to refute all the "furious expressions" he attributed to Abascal. The leader of the PSOE and that of Vox took the lead in the real clash of censorship while Tamames waited for his turn to intervene. He was not able to intervene until two and a half hours after the start of the session. The head of the Executive put all the spotlight on Feijóo, despite his absence, for opting to abstain from the far-right initiative: "The PP is as responsible as Vox for the immense harm it is doing to Spanish democracy this delirious motion of censure".
The President of the Central Government warned that the announced abstention of the PP in the face of this second motion of censure promoted by Vox in this legislature "is a deferred payment", which implied that Feijóo will pay dearly. "Be careful: this business is one that leaves a stain", he warned the PP group.
Sánchez denounced "the strategy of criminalization and hatred" of the ultra-right, as a PP gone bad, with a cascade of "messages harmful to democracy". "Vox is in Spanish politics like ultra-processed food in the Mediterranean diet", quipped the PSOE leader. "Vox is the glutamate of the right, a simple enhancer of extreme and radical taste", he accused.
After the hard duel between Sánchez and Abascal, it was finally Tamames' turn. In the last minute of his intervention, the veteran economist, assuming that the motion will not progress, asked that "at least" an end to the supposed "over-representation" of pro-independence forces - and regional or regionalist parties, which, in a strict sense, would have the same supposed advantage -, as a way of correcting the course of the country.
Tamames showed so much interest in this issue, which he referred to at the beginning and end of his speech, that he forgot to commit to calling early general elections in the event that this motion of no confidence succeeds, despite the fact that this was the supposed purpose of the initiative promoted by Vox, open the polls.
Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz then alternated to respond in turn to Tamames. "Honestly, I don't think it was the best idea he's had in his life", warned the president of the Spanish Government. "Vox is not another party", he pointed out. It is not what the PCE or the CDS once represented, where Tamames himself served. "Vox is something else", Sánchez insisted. "Those who promote the candidacy are the successors of Blas Piñar", he stressed, with reference to who was the leader of the far-right Fuerza Nueva formation during the Spanish transition to democracy. Sánchez thus regretted that Tamames now "contributes to whitewash" the ultra-right.
The veteran teacher grew impatient with Sánchez's long reply, and even interrupted his intervention to reproach him "for coming with a billet of 20 folios" to answer him. But then Yolanda Díaz took over, and also criticized the former communist for lending himself to be the candidate of the ultra-right: "He is deteriorating democracy", she told him, in a speech with a contained tone - especially economic and Labor – much tougher on the teacher.
Already in the afternoon session, spokespeople, among others, from the groups of the investiture block took the floor. For example, the spokesman of the PNB, Aitor Esteban, rescued the fabulous true story of a methane tanker Tamames, which ran into 50 flying saucers, an allegory that served him to nail an aggressive corrective to the ex-communist, in who qualified as "peacock". And he continued: "I'm not surprised that he was one of the ministers of the coup d'état General Armada". Gabriel Rufián, ERC spokesman, was not much more compassionate, although his tone was more of regret than of rebuke: "Those around him are the grandchildren of those who put him in prison. But this is not reconciliation. It's a surrender."
