One month. This is how the much-vaunted “social turning point” of the PP lasted after the return of summer. Announced in September with great fanfare by the spokespersons of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party, with great media coverage, the internal storm caused by the fiasco of the law which will allow Spanish prisoners to accumulate the sentences already served in the EU forced the PP to reorient its action. strategy to return to a tough end-of-cycle speech, far from the sectoral proposals which, they said, would dominate their agenda after a year of legislature. The indictment of the Attorney General following a complaint filed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner and the almost certain investigation against José Luis Ábalos in the context of the “Koldo affair” opened this path.
Last summer, the PP concluded that Pedro Sánchez would most likely manage to remain as head of government. Despite the enormous difficulties in obtaining the parliamentary majority that invested him for a third term, Feijóo’s strategists are almost certain that there will be a general budget for 2025 and, therefore, a legislature.
Feijóo had until then acted on the assumption that Sánchez would quickly succumb due to the impossibility of controlling Junts. Especially since the courts, led by the Supreme Court, have limited the application of the amnesty and left aside, for the moment, Carles Puigdemont.
Despite the obvious anger of the leader of the Junts, who is about to end his seventh year of flight from Spanish justice in Belgium, the reality is that the government has not lost any vital voice. The removal of the spending cap from the agenda at the end of September was intended to open a broad negotiation with the Catalan separatists to link support to budgets.
This is what one of the main leaders of the PP, Elías Bendodo, said this week. In a closed-door meeting with provincial party officials, he ruled out a motion of censure (for which he needs the unlikely support of parties as far-flung as Vox and Junts or the PNV) and considered public accounts for 2025 like almost some. PP does not hide the fact that he has an occasional dialogue with Junts.
The rejection of the motion of censure was preceded by several “no” votes. Some are fundamental from an arithmetic point of view, like that of the PNV. Feijóo has insisted since 2022 on attracting the “jeltzales” towards the classic role of hinge between them that right-wing Basque nationalism had in the past. But the signals coming from Euskadi are clear: the PNV shares many governments with the PSOE, including the regional one. And his relations with the PP are terrible. PNV spokesperson Aitor Esteban went so far as to publicly describe his PP counterpart, Miguel Tellado, as “clumsy.”
Another of the most significant “no’s” was that of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The president of Madrid, who usually marks the ideological and discursive course of the PP, took a position this week against the vote with Junts. He did this just after the president of the Catalan party, Laura Borrás, opened the door to joining the PP and even Vox to oust Sánchez. Those of Santiago Abascal joined them, but Borrás herself disavowed herself soon after.
Priority: changing the narrative
Tellado is precisely the greatest representative of the hard wing of the national leadership of the PP. Feijóo’s right-hand man for decades, first in Galicia and now in Madrid, his role as leader of the parliamentary group has been called into question not only by the fiasco of the law that allows prisoners to accumulate sentences, but also by the reaction to the news and the exploitation of ETA victims.
It took more than a week for the PP spokesperson to apologize for holding up a poster with images of ETA victims during the Congress plenary session. And he did it on Federico Jiménez Losantos’ radio with a formula that expressed shy regret: “I deleted this photo from my social networks out of respect for the victims of terrorism who may have felt offended. But I do not withdraw the intention of my action, which is to confront the PSOE with its own moral misery.” In case of doubt, he decided: “The PSOE is a party of miserable people, of miserable people”.
The alleged error in the treatment of the law is at the origin of the counter-turn in the PP’s argument, which brought it back to the previous position of harshness from which Feijóo wanted to escape. The opposition had become the subject of much criticism, particularly from its own people. And history had to be changed.
It started a week ago, with the extraordinary convening of a steering committee on a Sunday to announce that the next day they were going to file a complaint against the PSOE. The basis: an anonymous statement from an alleged businessman who declared in an interview with “L’Objectif” that he had brought “bags of money” to the socialist headquarters of Ferraz.
The duration of the complaint will be minimal, since case law opposes the admission to processing of complaints based solely on press cuttings. And in the PP, not only do they know it, but they don’t care, because their goal was to make headlines, as an authorized spokesperson for the leadership told journalists last Wednesday in the halls of Congress . In other words, change the media narrative.
The PP did not hesitate to use the Senate again for its own interests and, if it has already done it with the amnesty, it has done it again today. The president of the Upper House, Pedro Rollán, vetoed the law by voting in plenary, despite the fact that the Constitution requires that all or part of the amendments be presented, something the PP did not do during the weeks where the law was in force. Senate.
The strategy does not seem to be short. That same Friday, Feijóo warned from Berlin: “This has only just begun, the president is at the point of no return. » “The threat that worries the government the most is the corruption that threatens it,” he added. And the PP is ready to exploit it to the fullest.
Damnified: the social “turning point”
In his interview with the ultra communicator, Tellado recovered a recent phrase from the former president of the government and one of the main operators of the hardest wing of the Spanish right, José María Aznar. The one who managed to bring together the opposition to Felipe González in the 90s uttered a phrase that remained engraved during the development of the amnesty law: “He who can do, let him do”.
And, in the words of the PP parliamentary spokesperson, that is what they are doing. This strategy is precisely reminiscent of that launched by the political, economic and media right thirty years ago to overthrow the government of Felipe González. Someone who was in the engine room of the operation at the time, the former director of ABC and then La Razón, Luis María Ansón, said years later that they were endangering “the stability of the State “.
But this strategy was accompanied by a serious economic crisis which led to the fall of the socialist government. Something that today seems far from being repeated.
But the PP thought it had found a way to attack the Sánchez government through other means. Last week, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demand intervention in the rental market and the need to move towards a system that allows them to reconcile personal life and work has become evident among younger generations.
The PP theorized the need to defend both issues, or at least enter the debate and present concrete proposals. To resolve the problem of access to housing, the right has resorted to its revenues: lower taxes and land liberalization. To improve the working conditions of Spaniards, three quarters of the same amount: tax cuts and the privatization of preschool education in its first phases, among others.
Not all the proposed measures were appreciated by everyone and Isabel Díaz Ayuso once again affirmed that she does not accept ideological deviations, not even those that propose 10-hour days to reduce the week by four-day work, when companies want it.
But this phase has already passed. The escalation of the “Koldo case” into the “Ábalos case” and the “PSOE case”, the delegitimization of the Attorney General from the first day or the investigation against the president’s wife were already there when the PP sardonically said to journalists that they were going to be “fed up with sectorism”. That is to say, concrete proposals on specific subjects.
Necessity made the PP return to where it was before the summer holidays: hyperbole. That same Sunday, the Denaes Foundation, spokesperson for Vox, called for a demonstration in Madrid against the government. The PP has already announced that it will support it and send a representation from its leadership. Despite the breakup of autonomous governments and the criticism that Feijóo and Abascal regularly address each other, the unity of action between the two persists.
