It will be true that the key quote of the electoral campaigns, even when they have not started yet, is ‘El homiguero’. In his appearance on Wednesday’s program, Alberto Núñez Feijóo made superhuman efforts to be friendly and close, not a serious man who you can’t imagine telling a joke while he drinks a beer. You have to imagine Borja Sémper spending the whole day preparing the boss to try to be…charismatic. It’s complicated when you haven’t gotten out of the official car or the party since you were 29 years old because of your long political career. But Feijóo tried and the mess did not go wrong.
Pablo Motos asked him the questions that the Popular Party did not think would affect him much when Pedro Sánchez announced the call for elections. He got out of the issue of the pacts with Vox as best he could, stating that the PP will not allow the existence of gender violence to be questioned. There was only one subject in which he was shipwrecked in a resounding way, that of the euthanasia law, with a response that included an inexplicable frivolity.
One day after Pedro Sánchez came out very well in the same program, Feijóo had to maintain a good level and make some things clear in relation to the agreements with the extreme right. Only a few days before, the ABC had chosen as its front page headline not a piece of news, but a kick in the ass of Genoa, and therefore that of its leader: “The PP has already lost 15 days of pre-campaign in its entanglements with Vox ”. watch outthat you have started the final sprint with pity, I was telling them.
“The Vox thing will persecute him,” Pablo Motos told him, referring to the text of the Valencia agreement in which only “domestic violence” was mentioned. “It’s not just a word,” he warned her.
First of all, Feijóo tried to slip away: “The emphasis is on domestic violence. This document is not against the gender violence law of the Valencian Community”. Later, he affirmed that the Equality policies in that region will be in a Ministry controlled by his party. Later, he made up his mind to stand by what he should have said from the start. “I am not going to negotiate sexist violence.” That is to say, it will not be a concession to ensure the support of Vox.
On LGTBI rights, he made no concessions: “The rights of the LGTBI community are sacred.” From what institutional position will they defend themselves? With Feijóo, the Ministry of Equality will disappear and, according to what he said, its powers will depend directly on the Presidency of the Government. This raises logical questions about the political strength and visibility that the protection of these rights will have, because the president of a government usually has a very dense agenda and his priorities may be in other matters.
Future negotiations, if the PP is the party with the most votes, will logically depend on the number of seats that each party wins. Motos asked him directly if Santiago Abascal will be his vice president. Feijóo replied that his government will have a vice president. The two things are not incompatible. He was bombastic when they were asking him about Vox. “I am not Pedro Sánchez. I am not going to agree with Bildu”. Everyone knows that, even those from Bildu.
To deny that nervousness that is beginning to be seen on the right in the face of an election that they believed they had won after their success in 28M, Feijóo was so sure of himself that he did what should not be done before voting day: give you’re going to win, which may make a few of your voters think their ballot isn’t essential. “The polls say that the Popular Party is going to win. I believe them.”
He went straight to twisting the numbers. “They say that I am twenty or thirty seats away from an absolute majority.” The latest from Sigma 2 for El Mundo, which usually gives favorable results for the PP, does not say that. It served him to make the audience believe that he is in a position to achieve the same thing that Moreno Bonilla and Díaz Ayuso had in Andalusia and Madrid. If that were the case, the director of ABC would not have drunk a liter of lime blossom before deciding on the angry cover of the 15 days.
It was worse when Motos raised his promise to reform the euthanasia law. “A meeting point would be convenient,” he said, which is the same as saying nothing. He spoke of listening to bioethics committees, as if the task of legislating could be outsourced to scientists. Motos began to get impatient when Feijóo referred to ALS patients. “Precisely, many ALS patients love it,” he told her. More words from Feijóo so as not to speak clearly and another phrase from the presenter: “They do not want to continue suffering nor do they want their relatives to suffer.”
Feijóo was a bit caught and did something that didn’t seem very honest. First, with a sentence that implied a certain frivolity on the part of the people who demand euthanasia with which to put an end to so much suffering. “Maybe that person in a week makes another decision.” Are these patients seriously changing their minds about a situation they have been suffering for years?
It was difficult to explain it worse, but the leader of the PP succeeded. He brought up the case of the death of his father who was sedated in his last moments when doctors could do little else with a Parkinson’s patient for fifteen years. The family accepted it. That was a palliative case that had already been contemplated by legislation for years. It has nothing to do with euthanasia. We are left without knowing what Feijóo wants to do with that law that he has promised to change.
When talking about the economy, he said that Spain is “the penultimate country in the European Union in job creation since 2019”. The present does not interest him much, because Spain now leads the ranking in terms of GDP growth. Its economy has grown four times more than the European average in the first quarter. At least this time he did not comment that we are heading towards a “deep economic crisis”, as he said in the summer.
In the end, the moment when he stumbles when talking about the economy had to appear. He came to say surprised that he had verified that in some places the oranges are worth as much as a plastic bag, for which in some places you have to pay 15 cents. Only to complain that this tax has been implemented with the intention of reducing plastic consumption.
It is very likely that consumers are more concerned with the price of oranges and food in general than with the price of bags. In addition to the fact that they will have to travel half the city to find oranges so cheap until they discover that they do not exist.
However, a confusing and poorly explained economic example is a common result in Feijóo’s interventions. The important thing for him is that he came out alive from ‘El hormiguero’. He is no longer here to continue wasting the advantage he thought he had after 28M.
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