In Moncloa, they warn that, once again, the Popular Party is resorting to the two main elements of right-wing mobilization and agitation in the streets against the socialist governments: "Catalonia and ETA". And with the same common thread: "Spain is broken". Now with Pedro Sánchez, just like almost twenty years ago with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. But they insist that "citizens are no longer afraid: the wolf is not coming, nor is Spain falling apart". Not before, not now.
"Anyone is in charge of the PP, except Feijóo. It has no leadership or direction", warned yesterday the secretary of organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, after Alberto Núñez Feijóo assumed by calling a large event in Madrid the demand that the previous day encouraged former president José María Aznar of a civic mobilization against the amnesty demanded by Catalan independence to invest Sánchez, just like the one that took to the streets to stand up to the terrorism of ETA.
Cerdán warned that Feijóo only applies "the same manual of the PP as always", which he summarized: "Lies, out-of-tones and denial of reality". "They neither know nor understand Spain", lamented the socialist leader. "A party without options and anchored in the past cannot direct the future", he concluded.
The spokesperson of the PSOE in Congress, Patxi López, denounced that the protest called by the PP will be "a demonstration to attack the socialists and confront the Spanish". " Spain does not need spokespeople to fuel the confrontation. Nor leaders who do not lead, and all they do is obey Aznar, Ayuso and company, with formulas from a failed past", López insisted. "They already did this to Zapatero, who called for rallies and demonstrations against everything that was moving the country forward", he recalled.
"There are former presidents who do not help harmony or coexistence at all," he said of Aznar, despite the fact that Felipe González also declared himself against the amnesty, as did Alfonso Guerra and other former leaders of the PSOE. "Aznar seeks confrontation and confrontation, which only serves to divide and fracture Spanish society. Well, it's better to shut up!" cried Patxi López.
In Ferraz, they consider it inexplicable, in any case, that the PP convenes "an act to avoid the investiture of Sánchez, 48 hours before the investiture session of Feijóo". And they warn that he is not looking for the votes to get his investiture, which is the task given to him by the King, but that he is already establishing himself as "leader of the opposition".
"The current PP is ruled by the old PP", warn the socialists, who point out that Feijóo applies "the same manual" from the nineties with which he tried to bring down Felipe González, just as he deployed from 2004 to try to topple Zapatero . "Outbursts, loud demonstrations, denial of reality... A party living in 1996 cannot govern the Spain of 2024", they criticize.
And they question, once again, Feijóo's leadership. "He is a defeated candidate, who is headed for another defeat, and whose agenda is marked by a former president... Always overacting", they point out. They assure, however, that they are not worried that the PP will again try to shake up the streets to try to prevent the investiture of Sánchez. And they joke that "hopefully the demonstration will be in Columbus", referring to the protest against Sánchez that in February 2019 brought together Pablo Casado, Albert Rivera and Santiago Abascal in this Madrid square.
The socialists criticize that Feijóo, who assumed the leadership of the PP with an image of moderation and pactism to close the Casado stage, is being guided by Aznar, and also Isabel Díaz Ayuso or Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, that is, the which he considers the hardest sector of the party. "They didn't need saddlebags for this trip", they point out. "There cannot be this lack of leadership in a party that says it aspires to govern. Daily insults, lack of rigor, one day they say they don't talk to Puigdemont and the next day they do...", enumerate the PSOE leadership.
And they remember that Ayuso also signed up for the demonstration called by Societat Civil Catalana in Barcelona, "without coordinating with the national leadership". "This is a sainet!", they criticize.
The president of Castilla-La Mancha, the socialist Emiliano García-Page, who agrees with González and Guerra in rejecting the amnesty, assured to see Aznar "in his element". But he reiterated that he will oppose the amnesty requested by Puigdemont if Pedro Sánchez assumes it. "It hasn't been two months since a general election in which the PSOE and the entire Government proposed that the amnesty did not fit in the Constitution", he stressed. And he pointed out that "this will have to be explained or clarified, if someone wants to give a change of approach or idea". "That what didn't fit in the Constitution is enormously serious," Page warned Sánchez.
