The regional barons of the PP have closed ranks this Sunday around the Galician leader, Alfonso Rueda, in the first major act of the pre-campaign for the February 18 elections, making it clear that in this appointment with the polls they are not only playing to reissue the absolute majority of this community, but the objective covers the entire State and will involve an examination of the investiture pacts of Pedro Sánchez. “These elections are not just about Galicia, they are about Spain,” confirmed the Madrid president, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, while the host even set an ambitious goal: “We are going to build Spain from Galicia.”
Under the title We want to build Spain from the autonomous communities, the entire autonomous muscle of the Popular Party gave a lesson in unity and autonomy, making it clear that in this first appointment with the polls after 23-J Spain its territorial model is at stake and that From the PP they are not willing to give in to the sovereignty challenge. In addition to Ayuso, the presidents of Andalusia, Murcia, Castilla y León, Aragón, Extremadura and Valencia, Juanma Moreno, Fernando López Miras, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, Jorge Azcón, María Guardiola and Carlos Mazón supported Rueda; and party leaders in Asturias, Castilla-La Mancha, the Basque Country and the Balearic Islands.
Rueda thanked them all “for being so rich” by supporting him and addressed his request to all of them to start with Galicia to say no to the “exclusionary Spain” and “inequality” that the central government promotes. Among all of them, he insisted, they have “a lot of common sense” and “we are going to provide the sense that is missing in the central government.” Faced with the “interested hubbub,” he advanced that “we are going to continue putting meaning” and “where some want to put walls, we are going to continue building bridges.”
“We have to preserve equality above all, say ‘no’ to the auction of general interests that we are seeing,” said Rueda, who called to oppose the “impositions of nationalism” and the “sale of rights that are of everyone”, something that is, “simply, so that one person, the usual one, remains in power one more day”. The Galician leader disgraced Sánchez that “in 15 minutes whatever is necessary is given up” and called to “do a great favor to Spain”, imposing himself on Sumar and Podemos, who “only want positions, they only want to continue where they are”; to nationalism, “which only wants us all to be nationalists”; to the Galician PSOE, “who wants whatever Pedro Sánchez wants, he doesn’t care”; and Sánchez, “who only loves himself.”
Each of the regional leaders defends their community and what is best for their citizens, but, during the event, they insisted that the best thing for everyone is the unity of Spain and that in these elections everyone’s current situation is at stake. “You are risking your model of coexistence, but 48 million people are also risking a better future,” insisted Juanma Moreno, who asked, from Galicia, “to raise our voices in the face of what we are going through in Spain as a whole,” to raise our voices “in the face of tons of lies” and “in the face of so much humiliation with so much shameful concession that is made in the Congress of Deputies.”
Díaz Ayuso warned that in the nationalist balance “there cannot be one more, Galicia cannot also enter” because “if not, that weight against common sense and against Spain would be unbearable.” The Madrid president disgraced the central government and her partners that “all they do is make you shut up and not give your opinion” and she wanted to say to all of them: “We are going to destroy you at the polls, we are going to destroy you” because the majority of Spaniards, wherever they live, “want to be free and want to see their children grow up in their land, eager to leave and return and enter.”
Alfonso Rueda, who, as host, closed the event, made a declaration of intentions and assured “we are not going to be submissive to the contempt that we are enduring” or part of the “nationalist and independence blackmail”, but rather that Galicia wants to “continue giving hand in hand with the rest of Spain, now more than ever”. He defended continuing to build a community that “understands with the rest of Spain”, assured that “Galicia is not going to tell any Spaniard or any foreigner that they don’t fit here” because “everyone fits here” and he disgraced the BNG that ” Galicia with sense has to say loud and clear that it disgusts us to see representatives of the BNG yesterday at the demonstration in Bilbao saying that murderers of Galicians take to the streets.”
