Feijóo deepens his anti-immigration speech after the split with Vox

The PP has taken on part of the far-right discourse practically since the emergence of Vox, with whom it has been fighting for the same electorate for six years now. First it was Pablo Casado who verbalised the thesis that stigmatises migrants and links them to crime. When he was expelled, Alberto Núñez Feijóo – who was considered to have a more moderate profile – maintained the anti-immigration discourse. And, in recent weeks, the current leader of the PP has delved into these messages after Vox left the regional governments that both forces shared precisely by attacking the popular party for an alleged lukewarmness in its most xenophobic postulates.

The PP leadership’s discourse has hardened following the debate opened by the saturation of migrant minors in the Canary Islands, the request of this community to distribute these children among the rest of the communities and the agreement signed between the Government and the communities of the Popular Party for the distribution. The fact that these right-wing regions agreed to take in these children ended with the far-right leaving the executives of the Valencian Community, Castile and Leon, Extremadura, Murcia and Aragon.

Feijóo, however, has not used the snub of the man who remains his partner in dozens of town councils to claim the role of immigration or to put a stop to hate speech. His messages are increasingly aimed at temporizing with Vox and this week the PP voted in Congress together with the extreme right and Junts to overturn the reform of the immigration law promoted by PSOE, Sumar and Coalición Canaria that sought to regulate the obligation of the autonomous communities to take in child migrants when situations of oversaturation occur in the border regions, as is happening in the Canary Islands.

The leader of the PP repeats ultra-right mantras linking immigration with crime, but also with violent actions of a sexist or homophobic nature. He also distinguishes between good and bad migrants, just as Vox does, based on the origin of each person and, above all, their purchasing power or their skin colour.

The “values” of the “nation”

“Solidarity, yes, but security, too,” Feijóo stressed on Monday, before the Board of Directors of his party. When the leader of the PP talks about security, he is referring to the fact that “Spaniards,” among whom he does not include migrants, “have the right to go out safely on the street.” This was his reflection: “We are a nation with values ​​that include helping and giving aid to those who need it, but they also include respect for culture, for our beliefs, for women, for homosexuals, for the freedom to feel safe in one’s home.”

When talking about immigration, Feijóo now adds a ‘but’ to practically every one of his sentences. “There are thousands of regular immigrants who have made Spain the nation that it is, who have strengthened us in the same way and for all of them Spain is their home, but it cannot be for those who come with a different attitude and a different intention,” he said this week, without specifying who he was referring to or giving crime figures.

On Tuesday, during the plenary session of Congress that finally rejected the reform of the immigration law that sought to improve the situation of migrant children, the PP maintained a similar discourse, which adds to proposals such as those raised this month by the spokesman for the Popular Party in the Lower House, Miguel Tellado, who went so far as to propose “deploying boats” of the Armed Forces to stop the arrival of migrants to the Spanish coasts.

The link between migration and crime, in the same style as Vox or the rest of the European far-right forces, has become a common recourse for the PP whenever it sees its hegemony among the most conservative electorate in danger. In May, in the middle of the Catalan campaign, Feijóo said: “I ask for the vote of those who are in favour of legal immigration, but who do not accept that illegal immigration is allowed in our homes, occupying our homes and we cannot enter our properties.”

Campaign messages

She repeated this thesis in the campaign for the European elections in June, going so far as to suggest that “people who want to be part of the EU project” should sign “a commitment to adhere to and respect the founding values ​​of Europe, such as equality between men and women”, implying that migrants are sexist. “The Europe of institutions cannot be afraid to face the debates that take place in its streets, cities and towns”, she added, agreeing that “migratory pressure and illegal immigration are major European challenges”.

His predecessor Casado, whose mandate was also characterised by the fight for the same electorate with Vox – although with him, unlike with Feijóo, the extreme right did not enter any regional government – ​​made the fight against immigration one of the flags of his administration. As soon as he took office, in 2018, he considered that “it is not possible that there are papers for everyone and that Spain can absorb millions of Africans who want to come to Europe in search of a better future”. And since then he has multiplied his trips to Ceuta or Melilla, always linking immigration with insecurity.

Then and now there are voices within the PP that do not feel entirely comfortable with these speeches. This week the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, launched a harsh allegation in the regional Parliament against Vox for linking migration and crime. The Andalusian president accused the extreme right of “bleedingly using migration to win votes.” “Are you saying that all the immigrants who are entering are savages and criminals?” he asked, after stressing that in the official crime rates in Spain, only 7% are foreigners, “and many of them are European, British, Italian.”

It’s not just Vox. The leader of his own party makes similar claims and justifies himself. “We are not like the PSOE, nor are we like Vox, we are free. We will call solidarity solidarity and security security,” he said on Wednesday in the Senate, in front of the senators and deputies of his party who applauded him enthusiastically.