Feijóo now disassociates himself from the distribution of migrant minors while hardening his discourse against the Government

Four days. That is how long it has taken Alberto Núñez Feijóo to go from offering the “solidarity” of the autonomous communities governed by the PP to accommodate the migrant minors who have arrived alone in Spain, to putting “limits” on this aid to the Canary Islands and Ceuta. All this while he is fanning rumours about how these people reach the Peninsula and his spokespeople are blaming the Government for the thousands of deaths that occur at sea or buying into the discursive frameworks of the extreme right.

Feijóo’s change of heart occurred between Friday and Tuesday. At the end of last week, Feijóo launched a message that pointed to an appeasement with the Government, which is negotiating with the autonomous communities a new law to organize the distribution of minors who are crowding the centers, especially in the Canary Islands.

“The solidarity of the communities governed by the PP is guaranteed,” said the leader of the PP in statements to the media. He was under a slight threat from Vox, which warned of the continuation of joint regional governments if they agreed to accept the sending of minors to their territories. Vox’s position is to break Spanish and international laws and repatriate these minors. But Feijóo replied: “There is no threat, there is a reality.”

On Friday, Feijóo did denounce the fact that the Government has no migration policy, criticising the “permanent improvisation”, the “lack of funds” for the regions and the fact that the problem is not “attacked at its source”. But the tone used by the leader of the PP was far from other moments in which the party accused migrants of generating security and public health problems, among others.

This Tuesday, Feijóo’s speech changed. And, with it, that of the entire PP. “Immigrants are wandering around the Spanish streets, and the government puts them on planes and then, at night or at the time the plane arrives, leaves them in certain neighborhoods, cities or places in Spanish territory,” said the opposition leader on Onda Cero, who quoted himself in phrases he had already used in October 2023.

This time he went further. “The problem is the central government’s, not the autonomous communities’,” he said. The leader of the PP limited the responsibility of guardianship of the regional governments to when a minor is orphaned. “It is not the responsibility of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia to solve the unaccompanied minors who enter Spain on a massive scale, in others in another autonomous community,” he explained. “If we do not set limits, if we do not put up barriers, it is impossible to attend to all the people who are detained in the Canary Islands and those who appear to be going to come or who are expected to come until the end of the year,” he concluded.

What Feijóo suggested was that the autonomous communities have no real responsibility for the reception of unaccompanied minors and that, in any case, they can “collaborate”. This is a far cry from when the leader of the opposition made concrete proposals, such as a “points system” to rate migrants based on their training, experience or knowledge of the language.

Feijóo’s about-face came just one day after meeting with all the PP barons in Salamanca, where the party presented a commitment to homogenise, as far as possible, the selective tests for university entrance. The PP leader had lunch with the regional presidents, who already in conversations with the journalists present hinted at their rejection of the central government’s distribution plan.

The law proposed by the Executive is at risk precisely because of the rejection of the Autonomous Communities, the majority of which is the PP but also Catalonia. The Government has called a sectoral conference with all the communities on July 17, precisely in the Canary Islands, to try to agree on a distribution system.

Feijóo’s words in the morning on Onda Cero were later reinforced by his parliamentary spokesman, Miguel Tellado, who threaded together all the major milestones of the far right’s xenophobic discourse in a press conference in Congress.

“We are a sieve,” he said. “There is an absolutely clear dereliction of duty that has become an unprecedented call effect,” he added. “As a country, we have to stand up to it and defend our country’s borders,” he said. And he concluded: “The Government’s dereliction of duty leads to mafias trafficking people and a percentage of those people losing their lives at sea. And that is the responsibility of the Government, which does not attend to its duties.”

Tellado also defended the national PP’s silence on a problem that, according to Feijóo himself last Friday, is “national.” The PP leader compared migration policy with water policy to maintain that Vox should act as a national party, not an autonomous one.

But on Tuesday, that idea disappeared from the PP’s arguments. Tellado justified not giving an opinion from the leadership of the main party in Congress because “he cannot speak on behalf of the autonomous communities because it would be irresponsible.” “It would not be respecting the autonomous governments,” he concluded.