Fed up with a policy in which he did not feel useful, Borja Sémper (Irun, 1976) abandoned it. He felt “vital exhaustion”. He now returns from the hand of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with whom he feels "deeply identified". He is concerned about "the drift of the country" and believes that Feijóo can redirect it.
What does this project have?
An idea of a party that wants to widen its political space, that does not live obsessed with its rivals on the right and left and is committed to finding the formula so that citizens trust politics again, with sensible responses to the country's problems. And that residue of Feijóo that makes him a leisurely man, but not lacking in action.
Are you afraid of losing your moderation image?
Now, being against or defending an alternative position to that of power makes you a radical. Moderation is defending what you believe in without insulting the adversary and talking more about what you want than about how badly the adversary does it. Moderation is not the absence of principles or ideas, it is understanding that you live in a pluralistic country and that you may not even be completely right. This is even revolutionary. I know that my adversaries are going to try to make me a suit and turn me into a dangerous extremist.
Is Feijóo passing by?
I perceive in the street the opposite of what the PSOE tries to discredit him. I perceive that he likes what he says, in substance and form. Obviously, a continued smear campaign hurts us, but we don't care. It depends only on us that the Government is capable of discrediting us. Today the PP represents a modern center-right party, it is not an orthodox or sectarian party, we defend another model, but at some point politics broke, and opposing the Government makes you an extremist.
Also from Vox they are attacked: “the cowardly right”.
When you become an alternative, your adversaries want to hurt you, and our adversary is not only Sánchez, but also Vox. It is a clamp in which Vox aims to harm the PP electorally, and Sánchez, that we do not access the government. We are not too concerned.
Since when is Vox an adversary?
Since its foundation. It was born with the will to grow at the expense of the PP. There were levers that facilitated it, but they are more comfortable opposing the PP than Sánchez.
How can you capture votes from the PSOE and Vox at the same time?
Not obsessing with capturing them, but with expanding our space, giving answers to the country's challenges. Society is exhausted, even angry, and I will not be so cynical as not to recognize that part of that fatigue has also been caused by the PP, but today, whoever governs has a higher responsibility. Today the PP, and I stick to the Feijóo stage, proposes an alternative without insults or fuss.
Do you think that ideology can be put aside when voting?
The citizens are much less sectarian than some believe. They need a sensible and solid alternative. There is a wave of change and a transversal anti-Sanchismo, which emerges in the polls and does not understand acronyms or ideological positions, but rather proposals. The left-right axis has been blurred. Now it is institutional stability or mess and anti-politics.
Whenever he can, he distances himself from Vox. Doesn't that harm those who in his party have to agree with him?
It's just that I'm not from Vox. I am a member of the PP, which defends different things on important issues. The Spain of the PP is much bigger than that of Vox. Our way of interpreting sexual freedom is different, much broader, equality between men and women; in the economy, Vox is self-sufficient; the role of Spain in the world. I hear raves talking about Soros, almost about global Judeo-Masonic conspiracies.
Would these differences make agreements impossible?
I hope we don't even have to think about it. If we don't believe that we can have a result that is broad enough to govern alone, we won't, and it is possible.
Would you feel comfortable in a government with Vox?
He would be very comfortable in a PP-only government, capable of having a fluid dialogue with the rest of the parliamentary arc. The problems that will have to be faced require major reforms. The Spain that Feijóo is going to inherit is going to need consensus, and only a profile like Feijóo's can achieve it on the left and right.
Inflation has killed off social democracy in Finland.
Historically, inflation has run away with governments. It is a very powerful weapon to overthrow governments, but for this government it is an added drama to an erratic management. At the height of inflation are the consequences of the law that only yes is yes, and everything put in a shaker gives an exhausted government and a change that is glimpsed as more than possible.
The Basque Country and Catalonia are pending subjects of the PP.
The Euskadi of today is not the one in which the PP was seen as useful. The challenge is to find the utility proposal for the future. People don't vote for you for what you have done but for what you can do. No one will deny the PP its role in winning freedom, but they are not going to vote for us for that. They will vote for us if we are capable of articulating an economic, social discourse. My colleagues are on it. It takes time.
And in Catalonia?
It is another reality. The fracture of society is fresher. The key to reconstruction is a project made by Catalans for Catalonia, constitutionalist, center-right, that overcomes the perverse dialectic of not talking about management because the process has covered everything up. The PP must be a reference to overcome that.
Catalonia asks for more.
The lace is the one established by the Constitution, with a perimeter wide enough so that Catalonia could have been an example of success. Outside it has been much worse. If Catalonia knows how to succeed, has talent, its own culture and identity, it has all the elements to succeed. Outside of legality there is only failure, impoverishment and frustration.
And a new Statute?
It seems legitimate to me to ask for more skills, but first it is to give an account of what you do with the ones you have. Spanish politics must be aware of the particularities of Catalan politics, but Catalan politicians must also be aware of the plurality of Catalonia.
What happens if Feijóo does not win the elections?
Feijóo has said that if he does not win, he will not deserve to continue presiding over the party. We will have four more years of Pedro Sánchez and his partners, and just thinking about four years more equal to those now makes my hair cringe.
