“What interests the PSOE is to create tension, what interests it is to polarize. Who wins in polarization? Well, he, the PSOE wins.” The phrase was uttered last Thursday by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in an interview about the European elections of June 9 in which he added: “And then the populisms of both sides are fed and Spain automatically loses.” A reference to the pressure that the PP receives from Vox on the right, and that has not been reduced with the electoral contests of this semester, but has increased.
In the PP they have presented the elections as a plebiscite on Pedro Sánchez. A “now or never” that will be very tight, according to the latest surveys. In Genoa they are aware that, today, Vox is a rocky rival, that holds up at the polls and that has a loyal electorate that was not necessarily in the PP nor will it move towards it.
This is explained by sources from the party leadership, who point out that the PP’s growth path is in the center, in the moderate space that, they maintain, the PSOE has left free since 2020 and that they see enlarged with the amnesty law. This is where the PP grew in Euskadi and Catalonia in the recent regional elections, according to this thesis. This is what the party spokesperson, Borja Sémper, said in a press conference in May, between both elections: “We are growing in the center, with citizens tired of polarization who want good policies.”
In both communities the extreme right endured its results. And everything indicates that 9J Vox will grow since it comes from a result in 2019 prior to its great emergence of just 6.2%. The polls give him a better result within two weeks.
In the PP they fear that the resistance of Vox and the capacity of the PSOE to mobilize the progressive vote in the face of the ultra boom that is expected throughout Europe will stifle its capacity for growth. Or limit it.
In the general elections last July, Feijóo got 1.3 points ahead of Sánchez. On June 9, anything below that distance will be a fiasco. That is why in the PP they assure that it is enough for them to “have one more ballot” than the PSOE, so that a hypothetical victory by the minimum is not dull.
Vox message
In the PP they have designed a campaign strategy that will maintain an ambiguous, double discourse. A modality that Feijóo has already explored since his arrival in national politics, with mixed results.
The leader of the Spanish right launched the European campaign with a clear message of opening of the European PP to the Italian Fratelli of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has glorified Benito Mussolini in the past and today leads the speech on the continent that criminalizes migrants, demonizes the LGTBIQ movement and persecutes abortion.
In general terms, Meloni is to Italy what Vox is to Spain. In fact, both share a parliamentary group in Brussels, the ECR (Group of European Conservatives and Reformists, in English). And despite the multiple alliances that Feijóo maintains with the extreme right of Santiago Abascal, the cordon sanitaire against the ultra formations had kept them on the margins of the main community pacts.
Until now. The European PP wants to maintain its great agreement with social democrats, liberals and greens. Together they dominate community politics, but the rise of the extreme right that is expected for next June 9 has pushed the right to distinguish between good ultras and bad ultras. Among the first, the ECR of Meloni and Abascal. In the second block, in the Identity and Democracy group, are Alternative for Germany, Marine Le Pen’s French National Group, or Matteo Salvini’s League.
In an event organized on Thursday by the Cercle d’Economia of Barcelona, Feijóo wanted to make this distinction expressly. Precisely speaking of the “extremes” that “polarize,” he said of Meloni’s: “I don’t have enough information, but it doesn’t seem comparable to other parties that are considered extreme right in Europe. “It doesn’t seem like it to me.” That same afternoon, Ursula von der Leyen had directly appealed to Meloni to “work together.”
The naturalization of Meloni by the European right is that of Abascal and, therefore, the end of one of Feijóo’s main headaches in Brussels.
With the campaign already underway, Feijóo went to Elche (Alicante) to offer his first official rally. Alone, without his candidate. The party leader did not even mention Dolors Montserrat before a group of local business representatives to whom he sold a speech that bordered on Euroscepticism.
Feijóo criticized the energy transition, of which Von der Leyen has been one of the main supporters during her mandate at the head of the Commission. The PP leader had already had tough confrontations with his candidate for a second term at the head of the Community Executive over special taxes on extraordinary profits from banking and energy companies, for example. Or for the limitation of the price of energy, the so-called Iberian exception, applauded in Brussels and despised by the Spanish right and the PP, which came to call it the “Iberian scam.”
But this Friday Feijóo took another step by directly attacking the Next Generation Funds, the largest economic aid package injected by Brussels after the pandemic. Hundreds of billions of euros that have allowed a different way out of the crisis than a decade ago, and which has one of its main beneficiaries in Spain.
Beyond criticizing the way in which the Government manages these funds, Feijóo attacked the very spirit of the financial injection. “There are some politicians who come here who say that they have achieved the Next Generation,” he said, referring to Pedro Sánchez, one of the main promoters of the program, precisely at the hands of Von der Leyen. “No, no,” he continued, “what you have achieved is to put Europeans into debt of 750 billion euros.” And he settled: “That is not a good politician.”
