The president of the Xunta and the PP of Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, has gotten behind the wheel of a bus this year to congratulate Christmas on behalf of the popular Galicians. In a video released this Saturday, he enters fully into the pre-campaign for the regional elections on February 18 and does not skimp on winks to current national politics, with Isabel Díaz Ayuso and her “I like fruit” or Carles Puigdemont heading to Moncloa .
The bus, labeled with the motto Galicia no para!, travels through the community and meets the most diverse characters. There appears a man characterized as Puigdemont, yellow ribbon included, hitchhiking with a sign in his hand with the message “Moncloa.” While he invites the rest of the people he meets to get on his bus, at his pace, he refuses. “We won’t stop here, no way!” Rueda is heard.
At the wheel of his bus he comes across former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy playing sports and greets him with a smile and shouting “Galicia Rueda”. He also passes by a mobile fruit stall with the message “I like fruit”, a clear allusion to the controversy carried out by the Madrid president, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, after supposedly stating, during the investiture plenary session of Pedro Sánchez, “what motherfucker” and then assured that he had said “I like fruit”. What happened has already become a joke in the PP and Rueda includes it in his tour.
The video begins with a very familiar scene. The leader of the Galician PP makes a video call with his daughters, little given to public appearances, who ask him what he wants for Christmas. In his 2022 Christmas video, his first in office, he toured Galicia on a motorcycle. Now they ask him if he wants a two-wheeled vehicle, but he prefers “a bus.”
For two minutes and 20 seconds, he tours the interior and coast of Galicia and asks a couple of neighbors sitting on a marquee for directions, winking at the imminent Galician elections. They explain to him that, to reach 2024, you have to go “a little to the right, not much, and then you continue all the way through the center.”
The bus that Rueda asks for is “as big as Galicia, that we can all get on. Because Galicia doesn’t stop and this Christmas doesn’t either.” One of the famous Mozos de Arousa from the television contest Chain Reaction or the members of the El Combo Dominicano orchestra join him.
There is no lack of an allusion to his predecessor and leader of the national PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the number two of the Galician PP, Paula Prado, and the four provincial presidents of the party also appear: Diego Calvo (A Coruña), Elena Candia (Lugo) , Luis López (Pontevedra) and Luis Menor (Ourense).