Feijóo, caught between Trump and the Pope

MadridVehemently defending Spain's traditional alliances while the military and dialectical escalation of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu increases puts the PP in a complicated situation. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has so far avoided confrontation with the United States and Israel even when they have attacked one of the pillars of Spanish conservatives, such as Catholicism. The Popular Party remained on the sidelines when the Israeli government vetoed the Palm Sunday Mass in the Holy Land, and now that the US president has targeted Pope Leo XIV, Feijóo has been caught between the two.

Although it is true that, unlike the silence maintained when Israel prevented the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from reaching the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, on this occasion the popular leader has spoken out about the controversy, but has done so with an implicit criticism without directly mentioning Trump. "Christianity is an ethical and moral beacon for millions of people in the world, who do not deserve to be trifled with," Feijóo wrote on X this Monday after the confrontation between the Pope and the US president over the condemnation of the former in the Iran war. On this matter, the PP has distinguished itself from Vox, which has not commented. Despite the dispute between the two parties over the Catholic electorate, Santiago Abascal's party has no affinity with Leo XIV, and is instead Trump's reference ally in Spain.

The mention of the "joke" can also be interpreted as an implicit rejection of the image of the US president generated with artificial intelligence in which he appears as if he were a God healing a sick man. "Pope Leo XIV is a reference for Catholics who must be heard and respected," Feijóo insisted in a message defending the leader of the Catholic Church without the forcefulness that has characterized Pedro Sánchez when he has rejected statements or decisions by Trump. The PP's line is to avoid confrontation by opting for lukewarmness.

Cryptic messages

of the annihilation of Iranian civilizationEster Muñoz, spokesperson for the PP in Congress, also added that the threat was a "barbarity", but at the same time generated a strong controversy by downplaying the detention by Israel of a Spanish soldier who is an UN blue helmet. "I have been in traffic checks that have kept me detained for quite a bit longer," she said, because the situation lasted an hour.

The policy of alliances

The PP intends to discredit Sánchez for the role he has adopted internationally as an antithesis to Trump and Netanyahu. According to the popular party, this is an irresponsibility that betrays him as just another populist. This is the framework he has tried to establish after the electoral defeat of the Hungarian Viktor Orbán. The PP has branded Sánchez as "the Orbán of the south" and has predicted that he will be the next to fall from government due to the rise of conservatives. "Orbán pro-Putin and Sánchez pro-China. The first has fallen and now we are going for the second," said deputy secretary Alma Ezcurra this Monday, who attributed the Spanish president's official trip to China to an anti-democratic and anti-Western turn by Sánchez. However, the PSOE sees it as a lesson to the PP in Spain, which makes pacts with Vox, since Abascal's party is from the same political family as Orbán: the socialists have celebrated Péter Magyar's victory as if it were from the progressive sphere. For Pedro Sánchez's party, it is a triumph of democracy.