A day before, on Telemadrid, Feijóo criticized the President of the Government for saying that “the economy is going like a rocket” because, he said, “it is based on the fact that a significant flow of money is coming in with European funds.”
But it was not the only eurosceptic message of the last few hours. Feijóo criticized European environmental standards, with specific mention of taxes on plastic or CO2, and contrasted green policies with the needs of the “countryside”, one of his main electoral objectives in this campaign. There he competes directly with Vox. In Alicante, he even said that the logging industry is what guarantees that there is no desertification.
Feijóo criticized the PSOE candidate, the still vice president for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, who appears in the pools as the future vice president of the Commission. “It is a statement against agriculture, livestock, industry, fishing and water,” she said. “Mr. Sánchez and his minister have been the most harmful politicians for the countryside and for industry and for water in Spain,” he added.
Mobilize your own
Before, the Cercle businessmen in Barcelona did not mention the field. He focused on other issues, such as Europe’s alleged competitiveness problems, attacking Spanish economic policy, especially an increase in debt that has long since been reversed, and taxes that have not prevented Spanish companies from declaring record profits. .
Feijóo truffles his messages contrary to the “bureaucracy” and “regulations” of the EU with praise for the European “social model”, to try to fish on the remains of Ciudadanos and voters reluctant to vote for the PSOE.
“The European social model is not a burden,” he said in Elche, less than a week after the Argentine president, Javier Milei, called it a “parasitic idea of the West” in a speech at a Vox event. “Social justice is always unfair,” concluded the Argentine leader.
It was the speech in which he attacked Pedro Sánchez and called his wife “corrupt.” An event that Meloni did not attend despite being invited. The Italian sent a recorded video message.
Feijóo called for a choice “between two models.” And only between those two: “Between the socialist model and the reformist model. There are no more models. The rest are small groups that try to create difficulties and problems.”
“We are going to win the elections,” he said in Elche this Friday. In the afternoon he went to Murcia, where he made a passionate defense of a project to build a new container port in a natural setting, the Gorguel. The Government has paralyzed it, which has angered the Murcian Executive.
The president of the Region, Fernando López Miras, asked for the mobilization of the PP bases for the European elections because, he said, they are elections that are not just about Europe. “It goes from Spain and it goes from the Region of Murcia.” A message similar to that raised by the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno, who has appealed to the “disoriented” because “these are Andalusian elections” where “the interests of the Andalusians” are at stake.
In the PP they fear that high expectations and the usual disenchantment of Spanish voters with the European elections will reduce the mobilization of their own.
In Murcia, Feijóo recovered a speech with zero references to Europe and in defense of public services, and asked to “create wealth and distribute it, and then pay for public services.” And he also called for mobilization against the Government. “On June 9 we all spoke,” he said. And he took the opportunity to call for Sunday’s protest-rally in Madrid.
“We are going to do two things. The first, mobilize. In Europe, more laws are approved that affect our families, jobs and companies than are approved in the Parliament of the Region of Murcia or in Congress. The second, concentrate the vote. If we disperse, we have no strength,” he concluded. A summary of the fears that exist in the PP before 9J.
The “plebiscite” against Sánchez
The discourse of polarization and ambiguous messages about Europe magically disappeared this Sunday at the protest rally called by the PP in Madrid. Thousands of people (80,000, according to the organizers; 20,000, according to the Government delegation) gathered on Alcalá Street against the amnesty and as a “response” to the five days of reflection that Sánchez took to see if he would resign.
But the event was anything but a campaign event. None of those who occupied the platform dedicated their speech to talking about Europe. And the candidate, Dolors de Montserrat, did not speak for a second, despite being present and posing for photos.
Feijóo and Ayuso participated, as well as the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and the philosopher Fernando Savater. The first two set the June elections as a “plebiscite” on the president of the Government and the amnesty. The party leader asked Sánchez to “remove” the rule, which should be definitively approved on Thursday, because “the legislature is lost.” “Put an end to it, dissolve the Cortes, so let’s hold elections and let’s go with the truth first. Let him do it so that he lets us talk because he has deceived us, all of us,” he said.
The president of Madrid, who established the dichotomy “Sánchez or Spain”, dedicated a good part of her speech to glossing Javier Milei, attacking the president’s wife, Begoña Gómez, and reveling in the insult by loudly claiming her “I like fruit”.
There was only one appeal, mild and indirect, to Vox, when Feijóo said that the Government wants them “divided.” This time, Vox did not support the mobilization.
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