The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, who – with the exception of the extraordinary plenary session of Congress last August – had been practically missing for weeks and away from public activity, has now reappeared coinciding with the start of the political course. Abascal tries to take positions in the pre-campaign of the new electoral cycle that begins in May with the regional and municipal elections. While the extreme right continues to fall in the polls, its strategy to try to turn the polls around is to try to set the pace and attack Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s PP for its willingness to show a more moderate image than that of the leadership of Pablo Casado and for opening up to talk with the progressive government.
Sánchez shakes Feijóo and sows doubts about his solvency
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The popular ones are Vox’s great rival again in the face of those appointments with the polls. The extreme right has been competing with them for the same conservative electorate for four years. But, paradoxically, according to the polls, it is also foreseeable that both forces will need each other to reach agreements and prevent the left from coming to power, as happened in Castilla y León, where those of Abascal govern in coalition with the PP although with a very complex relationship marked by clashes and misunderstandings.
In the last year of the legislature, which coincides with the new electoral cycle, Vox will pressure Feijóo to attract him to his positions, more radical than those of the popular ones. And also to prevent any rapprochement with the PSOE Executive and United We Can that could make it easier for the PP leader to offer a more institutional image that could help him expand his electorate beyond the traditional right. For this reason, one of the great objectives of Abascal is that there is no agreement between socialists and popular to renew institutions such as the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), blocked by the PP since 2018, despite the harsh speech delivered by the still president of the body of the judges, Carlos Lesmes, on Wednesday, berating the two major parties for that lack of understanding that keeps him in his position.
Although in the plenary session of the Senate on Tuesday the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the PP revealed their difficulties in agreeing on any matter, Abascal only focused on the offer that, between crossed disqualifications, Feijóo made to the head of the Executive to resume the dialogue in search of agreements. “Look for support in the party that embodies the alternative,” the PP leader told Sánchez, alluding to his political strength. “We will never be permanent parliamentary partners, but we will always be allies of our country,” he added. Abascal considers that, with those words, Feijóo gave “an oxygen ball” to the Executive, and warns that Vox is going to “continue to maintain a position of infinite distance from this Government”, which it has always considered illegitimate due to its parliamentary agreements.
The president of Vox considers, in fact, that Spain is in an “exceptional situation” with an Executive “that has agreed with Bildu, with ETA, with Catalan separatism, and with the totalitarian communism of Podemos.” Abascal believes, however, that there is nothing to talk about with Sánchez and his people. That is why the extreme right will attack the PP if it seeks that dialogue with a double objective: to try to wear Feijóo down to stop his rise in the polls and, at the same time, steal all those votes from the most radical right that also denies any understanding with government.
Four months of attacks
That is the niche of votes that Abascal hopes to recover, since the extreme right has hardly benefited from the gradual disappearance of Ciudadanos, which played a hinge role in closing agreements and whose former electorate was the one that gave the absolute majority to the PP in Andalusia. in the June elections. Vox, led by Macarena Olona – who left politics last month as a result of this result, citing health reasons – failed to be decisive for the governance of the community, which sharpened its change of strategy to attack Feijóo.
Abascal’s attacks on the new leader of the PP began, in any case, before the Andalusian elections. In May, at the plenary session of Congress in which Sánchez appeared to talk about the espionage scandal, the top boss of Vox said he did not understand that Feijóo offered pacts to the Government. “No collaborationism with this government is acceptable,” said Abascal, who considered that “the Spanish want alternatives, but Vox has been left alone to denounce these collusion” of bipartisanship. For the leader of the extreme right, Feijóo “doesn’t really want to change anything”.
But, despite this, Abascal has not stopped reaching out to the leader of the PP “so as not to give this government water.” In the debate on the state of the nation in July, the leader of Vox summoned Feijóo to a meeting to seek “a real alternative” and “not a simple replacement” to the Sánchez government. He got no response. Both leaders have not met formally since last April 2 Feijóo replaced Casado at the head of the PP and that after the election of the former Galician president, one of his first decisions was to give the green light to the coalition with Vox in Castile and León.
Relations between the two Executive partners in that community are not easy either. Those of Juan García-Gallardo -Vice President of the Board, of Vox- have made their own announcements on behalf of “the advisers of Vox”, have introduced the party’s logo in the official promotional videos, and opt for communication in parallel to that of the PP, as if they did not form the same government. Fernández Mañueco has been forced to assume some of the impositions of the extreme right, such as the processing of a regional law on domestic violence, while resisting pressure to repeal the regional law on sexist violence, which, although still in force, could run out of funding if Vox wins the pulse again. Another of the edges that the PP has run into there is the repeal of the Historical Memory Law that Vox wants to replace with another of Concord, a request that for the moment has remained unanswered, as Abascal himself reproached Feijóo in the state of the nation debate.
The Viva Festival, the first big date of the course
However, the extreme right wants to focus the new political course on making it clear that the true and only strength of the opposition is its own. “Only Vox remains”, its leaders repeat in all public interventions. Those of Abascal blame, in fact, PSOE and PP alike for the economic situation in Spain. Socialists and popular, Vox maintains, are “accomplices” having applied “the same policies for decades.” “Pedro Sánchez is just the tip of the iceberg. The problems suffered by Spaniards are a consequence of the political and economic model that the PP and PSOE have brought to Spain in recent decades and their submission to the 2030 Agenda,” Abascal assured on Twitter, the platform on which he usually broadcasts his proclamations. .
The first big event of the course for Vox will be the second edition of the Viva Festival. The extreme right defines the event as “the great political, cultural and festive event that last year brought together more than 30,000 attendees in Madrid.” The current edition will be held between Saturday the 8th and Sunday the 9th of October, the weekend before the October 12 holiday. The celebration will culminate with “a great political event” that will include speeches by the main leaders of Vox and other far-right formations “with which the party has international alliances.” During that day, “a new political document” will be presented under the slogan “Spain decides”, a slogan that shows that Vox is already fully preparing to submit to the scrutiny of the polls.
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