Aznar warns the PP that Junts cannot be counted on to bring down Sánchez

MadridAlthough José María Aznar proclaimed the famous "whoever can, let them do it" against Pedro Sánchez, the former Spanish president is not pressuring Alberto Núñez Feijóo to register a no-confidence motion, unlike Vox. The former PP leader has warned his party that Junts cannot be counted on to oust the head of the executive, no matter how much Carles Puigdemont's party may occasionally support parliamentary initiatives, of a symbolic nature, against Sánchez's continuity. "Congress cannot build a constructive no-confidence motion," lamented Aznar, who attributed it to the fact that the allies of the socialist leader's investiture want "to be able to consummate their plundering of the State." The former Spanish president and PP leader criticized that La Moncloa has ended up being "a Madrid delegation of secessionism".

Aznar made this reflection at a press breakfast this Wednesday, where he spoke to present the PP spokesperson in Congress, Ester Muñoz, who also confirmed what Feijóo repeats to boredom: that there are currently no possibilities of building a real majority against Sánchez and, therefore, of presenting a successful no-confidence motion. Muñoz stated that she sees a hypothetical agreement with Junts as "difficult." From the popular leadership, they note an agreement with the Junts on economic matters, but at the same time irreconcilable differences on core issues regarding the conception of Spain. Muñoz emphasized that the PP has "the State, the Constitution, and the law" as red lines, and the popular party stresses that this is an issue they have always been clear about, beyond the words of the current president of the FAES Foundation.

In fact, the PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, already made it clear this Monday at a press conference that the PP has no intention of rethinking its position on issues essential for Junts, such as amnesty, to try to win them over. It is precisely on this demand from Puigdemont's party that Aznar has focused, denouncing the "Faustian pact [by Sánchez with independentism] by which the soul of the State, that is, national cohesion, is handed over" in exchange for "mediated power." In this sense, the former Spanish president stressed that the "majority capable of overthrowing Sánchez" will either "be national or it will not be." Aznar called for building "a broad, centered majority with the capacity to rally the right and the left."

In full negotiation with Vox in Andalusia, one of the last bastions of the PP's centrist soul, Aznar insisted that support must be gathered from both sides of the political board with a "reconstructive purpose of historical dimension". According to the former president, what is important about the upcoming Spanish elections "is not when they are called" but understanding that they are "the most important in all of recent democratic history". "We are not playing for a change of government but for a change of system", he hammered, and warned that "the constitutional nation and equality before the law" are at stake.

The 'cleanliness law'

Aznar has overlooked the controversy that Feijóo generated this week for having joined Vox in preparing the ground to question the results of the next Spanish elections. Ester Muñoz, who referred to it in her intervention this Wednesday, argued that "the PP has always defended that all descendants [of exiles] can recover their nationality." However, the PP spokesperson in Congress has questioned the way the Spanish government is implementing the so-called law of the clean ones. Muñoz referred to an instruction from 2022 from the Directorate-General for Legal Security and Public Faith, headed at the time by Sofía Puente, sister of the current Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente.

According to the PP, this document "reinterpreted" the original law to go further, which has given the Spanish government the power to act with "a system of absolute opacity" when granting nationality and, therefore, the right to vote to up to 2.5 million people. Is this the supposed "electoral engineering" that former Madrid president Esperanza Aguirre also denounced at the entrance of the breakfast, in line with what her successor, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, also does.