Alberto Núñez Feijóo considers the legislature in Spain over, although he also assumes it will last a few more months during which he expects the PSOE's situation to worsen due to ongoing judicial investigations and its parliamentary weakness. "Pedro Sánchez faces his last Christmas at Moncloa. He deserves nothing less than the greatest possible electoral punishment because he has been a disgrace to this country," he stated this Wednesday in a press conference reviewing the political year. Between now and the next Spanish elections, the PP leader has hoped to team up more often with Junts and Vox in Congress to further undermine the Spanish Prime Minister. "We have voted the same way on 170 occasions," he stressed. In this regard, the PP leader argued that "it has been a month since [Sánchez] ignored that he has been politically dismissed," referring to the initiative approved in the lower house, with the votes of PP, Junts, and Vox, which called for the socialist leader's resignation. "He has gone from governing in a minority to governing against the majority, he has nothing left to give," he sentenced.

The PP's response to the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) endorsement of the application of amnesty to Carles Puigdemont is another demonstration of the strategy that Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party wants to apply in Catalonia. From Génova they argued that the focus on the "Procés" must be left behind to "open a new era that allows us to talk only about what Catalans need". "More housing, more doctors, lower taxes, and more security". This is the recipe that the PP leader already presented during the Catalan Popular Party congress three weeks ago. His aspiration is to ensure that the social and economic axis prevails over the national one and that his project is attractive, mainly with economic proposals, to voters from Junts, PSC, and Vox.

Don't think of an elephant... Did you think of one? Probably, yes. Now you must be wondering why this article starts like this, asking about an elephant, but the answer is simple: to show how the A-B-C of any electoral campaign operates and that it is key to winning elections. As George Lakoff theorized in his reference book Don't Think of an Elephant! (2004, Chelsea Green Publishing), whoever sets the framework for the debate and manages to talk about what they want and in the language they choose, has a high chance of taking victory at the polls. And this is the underlying battle that the PP and the PSOE have been fighting for months in Madrid, as whoever manages to impose the terms of public discussion is the one who comes out with an advantage for the next general elections. The confrontation is between two visions: those who brandish the ghost of corruption (the PP) against those who threaten with the ghost of neo-fascism (the PSOE).

The Libertas Forum is an initiative of the European People's Party that aims to build bridges of dialogue between Europe and Latin America and is made up of right-wing and center-right organizations, with a total of 60 parties from more than 40 different countries. And it was within the framework of the summit held in Madrid this Wednesday, before European and also Latin American leaders, that Alberto Nuñez Feijóo defined Pedro Sánchez as an "authoritarian president". In an inaugural speech in which he claimed "Western values" and the alliance with the United States against other states like China, Feijóo accused Sánchez, without explicitly naming him, of wanting to "control" key elements of the State and "threaten" democracy.

Spanish right-wingers have always had a certain complex regarding France. Seeing French national unity, apparently so well-tied, in contrast to a Spanish nation that has never been able to completely neutralize the peripheral differential facts, seems to make them feel inferior: why them and not us? It disturbs them to have as a neighbor a country that General De Gaulle left substantially structured after the war. If they had the dignity to think about who the reactionary forces entrusted with the structuring of the homeland (General Franco with a war) and to whom the French entrusted it, they would see that there is an abyss that should shame them, but they pretend not to remember. It is not surprising that when the Hispanic right-wing wants to build the nation, resentment emerges and the psychopathology of small and large differences flares up.

With Juanma Moreno Bonilla handed over to Vox, in the baron popular has lost, at least publicly, the moderate label it had earned by contrasting its ideological profile with that of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The PP is convinced that if it wants Alberto Núñez Feijóo to reach Moncloa, it will have to be hand in hand with Vox. That is why the popular party has been paving the way for pacts with the far-right at the regional level and, in recent days, the popular leader has tried to join in. Of course, with his clumsy style and following a rather erratic line.

The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has caused a real earthquake this week by advocating for a salary cut for those on sick leave. Spoiler alert: this already happens. In the case of common illnesses, such as the flu or back pain, for example, there is no benefit during the first three days; from the fourth day up to the 20th, the worker receives 60% paid by the company; from the 21st onwards, 75% is paid by Social Security. However, there may be modifications included in the collective agreement and other amounts or 100% may be paid, as is the case with maternity or paternity leave, which is paid by Social Security. When it is an accident or occupational illness, 75% is paid from the first day by the company.

