All the concentrated heat of the San Miguel summer was falling heavily on Madrid when Alberto Núñez Feijóo took the stage in Plaza Felipe II to the rhythm of Bruce Springsteen to take a mass bath 48 hours after his failed investiture. The Rising was playing at full volume: “Come on, let’s get up.” With the emotional kick of seeing before him an overflowing flood of supporters, two former presidents and 11 government barons, the president of the PP has intoned his particular “enough is enough!” against the possible erasure of the crimes of the process: “Freedom, equality and dignity” against the “unspeakable cacicada” of the amnesty.
All the expectations of the PP for its act of self-affirmation as guarantor of equality have been exceeded. 40,000 people, according to the Government Delegation, and more than 60,000, according to the PP, have packed the capital’s Plaza de Felipe II (where 10,000 attendees were expected, in principle) and, above all, its adjacent streets, where You couldn’t hear the speeches, but rather a looped chant: “Puigdemont to prison.”
At the rally, Feijóo gave a harangue speech against the hypothetical investiture pact of Pedro Sánchez with Junts per Catalunya in exchange for giving in to their demands for maximums. “In a Spain of free and equal citizens, the vote of one person cannot be given more value than the vote of another. Law and Justice must be equal for everyone, starting with politicians, because if politicians are not equal before the law is an unspeakable cacicada in a Law State,” Feijóo stressed in the main passage of his speech. “There is no room for first-class and second-class citizens,” he added.
After two months of digesting his bitter victory in the general elections, Feijóo today received a real electroshock of self-esteem with the massive support of his people to “defend sovereignty.” “Even if it costs me the Presidency of the Government, I will defend that Spain is a nation of free and equal citizens.”
“What they do has only one name, indignity. And there is only one person responsible, the one who is in La Moncloa after having lost the elections,” Feijóo proclaimed, after invoking the Constitution of 1812: “More than two centuries later, and “After 45 years of democracy, we Spaniards are forced to defend the same thing as in 1812: our sovereignty, our freedoms and our right to the same opportunities.”
For the candidate for the investiture, “it is false, flatly false, that the independence movement has to be decisive in governability. It is one more socialist fallacy.” “What no Spaniards voted for, at least 94%, was a change in the constitutional regime,” he stressed. “94% of us voted to maintain the Constitution,” he insisted, before once again describing as “aggravated and repeated fraud” the fact that Sánchez did not include the amnesty in his program and has now opened the door.
“It is not socialism when they claim privileges for an elite. That is elitism, never progressivism. They call amnesty normalization and they call for losing to win. What I say is that they do not call us Spaniards stupid, because we are not, we do not swallow with that,” exclaimed Feijóo.
After criticizing “Sánchez’s irresponsibility” for demonstrating “an absolute lack of moral integrity and political integrity”, Feijoo wanted to thank Vox, UPN and the Canarian Coalition for their votes for the investiture and for “uniting to defend unity and equality of the Spanish.” “This is not about blocks or territories. It is not even about legality, it is about principles, having them or not. About rights and equality. No one can be more than anyone else. I will defend the equality of the Spanish people even if it costs me the presidency of the Government,” he reiterated.
Finally, Feijóo has contrasted his “principles” with those of Sánchez: “The PP never sells its principles for a mayor’s office, for a deputation, for an autonomous community or for the Government of Spain.” “We have not done it and we never will,” he concluded.
The opening acts for Feijóo included the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida; the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso; and the former presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy.
Aznar has assured that “the Constitution is not a bargaining chip to satisfy coup plotters” and that “no one is going to misappropriate the freedom and equality of all.” Furthermore, he added that the amnesty would be “an unprecedented attack, because it not only comes from the enemies of the Constitution, but also from a party that has the obligation to defend it and does not do so”, in reference to the PSOE. “We will never accept it!” he exclaimed.
Rajoy, who was president in 2017, when the sedition condemned by the Supreme Court in Catalonia occurred, has pointed out that the amnesty is “an amendment to the entirety of our Constitution and our democracy” and is “morally unacceptable.”
“This is what the PSOE leaders said a couple of months ago. And why don’t they say it now? The only difference is Puigdemont’s votes that Sánchez needs to be sworn in,” he responded to himself.
Then, as in many other moments of the event, the chants of “Puigdemont to prison!” increased.