Ángel Collado
The President of the Government is desperately trying to put a brake on his own burnout at the start of a political year that will culminate in the municipal and regional elections in May next year.
Pedro Sánchez has had to accept the challenge of the head of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and go to the Senate for a debate in which he aspires to show off as a manager of the energy crisis despite the bad data and forecasts for the Spanish economy. For the PP president, it is still an opportunity to present his alternative to the threat of recession.
The Executive has still not come to terms with the blow of the Andalusian regional elections, the absolute majority of the Partido Popular in Spain’s most populated region, nor its subsequent consequence at the national level: falling behind the party presided over by Feijóo in all the polls, including the official surveys of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS).
Sánchez appears to be as proud and satisfied with his measures to curb inflation and soaring energy prices as the opposition, convinced that, instead of alleviating the problems, he is aggravating them. This is the terrain on which the chief executive wants to play to stop Feijóo. He has the advantage of the very format of the debate in the Senate called for this Tuesday, at the government’s own request, which allows him to explain what he deems appropriate at any given moment and to reply to the parliamentary spokespersons without time limit.
The President of the PP, as representative of the Popular Group in the Upper House, has to make do with a first intervention of 15 minutes and a reply of another 5 minutes to what Sánchez wants to say.
As a prologue to the parliamentary session, the Government has been trying to wear down Feijóo by means of personal insults throughout the holidays. Up to 11 members of the Executive have covered him with disqualifications in recent weeks with a similar pattern and similar adjectives: denialist, obstructionist, lazy, ignorant, toxic, sectarian, liar, “trumpist” or incompetent.
Sánchez finished the job off on his return from his holidays with the accusation that Feijóo is at the service of the interests of the energy companies. It is the counterpoint to his own image-boosting campaign that presents him as the president of the “government of the people” as opposed to “the right” that only represents the “dark forces”. These are all terms or concepts copied or recycled from the origins of Podemos with Pablo Iglesias at the helm.
The head of the Executive combines this turn of populist messages with the plagiarism of specific measures defended by Feijóo five months ago to alleviate the rise in energy prices. Having learned that the president of the PP was going to insist this Tuesday on reducing VAT on gas consumption, he preferred to announce the measure as his own initiative, even though his ministers had disqualified him until the day before for coming from the head of the opposition.
Sánchez disconcerted both the members of his cabinet, socialists and communists alike, and the PP itself, which scored the goal of forcing the government to apply a tax cut after half a legislature devoted to raising taxes.
If the Moncloa Palace has decided to present its current tenant as the European benchmark in the debate and measures on the energy crisis, the Popular Party has found new arguments to demand a general lowering of the tax burden on citizens punished by the escalation of prices. Feijóo has been proposing, since before the summer, the formula of “deflating” the personal income tax rate, the same formula that the German social-democratic government will apply.
For the PP, the chorus of insults to Feijóo, the campaign of the “Government of the people” to revive the personal image of its president and the plagiarism of the VAT reduction on gas are evidence of the nerves of an Executive that is out of place and fearful of the economic crisis that it fears could take it by surprise.
For the Sanchistas, who remain convinced that their leader is doing a great job in the face of the economic problems arising from the invasion of Ukraine, the debate in the Senate is a great opportunity to slow down Feijóo in the polls, as they hope that Sánchez “will put him in his place”. They need at least the CIS to give them hope of recovering ground before an autumn that they themselves are now whistling black.