Feijóo has done it again and, when it seems that the winds are blowing in his favor (with the modest help of the judiciary, the Public Prosecutor's Office, the Civil Guard, the UCO, and a majority of Spanish and Spanish nationalist media, and of the Íbex-35), he manages to show that he is still capable of shooting himself in the foot. And with precision. This time he said that paid sick leave incentivizes the "cancer" of absenteeism and, therefore, fraud. Anti-fraud and anti-cancer meteorite. Seeing the dust raised, spokesperson Borja Sémper took to social media and everywhere else to try to clarify the message: it was worse, because in this case the message was Sémper himself. Recently, the most syrupy spokesperson for the extreme right had to take paid sick leave, precisely for cancer treatment. Subsequent attempts by the party to make it seem that Feijóo had not said what he had indeed said have also not been very useful.Garamendi and Sánchez Llibre –a quasi-comic pair of skinflints– pointed out that Feijóo demonstrates “sensitivity” to a problem that “employers” have been denouncing for some time. An exquisite sensitivity. It would be necessary to know, on the other hand, with more precision, which "employers" they are referring to. Are they the kind of employers, perhaps, who exploit undocumented immigrants while demanding a hard line against dinghy crossings? Those who force employees to be false self-employed? Those who refuse to pay overtime? Those who abuse employees in internships? The absentee worker is a being from the same galaxy as the squatter who takes your home when you go on holiday, the Catalan student who doesn't know how to speak Spanish, or the "moro" rapist of young white, Catholic, well-educated and well-fed girls. They are characters who are part of the imaginary of the current right-wing, created from half-truths and complete lies, which serve to fill the scary tales they tell in their public appearances, their rallies, their articles and discussions and podcasts and whatever else you want. In any case, from denouncing absenteeism at work to identifying labor rights as “a cancer”, and doing so from a place as identified with privilege and parasitism as the political class, there is a considerable distance.Feijóo claims to have the cure for this illness: a labor reform (not negotiated with the unions) that includes a cut in the salaries of workers who are on leave. It strongly recalls the labor reform promoted by his compatriot Rajoy, approved with the steamroller of the absolute majority to the cry of “Que se jodan”, uttered in Congress by the deputy Andreíta Fabra, daughter of the corrupt Carlos Fabra, the one from Castellón airport. Almost fifteen years have passed and the PP's doctrine on labor matters remains where it was: now, if anything, with the assumption that precariousness and growing inequalities (and that we live in a communist dictatorship, according to them) justify any violation of labor rights.

When I returned from the United States and colleagues, future correspondents, came to ask me for advice for the day they could go to work there, I told them – and I tell them – that knowing American history or the political system of checks and balances is all well and good, but that the most important thing is that they be in shape. That they would experience a lot of heat and a lot of cold, that they would be subjected to extreme climatic conditions: scorching temperatures, monstrous snowfalls, and months with frozen sidewalks and without being able to have a coffee on a terrace, tornadoes, gales, that the electricity would go out, meaning the refrigerator and air conditioning. Or the heating… and that, in addition to suffering it, they would have to go and explain it on the front lines. And that if they didn't make themselves physically and mentally strong, it would be very hard for them.Well, this has already arrived here, in Catalonia. You only have to look at the records that are being broken these days:“Barcelona breaks its heat record in 113 years. The Fabra Observatory registers a temperature of 40.9 degrees”. In Vinebre, temperatures exceeded 44 degrees. And we have it for another week.It is not adventurous to think that the usual September downpours may be particularly dangerous this year, taking into account the amount of heat that the land and sea will have stored. All these extreme phenomena have a cost in health, physical and mental, in lifestyles, in leisure, but also, in the functioning of basic services and the maintenance of infrastructure. Increasingly, governments will have to drop everything they are doing to deal with emergencies and, in general, to adapt public spaces and services (streets, natural parks, schools, hospitals, residences) to the new climatic conditions. And us, too.

Step by step, whether forced by pacts with Vox or on its own initiative, the PP is adopting the postulates of the far-right in different areas, such as immigration, gender violence, or, now, the anti-abortion agenda. Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced this Monday that when he reaches Moncloa he will promote a law for the unborn so that women can receive aid from the very moment of conception, when they confirm their pregnancy. It is a supposed law that is presented as social and in defense of the family, but which in reality seeks to establish an ideological principle that conditions women's rights, which is that, as Isabel Díaz Ayuso herself said, "the unborn is a person from the first minute".

Isabel Díaz Ayuso approved last week, thanks to the PP's absolute majority in the Assembly of Madrid, a controversial law on conceived but not born. The rule grants the status of family unit member to the embryo, so that, from the moment pregnancy is proven, families will be able to access maternity benefits without waiting for the birth. This is a measure that is part of in the cultural war against the progressivism of the Madrid president which, one year before the regional elections, is in full competition with Vox to prevent them from undermining this absolute majority. In fact, a few days after Juanma Moreno Bonilla had to give in to the far-right to be invested as president of Andalusia, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has announced that, if he is president of the Spanish government, he will follow Ayuso's steps and promote a state law for the conceived but not born.

"Any party official must know that they are nobody without their party, and the duties are very clear: more mayors, councilors and deputies." This phrase from the state leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, did not go unnoticed at the Catalan PP congress last week that re-elected Alejandro Fernández as president of the formation in the Principality. It was a message to Fernández to make it clear that after yielding in all his organizational plan for the party, the trust had to be rewarded with results and internal efficiency. The leader of the Catalan populars has in his hands the growth of a Catalan PP that will serve as a springboard for Feijóo to reach Moncloa. However, what is the state leader's plan for Catalonia? How does he intend to seduce the Catalan electorate?

