PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo took advantage of a regular meeting of his party’s Executive Committee this Monday to reiterate to his regional barons an idea that is not the first time it has been heard in recent weeks: be careful with the meetings with Pedro Sánchez at Moncloa and the “bribes” with which the president of the government, according to this thesis, will try to divide the opposition over the reform of regional financing. A warning that Isabel Díaz Ayuso also issued at the beginning of the month, who took advantage of Monday’s appointment to clarify to her colleagues that she had never intended to give them “homework”.
Feijóo’s meeting with some of his barons was the first after the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, began receiving the regional presidents at the Moncloa during the round preceding the convocation of the Conference of Presidents. Last Friday, the Lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, the Galician president, Alfonso Rueda, and the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno, were present.
None of the PP barons who have already passed through Moncloa attended the PP meeting. Rueda had scheduled the usual weekly meeting of the Government Council, and Moreno had summoned the Andalusian parliamentary groups to comment on last Friday’s meeting. The president of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, did not attend either, since Felipe VI inaugurated the university course there. For reasons of official agenda, the president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, is also not present.
The Executive Committee could not know directly what Sánchez proposed or did not propose to the regional presidents. What was discussed? And if there had been that attempt at “corruption” that the PP denounces and that both presidents already denied on Friday. Moreno and Rueda assured that the president had not proposed anything to them.
But there are still many meetings to come, and Feijóo hopes that none of his barons will break the “unity” that he has achieved, at least in the rejection of his own funding for Catalonia, even if for the moment they have not presented their own alternative.
In his open speech, the PP leader compared the government to “a hamster stuck in a wheel that keeps turning every day” to always end up in the same place. The opposition leader assured that the only thing the Executive does well is to “degrade everything within its reach” and oppose the PP. “A minister has joined whose exclusive dedication is to insult a certain Feijóo,” he joked about the entry of Óscar Puente in place of José Luis Escriva.
“This is the only thing they have left. Go after us,” he assured his executive committee. “Starting with the regional presidents,” he added. The government’s intention, according to Feijóo, is to go after the PP. “But neither with insults, nor with humiliations, nor with bribes, they will succeed,” he concluded.
Ayuso qualifies his remarks on the barons
Feijóo’s words are similar to those spoken by the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, on September 5, a day before the summit of the barons in which all the regional presidents of the PP committed themselves not to accept “bilaterality” in conversations with them from the Government and to refer all negotiations on regional financing to a multilateral level: the Conference of Presidents and the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy.
Ayuso then demanded that the barons “not fall into Sánchez’s trap,” who, as he said 20 days ago, “will try to bribe everyone” in Moncloa with concrete and bilateral offers of additional financing or debt relief. “I ask the presidents of the autonomous communities not to believe in Sánchez’s strategy,” he said, because his goal is to divide the PP and for Feijóo to appear as an unhealthy leader in front of whom the regional presidents escape all control when they give them money. . past.
Ayuso’s words were not well received by other PP leaders. The Madrid president has not yet confirmed whether she will attend the meeting with Sánchez when he calls her (the order is that of the approval of the autonomy statutes, and Madrid is fourth from the bottom), and this statement was seen by many as if they were being assigned tasks from the capital.
The next day, all the barons committed in writing not to accept bilaterality, to refuse debt relief and to jointly propose a negotiation on regional financing. A document that had obviously been negotiated by the respective cabinets for some time, so Ayuso knew what was going to be made public 24 hours after his warning.
Ayuso asked to speak this Monday, already behind closed doors, and spoke before the National Executive Committee after the open intervention of its leader. Different sources consulted by elDiario.es assured that the Madrid president gave a long speech in which she wanted to clarify that her intention was not to belittle them or give them duties, but rather to warn against Pedro Sánchez. In fact, a good part of her speech was aimed precisely at making a chronology of all the attacks committed, according to the PP, by the president.
In any case, last Friday, in Moncloa, no offer, concrete or not, regarding financing or debt relief was presented. As explained by the two PP barons present at the meeting, the President of the Government not only did not write them checks, but he even admitted that he did not believe that a financing reform for all communities could be agreed, always according to the history of the presidents.
