Last Wednesday, Pedro Sánchez's immediate future was at stake in Congress. It was a great opportunity for the People's Party (PP) to take a definitive step toward alternation. Naturally, Feijóo had to fine-tune his approach, but he failed to find the right tone. Once again, resentment made him lose sight of the world. And he demonstrated his limitations. What was he supposed to do? Appear on the scene as the leader with a project ready to assume the presidency to lead the country out of its dead end. With a corny expression, we could say he had to play the statesman: demonstrate objectives, solvency, and a certainty worthy of a difficult moment and in the face of a cornered president. What did he do? One of his own tantrums. A list of accusations, mixing facts, clues, falsehoods, and fabrications without any rigor, with inflammatory rhetoric demonizing Sánchez, speaking quickly and almost shouting. Not a single idea of his own, not a proposal against corruption, not a profile of an alternative, not a sign of where everything should be headed again. Sánchez the delinquent. Period.
Result: a relief for Sánchez and the umpteenth confirmation of the limits of a PP leader who is incapable of responding to the government's confusion with a convincing narrative and proposals. Not one critical contribution to the series of measures proposed by President Sánchez. And yet, the PP should have experience: no party can beat it in terms of corruption record.
Feijóo missed an opportunity to take a step forward—from noise to proposals—and catch Sánchez by giving him homework. Absolutely nothing. Sánchez saved an initial match point. And Feijóo continues to show his limits: for him, power is not won with a project, with proposals, or by generating trust, but with the destruction of one's adversary. It could take a long time. For the moment, on Wednesday, Sánchez achieved a truce, Vox confirmed that his playing field was expanding (Abascal isn't one to talk and make proposals) against a PP that's betting everything on the corruption card, and the usual doubt lingered in the air. Why does the PP continue to put up with Feijóo, who is a hindrance even in a favorable situation? And then they are surprised that Sánchez's resistance continues.
Alternation requires building an alternative. The crisis of the PSOE is clearly an opportunity for the right. But if the PP neglects and has no other weapon than denouncing corruption (an issue on which it lacks moral authority), it could find itself trapped between Abascal and the current parliamentary majority due to its inability to garner support beyond its own space. It is true that Feijóo's path is narrow: the more Vox stretches, the more difficult it will be for the PP to maintain the center. Right now, the space of the old alternations is not available to it. And the more he depends on Vox, the less he'll have. What does this mean? He needs a leadership that gives him his own project and allows him to redirect his relationship with the PNV and Junts and—in the dynamics of the useful vote—win back Vox voters. Feijóo's gamble last Wednesday was in the opposite direction: entrenched in his rigidity, he distances himself from both sides. And it's hard to understand why this pleases the economic powers that are supposedly ready to lend him a hand. If he loses the gold, all he'll have left is insolence.
