Badalona: What does the PP think?

In the crisis caused by Mayor Xavier García Albiol in Badalona with his petty sheriff-like actions (a crisis that will continue, initially, as long as people are sleeping rough, but which will have far-reaching repercussions), the People's Party's stance has been conspicuously absent for ten days. This is one of the most powerful mayoralties among the many held by the PP: the fourth largest city in Catalonia and—according to them—a major Spanish city. It was therefore necessary for the PP to take a position. Specifically, it was important to know Feijóo's opinion of Xavier García Albiol's decision (to carry out an eviction using police force) and also what he thought of Albiol's own handling of the situation. Albiol's management has consisted of puffing out his chest with bravado and corny jokes, and being far more concerned with appearing in the media trying to portray himself as a tough guy than with finding solutions to a debacle he himself created, which has caused division and social alarm. Feijóo had to comment on all of this. Did he approve? Did he disapprove? Did he approve but with some reservations? Was Albiol also keeping him informed "in real time" about what was happening in Badalona, ​​like Mazón did in Valencia?

This Monday we got our answer. And the answer was a textbook show of unity from Feijóo and his party with her husband in Badalona. However, what Albiol did was also a textbook example of hate politics. Hate and dehumanization: in the official stance of the mayor of Badalona, the poor, immigrants, and anyone who isn't white (always, and especially, Black people) have ceased to be people with rights and needs, instead being presented as criminals, delinquents, and sources of infection, both social and epidemic. The result was that the next day a group of citizens showed up at a shelter shouting that they wanted to "burn it down," presumably with the immigrants inside. Albiol tried to dissuade them, but only because they were being filmed and risked facing legal consequences. As for the rest, he made it perfectly clear that he was with them "one thousand percent." That's exactly what hate and dehumanization are.

In 2025, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the PP accepts these policies of hate where it governs. Hatred of immigrants, in line with the far-right regression of our time, but also hatred of women forced to have abortions, hatred of the families of victims of the shameful protocols in Madrid, hatred of the victims of the DANA storm in the Valencian Community, hatred of women with breast cancer protesting environmental and climate change prevention screenings in Castile and León, and old, raw hatred of the Catalan language in the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community. These hatreds are fueled in the places where the PP governs hand in hand with/under the thumb of Vox. In 2026, Feijóo has a series of elections to clarify whether his government program (which we still don't know) incorporates all these hatreds.