2023-07-11 09:28:29
Posted Jul 11, 2023, 11:28 a.m.Updated Jul 11, 2023, 11:30 a.m.
For his start to the electoral campaign, the candidate of the People’s Party (PP, moderate right), Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, favored by the polls in Spain, had chosen a place dear to his heart, Os Peares, the village of his childhood, in Galicia hit by the rural exodus, in the west of Spain.
Opposite, the outgoing Prime Minister, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, was that evening in Madrid, surrounded by militants of the PSOE, to claim the intense action of his government, the two hundred reforms voted, and the proactive role of the Spain in European debates.
Less than two weeks before the legislative elections on July 23, the contrast could not be more striking between the two men. The socialist leader thought that the campaign would revolve around the results of his five years in power, but the ground slipped on other subjects. The big televised face to face, Monday evening, turned to the advantage of his opponent who plays with a good-natured image and widens the gap.
Narcissistic and distant
Pedro Sánchez appears as a narcissistic and distant man, focused on his international prestige. His adversary presents himself as a man of the people, listening to simple people who call him “Albertito”. What does it matter if Nuñez Feijoo, 61, is no longer a village kid, but a career politician, who rose through the ranks within the PP and has been waiting for his time for five years to compete at the top of the list in these legislative elections.
“The tone of the campaign is totally unusual, notes political scientist Pablo Simon, from Carlos III University in Madrid. Pedro Sánchez claims the transforming action of his government, but that is precisely what he is accused of, having transformed. The right-wing opposition, on the contrary, defends a classic vision of Spain and plays with nostalgic references. »
Acrobatic parliamentary alliances
The right denounces the acrobatic parliamentary alliances of the Socialists with the Basque and Catalan independence left. On social networks there are also constant criticisms of questions of feminism, abortion, or the rights of homosexuals and transsexuals.
“Until then, the Socialist Party played the scouts and extended social rights. The right protested each time, it presented appeals to the Constitutional Court and then ended up accepting the changes, whether it be laws on divorce, abortion or gay marriage, ”describes journalist Carlos Cué, who follows the campaign for the daily “El Pais”. “This time it’s different,” he notes, “because Vox’s pressure on the far right is pulling the most moderate towards his turf. »
Polls indicate that to form a government majority, the PP would need an alliance with the ultras. The whole question is to know what he is ready to give up, faced with Vox, which announces its intention to abolish the right to abortion and the laws on the end of life, to take back control of education, to reconsider the rights of sexual minorities and on the fight against violence against women, or even to stop “criminalizing farmers” and to slow down initiatives against climate change.
Government agreement with Vox
So far, the People’s Party candidate has avoided specifying the terms of a possible government pact with Vox. But the agreements concluded in recent days at the municipal and regional level between the two right-wing formations, and the arrival of Vox in executive positions at the local level, could give some leads.
The first initiatives of the new local elected representatives of Vox concern subsidies for women victims of violence, the removal of rainbow flags from administrative buildings, or the revision of local cultural programming, to cancel for example a play by Virginia Woolf evoking homosexuality, or even a tribute show to a Republican teacher shot at the start of the civil war.
The question does not concern the candidate of the PP, Alberto Nuñez Feijoo. Surveys indicate that his constituents welcome an agreement with Vox without embarrassment. For his part, Pedro Sánchez denounces this Spain “in black and white”, “which is going backwards”, and hopes to convince the 5 to 9% of disappointed socialist voters who have switched to the PP, but are not necessarily ready to accept Vox supervision over societal issues.
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