While this Saturday Alberto Núñez Feijóo censured Pedro Sánchez for considering that he “went homage to autocrats”, coinciding with the celebration of the Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo, the President of the Government commented with the King on moments of the meeting and both laughed complicitly . In La Moncloa there is a major anger with the opposition leader for his attacks on the foreign image of Spain. Sánchez knows that this is a profile that the Galician has won, he feels comfortable and exploits it, but in the presidential complex they do not forgive that the PP seeks to damage the international image of Spain.
Sánchez arrived in Santo Domingo with growing discomfort, after Feijóo suggested from Brussels that he prefers the pension reform imposed by Emmanuel Macron, and that has generated a wave of protests and altercations, compared to that of Spain, agreed with unions and with the European Commission. In the Executive they consider that the leader of the PP “walked through the European Parliament like an elephant in a china shop”. In the Government they increasingly use the trick of comparing Feijóo with Pablo Casado, claiming that the former popular leader did the same in Europe, but that Feijóo’s supposed moderate aura did not glimpse that same line. In La Moncloa they also insist on the excellent relationship that Sánchez maintains with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, despite the fact that she belongs to the political family of the PP.
The leader of the PP, for his part, has accused the chief executive of wanting to “destroy” the opposition and “manipulate” his words. Feijóo has blamed Sánchez for changing his statements: Génova has explained that she did not intend to criticize Sánchez’s attendance at the summit, but rather that they were referring to regimes such as Nicolás Maduro’s.
“It is curious, they have such a high democratic deficit that they want to destroy the opposition, it bothers them that we can speak, that we can give our opinion, they manipulate what we say. They change the meaning of our words and their fundamental objective is that there is no opposition in a democratic regime”, Feijóo asserted, stating that “the guarantee of democracy is a responsible opposition, not just an irresponsible government”.
Meanwhile, in the Executive they do not stop remembering that in Europe Spain now has an important role and Sánchez has led debates such as the reform of the energy market and opted for European funds… “A Spain with a voice in Europe”, They remember from La Moncloa. Faced with the criticism of Feijóo in the Executive, they contrast the image with the King and the Ibero-American countries, to which they add the agenda that Sánchez has as president of the Socialist International and that led him on Saturday to head the Forum of Progressive Governments with leaders Latin Americans, in which the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, also participated; the one from Chile, Gabriel Boric; the one from Colombia, Gustavo Petro; that of Portugal, Antonio Costa; the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro; the president of Bolivia, Luis Arce; and the one from the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, and Benedicta Lasi, general secretary of the Socialist International, also attended.
That international agenda is an argument that the government opposes against Feijóo’s criticism. They remember the photos of Aznar with Fidel Castro or that Mariano Rajoy, as President of the Government, also attended these Ibero-American summits, and that in 2010, when Zapatero did not go, he harshly criticized him. And the trip this week to China, at the invitation of Xi Jinping, and next week to Italy, to hold his first meeting with Giorgia Meloni, they consider that evidence of the “undoubted weight” of Sánchez. Or the last visit of the President of the Government to Ukraine, to visit Zelensky.
Faced with criticism from the PP and its allusion to “autocrats”, in the Government they defend that Sánchez, as president of Spain, and also as the next president of the EU, must have as a “priority” the strengthening of relations with Latin America, but also with a country like Italy, despite the ideological distance that separates Sánchez from Meloni, for being a strategic partner. That the work as head of the Executive is to cultivate and strengthen relations with those in whom there are political and economic interests.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
