Feijóo promises to recover the crime of sedition and appeals to the "moral duty" of the PSOE barons against Sánchez

Feijóo has appeared to read what the PP has called an “institutional declaration” shortly after landing in Madrid from Quito, Ecuador, where a long tour of Latin America has concluded. “Sánchez has accepted the pro-independence blackmail to overcome his parliamentary minority,” said the Galician leader. “He has no limits”, he has said

The leader of the PP has recognized his inability to prevent the reform and his resignation from using legal or parliamentary resources that at least postpone it. He has not announced any concrete political or institutional measures. He has only reiterated that if he is president of the Government in 2024, he will repeal the measure and restore the crime of sedition.

Later, he addressed the barons and the socialist bases, in a movement that points to those who have to submit to the polls in May 2023: “I want to make it clear that it would be simplistic to single out the President of the Government exclusively. Yours is the main responsibility. But the PSOE is more than Pedro Sánchez. It is the sum of its leaders. All of them and it is up to all of them to establish a position”. “When borders are crossed, it is essential to speak up and act accordingly,” he insisted. “In this there are no subterfuges: either with the convicted and the escaped, or with democratic legality”, he added, to settle: “The moral duty of the Socialists who believe that it is an aberration is to make public their opposition to this measure and try not to go ahead.”

The leader of the PP thus seeks a loophole to make a dent in the PSOE and use internal criticism as an electoral lever both in the regional and municipal elections and in the subsequent general ones. In fact, both the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García Page, and that of Aragón, Javier Lambán, have been opposed to the reform.

Page said this Friday that Sánchez’s words on Thursday night “suddenly took away his sleep”. “Luckily this morning we have been in a pharmaceutical and I have already told them to see if they have medicine for the curves that are coming in the next few days, but I have not found them,” he joked. Then she pointed out that “it is not the way to agree on this reform with those who want to break coexistence.” “Obviously I do not share the approach. I was surprised because although the debate is legitimate to raise it, I think it should be done within a year or two ”, he has settled.

Lambán, for his part, has argued that what happened in Catalonia “was very serious” and that “the rule of law, in the face of any possibility of attacking the Constitution, must be very well armed politically and legally”, so that, in addition of current legislation, including the Penal Code, should have “other tools”. “I hope that sometime, when we all get common sense, we can work on this, one of the most serious problems in Spain,” he settled.

Feijóo ignores calls for a motion of no confidence

Feijóo has offered a harsh image, of a total break with the Prime Minister. But he has also shown the impotence of someone who does not have any spring in his hand to prevent what is going to happen. The Galician leader has ignored the request of the leader of Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, to promote a motion of censure against Sánchez.

He has even avoided asking for the resignation of Sánchez, something that Cuca Gamarra and Elías Bendodo, his number two Y three, respectively. Bendodo, in fact, was in Malaga this morning and has traveled to Madrid. Both have been sitting in the first row of the press room of the national headquarters of the PP, in Madrid’s calle de Génova, together with the vice-secretary for Social Policies, Carmen Navarro.

Feijóo has not urgently called the Management Committee of the party and has drawn up the statement with his closest team and some of the leaders who accompany him on a regular basis. A National Executive Committee is scheduled for next Monday, convened several days ago. That day the barons of the party will speak, with Juan Manuel Moreno and Isabel Díaz Ayuso at the head, since this Friday they have remained silent until the president has spoken.

Ayuso will also offer a previous speech during an informative breakfast on Monday morning. And while the Executive Committee of the PP is being held, the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, will appear at a press conference. The first he offers in months.

The ultra leader described Sánchez as a “traitor” after the announcement made by the president on Thursday night. An epithet that Bendodo repeated this Friday. “High treason”, he has come to utter. Gamarra, who also appeared before the media on Friday, said: “Spain deserves a statesman at the helm of the government, and it doesn’t have one.”

Abascal, for his part, endorsed the idea of ​​the motion of no confidence in a message on Twitter: “Two years ago we raised a motion of no confidence. The PP and Cs voted to keep Sánchez”. It remains to be seen if on Monday the ultra-right raises it again.

The motion of no confidence in October 2020 meant the definitive break between Vox and Pablo Casado, and vice versa, since the PP understood that the only objective was to discredit the then opposition leader from his role. Abascal did not get a single support from the entire parliamentary arc.

But in Feijóo’s PP they do not seem willing to give in to pressure from Vox or Ciudadanos and, with an eye on the calendar, they consider that the first appointment at the polls is the regional ones in May 2023. That is why he appeals to the socialist barons, although in Genoa they recognize that the Galician does not have many more options since, apart from a motion of censure aimed at fiasco, there is no legal mechanism that prevents a parliamentary majority from changing the law.

All in all, Feijóo has had very harsh words with Sáchez. “There is no well-intentioned reason for this decision,” he has said. “The excuse [de la homogeneización con Europa] it is flatly false. Facts similar to those that are intended to be erased, even less serious, have more severe penalties assigned in nations around us ”, she stated.

In his opinion, the Government “hides that there are pro-independence organizations that advocate the separation of a part of Spain”, something that “they have tried to do” and that “they will do again”. “This is how Sánchez himself understood it until he decided to surrender to the requests of the seditious, without even ensuring the counterpart of non-recidivism.”, He has raised.

And why does Sánchez do it? Feijóo has wondered: “he intends to continue in power no matter what is delivered in exchange.” His only project “is to gain time, even if it weakens the institutions and the democratic quality” along the way. “I am sorry to have to ask myself, what is the limit of Sánchez in his decisions to continue in the Government? In my opinion, they do not exist. At this point he has no limits ”, he has asserted.

The “commitment” that Feijóo has acquired is to “reverse” this reform. For this, we will have to wait more than a year. If the leader of the PP wins the elections and collects the necessary majority to be sworn in as president, first, and modify the Penal Code, later.