These days, when I feel like provoking people by saying that the next general elections – whether this year or next – are not definitively decided, I encounter reactions of disbelief and even severe criticism around me. If in the group exchanging opinions there is someone from the right or liberal, the interruption is immediate, and they say things to me like “Have you lost your mind?”, “You’re completely lost”, or “It’s unbelievable you could think that.” On the other hand, if in the same group there is someone from the left – it doesn’t matter if radical, moderate, or in-between – what they first express is a lack of faith, but immediately accompanied by expressions of the type “Are you sure?”, “And what are you basing that belief on?”, or if the interlocutor is fond of irony, “Félix Tezanos must have told you that,” the director of the Sociological Research Centre (CIS), always accused of sweeping in favor of his own, the socialists. This difference between the respective reactions reveals that the right is very hopeful about regaining power, and sees it as practically done. It also reflects that the left lives with an accentuated feeling of anticipated defeat, but deep down wishing for an unexpected turn, an unlikely stroke of luck, or simply a miracle that will allow them to remain in power.

José María Aznar gave Alberto Núñez Feijóo an order yesterday in front of everyone: to get rid of Sánchez, you must only count on Spaniards. And to govern, in the future, also, only Spaniards, not the PNB, nor Junts. He said it like this:

In Madrid, Galician ambiguity doesn't pay, and that's why when Alberto Núñez Feijóo sends messages that can be interpreted as a gesture towards Junts or towards Catalonia (whether or not that is the Galician leader's intention), someone quickly reminds him that this path leads nowhere. This Wednesday, the great mastermind of the Madrid right and its spiritual guide, José María Aznar, has set Feijóo on the course he should follow. Aznar has called for a "national majority" that includes the left and the right to oust Pedro Sánchez. "This majority will be national or it will not be," he reiterated. Translated into political terms, Aznar tells Feijóo that he must forget about Junts and the PNB and, instead, look towards people like Emiliano García-Page and Jordi Sevilla, that is, the Felipe González-era PSOE. Lest there be any doubt, Isabel Díaz Ayuso has cried out against "the constant independence threat".

José María Aznar must always be listened to. Beyond the occasional strident declaration or the catchy soundbite that makes headlines, what he says usually reflects in depth the thinking of the dominant right-wing in Madrid. Not always coincident with what, by intuition, the Galician Alberto Nuñez Feijóo might think.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has decided that if the democratic game doesn't favor him enough, the rules must be changed. If he doesn't win, the problem is the system, not him. And some of the citizens who have the right to vote recognized. He fiddlesby crossing the dangerous red line of instilling distrust and suspicion in the guarantees of the process itself. If the difficulties many residents abroad face in getting their vote from where they live are well known, now the leader of the Popular Party intends to put obstacles in the way of a specific type of Spaniards living outside state territory: the grandchildren and descendants of exiles and emigrants who were forced to leave the country, let's say, due to force majeure. Feijóo hasn't even ruffled his hair questioning the validity of a law that aims to repair in the present the consequences of the fierce repression of the war and the dictatorship. Both he and part of the PP and, of course, Vox, seem to want to continue humiliating the victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship ninety years after the "alzamiento" (which was not national at all, "national" was the Republic). As if the executions, prison, and exile of all those who committed no greater crime than defending themselves from fascism were not enough, as if the violence of the past were not enough, now it seems they want to continue perpetuating it in the present. If Franco wanted to exterminate all the elements he considered impure and subversive, and turned Spaniards who were not as he believed they should be into enemies, now the aim is to eliminate the vestiges, memories, and narrative of those who come directly from the horror and are the fruit of the barbarism that began that July of '36. Later they will say that it is the left that digs up the Civil War dead and they will complain about being considered heirs of the dictatorship, but when they attack the losers they show whose sons and grandsons they are. 

There are jokes that, besides being grotesque, are revealing. A recent example: Feijóo's claim that the party that wins the legislative elections should have a "bonus" reward in the form of receiving between 20 and 50 additional seats as a gift, which, if they had been voted for, would have been won by other parties. That is, to force an absolute majority by legal imperative, and thus save the winner from having to look for partners and make concessions.

Pedro Sánchez is not exactly preparing a "tupinada", but rather designing through "electoral engineering" a plan to win the next state elections thanks to the vote from abroad. This is the thesis defended by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who this Tuesday wanted to place the Popular Party one step below Vox in the accusations of future electoral fraud that both parties have been fueling for some time. Feijóo, who was interviewed by the media outlet La7 Región de Murcia, thus specified his words on Monday on esRadio, where he openly criticized that the so-called "law of the clean" – a provision included in the law of democratic memory – is designed to alter the electoral roll in favor of the PSOE.

Almost all the analysis space is occupied by the noise of Spanish politics, a noise that has two fundamental emitters. The first is corruption close to the PSOE and Pedro Sánchez (Ábalos, Koldo, Cerdán), which adds a new indicted person: