Alberto Núñez Feijóo wanted to be the first opposition leader, that is, without a government position, to visit the Spanish Armed Forces deployed abroad on an active mission alone. The image of the PP leader greeting the troops in Latvia, where NATO borders Russia, on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine could give Pedro Sánchez’s rival the presidential image he has been seeking since he landed in national politics in April 2022.
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Latvia is the latest example. The PP announced it on Tuesday, shortly after the speech in which Russian President Vladimir Putin assured that he has no intention of losing the war in Ukraine. Spanish troops in the Baltic country are deployed under a NATO mandate on a peace mission.
Latvia is one of the countries that President Sánchez has visited in the last year. There he visited the Spanish troops and offered a joint press conference with other NATO leaders, such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The photo of Sánchez with the Spanish military is the same one that Feijóo wanted to take. But it is an unprecedented image in Spain. No opposition leader has ever visited troops abroad alone. As government sources recalled on Tuesday, the deployed Armed Forces are only visited by the president of the government, the foreign and defense ministers and, in some cases, a parliamentary commission.
In one of those parliamentary missions, Feijóo could have tried to sneak in as a senator and president of his group. But the Galician leader wanted that photo alone. An impossible image. The Ministry of Defense told him that what he was asking for could not be, and the PP pointed to the Government for vetoing something that has never happened. In a press release, however, Feijóo’s party described the refusal as “unusual”. And he pitched two ideas. The first, that the petition had “the approval of the NATO commanders.” “It already has the support of the competent authorities of the Atlantic Alliance,” the note insisted. The second idea: that there was an “initial understanding” with Defense that Moncloa short-circuited.
elDiario.es contacted NATO through different channels, without anyone being able to confirm any type of communication from the PP with the organization to make this trip, which obviously should have the permission of the Alliance authorities. Regarding Defense, Minister Margarita Robles said: “They know that those who are in Latvia are on a very risky and complicated peace mission.”
From the Government they added that there was no record of any management before the Spanish Embassy in Riga or before NATO, a management that, according to PP sources, fell to Esteban González Pons.
This Wednesday, the PP has insisted. In another press release, they have reported the sending of a letter to Defense signed by the director of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s cabinet, Marta Varela, in which she requests any date to go to Latvia “so that we can put them in common with the Latvian Prime Minister to close a definitive agenda”. And she concludes: “It does not seem reasonable to prevent the leader of the opposition from simply going to recognize and thank the work of our country’s troops. The partisan thing would be to ban it.”
Feijóo himself showed his disagreement with the Defense’s refusal in a message on his Twitter account.
The Armed Forces are not from the Government but from the Spanish.
If I am president, I will not limit the fact that the leader of the opposition is going to thank the work of our country’s troops anywhere in the world.
The partisan thing is to prohibit it.
— Alberto Núñez Feijóo (@NunezFeijoo) February 22, 2023
There has been no official response to this new letter, but everything indicates that Feijóo will be left without his photo with the Spanish soldiers in Latvia. In addition, in the PP they have stopped insinuating that in Defense they were told that “in an electoral year” there would be no trip.
Institutional declarations, flags and the coat of arms of Spain
The idea adds to other attempts by the PP to raise the status of its candidate. To turn him, and the leaders he appointed, into something more than representatives of the party leadership.
Last November, the coalition government announced a reform of the Penal Code that included the repeal of the crime of sedition. Feijóo, traveling in Latin America, flew to Madrid and landed on a Friday. That same afternoon, he summoned the media and read a statement from the PP with his position on the reform that he tried to give a formal air. calling it an “institutional statement”.
A signifier that is usually applied to those who hold institutional positions: from the president of the Government or of an autonomous community to a mayor, president of the House of Representatives, etc. The scenery for that November 11 was planned: a lectern, two flags (the one of Spain and the one of the EU) and the logo of the PP, in small. Feijóo arrived, read the statement and left without answering any questions.
The PP has used other official symbols to try to cover the image of its leader with a presidential aura, or at least to try to assimilate him to Pedro Sánchez and separate him from the rest of the political leaders. Feijóo has repeated on multiple occasions his desire for bipartisanship and for returning to a distribution of power in Spain like the one that existed until 2014. A framework in which he does not have to compete with anyone to be the leader of the opposition.
He did it, for example, with the coat of arms of Spain and the document with economic proposals that he sent to the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, within the framework of one of the royal decree laws to alleviate the effects of the crisis caused by the war from Ukraine. Or in another document with measures to unblock the renewal of the CGPJ, which the PP has kept blocked for almost five years.
Feijóo even went to the Oratory of San Felipe Neri, in Cádiz, where in 1812 the first Spanish constitution was signed, known as La Pepa. There he presented his Institutional Quality Plan alone (again, with the flags behind him). Then, he too alone, signed it.
Nobody else has signed it so far, but the intention that day was, in addition to communicating a series of political reforms that the PP wants, to offer the image of Feijóo beyond his figure as a senator or as president of the PP. Two attributes that the strategists who advise him may not see as enough to compete with Pedro Sánchez in the elections scheduled for the end of the year.
