“No matter how long it lasts, this Government is past.” This is how the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, tried to harangue his people this Sunday, at the closing of the work retreat to which he has called all the regional presidents of the party. Feijóo has challenged the president, Pedro Sánchez, to see himself at the polls, although he has assumed that the general secretary of the PSOE has it within his power to prolong the legislature until its natural end in 2027. That is why Feijóo turns to his barons to demonstrate a power that he does not have and to show himself to the Spanish people as the political leader of the actions of the regional governments controlled by the PP.
In a speech in Oviedo, Feijóo outlined what his team has dubbed the ‘Declaration of Asturias’, a document signed by him and the regional leaders of his party with measures on housing, immigration or “market unity.” Of course, without any news about what he himself has already proposed in recent months. All the ideas launched were known or already applied.
Before their intervention, the regional presidents paraded across the stage to sign the document. The ‘president’ of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, has received a notable ovation from his party colleagues, with which only Isabel Díaz Ayuso from Madrid has competed.
It was the only appearance of the PP barons in the entire weekend of confinement in Asturias. The national leadership of the PP detained them since Friday in a five-star hotel in the Asturian municipality of Colunga, with access prohibited to journalists. All information was controlled and distributed by Feijóo’s communication team.
To close the conclave, the head of the opposition offered a speech also banned from the press. The journalists have been in a separate room and have not been able to ask questions. At the beginning of his speech, Feijóo “thanked the media for their understanding.”
“Greater opposition, without quarter or rest”
With the new year, Feijóo has not modified his story one bit and has begun his speech with an attack on the Executive focused on Venezuela and the judicial investigations against “the PSOE, the Government and the president’s entourage.”
“Spain has been infected for too long by a toxic policy generated by a Government that only cares about power at any price, that uses institutions against its adversaries and for its benefit,” began Feijóo, who has recognized that the PP also resorts to that “toxic policy” that “is contagious like the hormone cortisol, which in small doses activates you, but if you overdo it, it intoxicates you and feeds back.”
Feijóo has asked his people for “greater opposition, without quarter or rest” in the face of a Government that “whatever is prolonged, is the past.” The leader of the PP has exemplified this with the commemoration of the death of the dictator Francisco Franco: “His main initiative, to go back 50 years and oppose a dead man. “Let them stand up to Maduro who is still alive and well.”
With Venezuela, Feijóo came out more energetic during the intervention, accusing Pedro Sánchez of “lukewarmness towards the Venezuelan regime at the height of the repression.” The leader of the PP has resorted to another classic of his speeches, the “there he is” that he habitually says to the president. “He will go down in history as Maduro’s last support. There he, us with freedom and democracy, in any place and situation, whatever the cost.”
“Sanchez’s Spain has been a brake, not an engine against tyranny. “Not only does it not fight it, it even imitates it,” Feijóo said to criticize the PSOE’s proposal to modify the law to limit the action of the popular prosecution in judicial investigations. “The idea of preventing Justice from investigating the president’s relatives could only come from some of the Venezuelan suitcases that arrived in Madrid,” he said. “It’s nonsense, a full stop. This is not the rule of law, it is the opposite,” he added.
Feijóo has ignored that the PP itself attempted a similar initiative when Mariano Rajoy governed. In fact, both Rafael Catalá, who was Minister of Justice in said Executive, and the president of the CGPJ supported by the right Carlos Lesmes They defended at the time limiting this popular accusation.
“There is the Government and its murky affairs, there is whoever wants to stay by its side, either as an accomplice or participant in its harmful political dynamics,” he concluded.
Housing: build, free up land, lower taxes
When the time came to propose the specific “alternative” and launch his proposals, Feijóo has dusted off the same discourse that he has been developing since he assumed the leadership of the PP in 2022.
The Asturias summit had housing as the main subject to be discussed by the regional presidents and their organic leader. “If there are no more homes, housing prices will not go down,” summarized Feijóo, who has only mentioned the central government as a problem. The head of the opposition has not had a single word against speculators or hoarders, not even to ask for their commitment or help in the face of what he himself has called a “serious problem.”
Feijóo has outlined 10 well-known points that can be summarized in three. First, lower taxes “on those who buy a home, those who rent it, and those who lease it.” The leader of the PP has assured that the “young people” are the ones who suffer the most from the problem of access and to them in particular he has directed another measure: “Lower the property transfer tax from 10% to 4%” to those under 40 years of age, a measure already announced in 2023
Feijóo has not specified when the regional presidents will implement this measure or what conditions will have to be met to access it.
The leader of the PP has assured that the autonomous communities will guarantee “100% to be able to mortgage, buy, save and be owners.” A measure that, he said, is already being applied. In reality, what is already being done is that regional governments guarantee the last 20% of mortgage loans, since banks usually grant loans on 80% of the appraised value of the home. In short, the savings of that 20% are replaced by increasing the debt of those who buy, with public guarantee of course.
Feijóo has announced that its regional governments will make public land “available to the sector to build homes to rent at an appraised price, 30% cheaper than the average free market rentals.” The PP leader has not explained how he will measure this free price, for how long the land will be transferred or who will be the real owner of the apartments.
Another announced measure that has already been widely applied for many years is obtaining non-payment insurance for apartments made available to public rental services. Or the “anti-occupation telephone” that, for example, in Castilla y León you barely receive one consultation a day. In Madrid It hasn’t gone better either.. Or reduce “bureaucracy” and allow “access to publicly owned housing,” in addition to repealing the housing law as “ideological” and “ineffective.” An assertion that has earned him the response of the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños.
Feijóo has accelerated to present, on tiptoe, other measures agreed with his barons in the ‘Declaration of Asturias’. For example, laws to “guarantee the open market in the communities where we govern” so that “permits, certifications or authorizations issued by one are valid in all” regions.
Or irregular immigration, where it has once again exempted its regional presidents from responsibility to demand that the central government be responsible for all management of unaccompanied minors. Feijóo has imitated his speech from the DANA of Valencia and has maintained that Spain is experiencing “a national emergency” with “the largest irregular immigration crisis of all EU countries”, despite the fact that Italy’s figures were higher in 2024 than in Spain.
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