Why hasn't Feijóo attacked Sánchez regarding Ábalos's appointment to the Supreme Court?

MadridPedro Sánchez did not expect Alberto Núñez Feijóo to leave aside his usual comments in the control session in Congress. Macedonian questions, in which he mixes all kinds of attacks on the Spanish president to portray a government on the verge of death, and focuses on the New contributions for the self-employed for 2026"He has turned Spain into a country that is expensive for workers and cheap for scoundrels," Feijóo protested, warning Sánchez that citizens are "tired of paying for the embezzlement and privileges of their people." "With you, it's worth being a snitch. If you work, you pay; if you steal, you get paid," he denounced, also alluding to the alleged corruption case involving his two former organizational secretaries in the PSOE, Santos Cerdán and José Luis Ábalos, the latter summoned to testify this Wednesday before the Supreme Court.

But Feijóo didn't focus his intervention on Ábalos. There are at least two possible hypotheses. One is that the PP's request to Judge Leopoldo Puente to impose the pretrial detention could backfire—as has happened, because the magistrate rejected it—and another is that the conservative leader has realized that his opposition cannot be based on commenting on the alleged corruption of the Spanish government or straying into issues that are the preserve of the far right hot on his heels—none like the CIS, certainly. A possible increase in self-employed contributions was a sweetheart for Feijóo, although the PP voted in 2022 to reform the system, which already anticipated that the figures would be revised in 2026.

Sánchez was not agile enough to remind him and limited himself to defending the "decency" of the government, which Feijóo had questioned in his question. The Spanish president recalled that the International Monetary Fund had improved its forecasts for the state and clung to the argument he had already prepared against the PP. "Stop talking about black boxes, if they existed, it was in your party," said the head of the state executive. Feijóo had complained that "families struggling to make ends meet see how the PSOE and the Ministry of Transport, headed by José Luis Ábalos, are running out of money like in a brothel."

Improvisation

These past few weeks have not been good for Feijóo, and Sánchez has been busy listing the various issues that have left him in a bad light: Isabel Díaz Ayuso's position on abortion—PP sources emphasize that they will comply with the law, but only if the Community of Madrid doesn't register objects—Moreno in Andalusia over breast cancer screenings; and the admitted lies by Ayuso's chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, regarding the case of the State Attorney General. The conservative leader's latest move has been to make proposals on immigration, but the public has been left with the feeling that he has done so in the wake of Vox.

It remains to be seen whether Feijóo abandons improvisation and opts to consolidate an opposition based on an alternative project to Sánchez, as he hinted this Wednesday with the issue of the self-employed. One of his weaknesses is that contrasting the PSOE model with that of the PP in the autonomous communities is risky, given recent precedents. Either October 27th or 30th will force Sánchez's appearance before the Senate's commission of inquiry into the Koldo/Ábalos case, coinciding with the first anniversary of the Dana in the Valencian Community. So obvious is this, and the diversionary maneuver could backfire on Feijóo.