Is Sánchez capable of governing again?
Sánchez wants elections and the PP, too. Who is wrong? The fall of the rent decrees was the only opportunity for someone who had said and repeated that he would not advance them
Surely you are aware: we will go to vote on November 29th. It was 9 in the morning when, after spending the whole weekend making political and legal consultations, and looking at polls, Pedro Sánchez appeared at Moncloa and announced the calling of snap elections: “After informing, as is appropriate, the Head of State, I have decided to convene an extraordinary Council of Ministers this very morning to dissolve the General Courts and call general elections that will be held on Sunday, November 29th, in accordance with the deadlines established by law.”
In strictly electoral terms, Sánchez has made very good use of the opportunity to keep everyone hanging on his words. It was a very good rally. He even remembered Ayuso’s penthouse: “And we have also had to deal with the worst opposition our democratic history has known. An opposition without any sense of State that has not stopped questioning even the legitimacy of our electoral system, blocking measures and voting against policies that were good for the country, and using its regional and municipal power to boycott policies that are good for ordinary people. We have transferred more resources than ever to these regional governments so that they would invest in healthcare, in education, so that they would build housing, and they have bought penthouses and privatized hospitals”
And he went so far as to say that he has not sacrificed the welfare state at the military altar of 5% (of GDP for defense), and that Spain is today a global benchmark for peace, feminism, and prosperity.
You already know that, when elections come, parties try to bring them onto their own turf, suggesting to the people that they answer a question, as if it were a referendum. Sánchez’s has been: do you want to join the far-right majority running through the world or do you want Spain to continue being a beacon of progressivism?
And the PP’s, what was the question this morning? Well, that this is not a PP-PSOE but rather a Spain or Sánchez. Feijóo said it, who appeared an hour later. And who starred in a great cognitive dissonance. Look at the PP’s tweet from this morning:
“At last”, with the Hymn to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth. Because the PP has been calling for early elections for years. But I speak of dissonance because the joy of the tweet has contrasted with Feijóo’s well-known communicative incapacity, who with a poker face, more angry than hopeful, started his speech by saying: “At last. At last Spain will say what it thinks. At last the majority will speak again. At last the Spanish people will speak again. Not one, not a few, but all the Spanish people. At last we can close this time and open a better one. At last he who should never have come this far will leave, at last we will vote and at last Spain will be able to choose what country it wants to be.”
It is quite curious: Sánchez wants elections, the PP wanted elections, and even on the left of the PSOE, which already has a name but no leader (“Frente Amplio”), they also agree that elections were necessary. Is someone wrong? We were already saying on Friday that the rental decrees were the only opportunity for someone who had said and repeated that the elections would be next year. Will he be able to lift this party? Did he read well that housing will decide?
The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, has come out in defense of the soldier Sánchez, in Catalan and Spanish and with a retweet from the PSOE: “Catalonia does not resign itself. Catalonia does not surrender. Catalonia will be with Pedro Sánchez. Now more than ever”.
And Ayuso has done what we were saying about the question and has said that in these November 29th elections it will be necessary to choose “either communism or freedom”.
This morning, Sánchez has shown that he feels up to it, and Feijóo was seen between feeling responsible and scared. If as it seems, the Supreme Court lifts the arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont, the president’s return from exile will coincide with this call for elections, at a moment when Junts has staked everything on this vote against the decrees. The trend in favor of the PP and the insults in chorus at Pedro Sánchez have done a lot of work. The "whoever can do, should do", as well. There is a wave of far-right in all of Europe. Sánchez is against the ropes but still wants to fight. Is it possible that he will govern again?
Good morning.