For those who yearn for a change in the Spanish government, there’s the problem of the leading opposition champion evidently not being the right person for the job.
The hard-to-pronounce (or spell) Alberto Núñez Feijóo had been the president of Galicia and was chosen to take over the leadership of the Partido Popular following the defenestration of Pablo Casado (for criticising on the television the behaviour of his colleague Isabel Díaz Ayuso during the pandemic). Since he can’t talk about the economy – which is doing surprisingly well (now that everyone has been obliged to pay their taxes), Feijóo must concentrate his relentless opposition on the actions of his rival and his crew, whether actually true or basely dreamed up by the innumerable fábricas de bulos which are endlessly circling the ship of state.
Feijóo (pronounce him fay-who) sort of won the election last year (he has the most seats), only he didn’t since he and his allies – the Vox and a couple of tiddlers – weren’t quite enough to win against the coalition of the PSOE and its partners to the left plus some nationalist parties from the north. ‘I could have been president’, he said at one point, if it wasn’t for his partnership with Vox, producing the jocular rejoinder of Pedro Sánchez in the Cortes with "That’s a very good one! Sr. Feijóo, you are not president because you do not want to be. In fact, you have even proclaimed that you are the first Spaniard to renounce being president of the Government when you could have been".
They’ve been at daggers drawn ever since, with Sánchez only last week complaining of Feijóo’s ‘vinegary’ and senseless opposition. Why, he will even go against the opinion of the PPE in Brussels in doomed attempts to pull down either Spain’s standing internationally, or Sanchez’ britches at home.
The party (and its supporters) is beginning to have second thoughts about the Galician (and his troubles back in his home region), his lack of constructive ideas ("When there is a problem with Morocco, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; if there is a problem with Algeria, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; if there is an issue in Venezuela, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; always against the Government of Spain and never in defence of the Spanish people" says a government minister with candour), and his recent performance over Venezuela, where his claim that Spain had plotted with the Caracas government to allow the disputed winner of their recent elections, Edmundo González, to seek asylum in Spain – was afterwards denied by the arch-conservative candidate Edmundo González himself.
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| Feijóo with Ayuso |
Feijóo wouldn’t make much of a president anyway – he gabbles and doesn’t speak English – and waiting in the wings is the abovementioned Isabel Diáz Ayuso, who may be a handful with much baggage, but for some reason – she’s bulletproof. Pretty, too, like Meloni.
Talking of the Italian torpedo, Feijóo was over in Rome a week ago, to discuss immigration from the point of an ultra – however it panned out, Georgia Meloni wouldn’t say – and apart from a stolen snapshot, there’s no record of the summit anywhere in the Italian media.
Now we have the pre-budgets for 2025. The Conservative regions want more money from Central Government, but their colleagues in Parliament said they would be voting against the proposals this Thursday, which would include any increase for the regional autonomies (mostly under PP control). They have unlikely support from the Junts per Catalunya. On Tuesday, the government postponed the vote for another more propitious moment.
Pedro Sánchez certainly has problems to keep his majority, but the loosest of his allies – Junts per Catalunya (the exiled Puigdemont’s rabble) – know full well that they would get short shrift if the PP and its friends at Vox were to somehow take over the government.
So, maybe Sánchez and his reckless claim of three more years is not such a fantasy, and with Feijóo for his rival, he may be right.
As someone says: better a Frankenstein government than a Neanderthal one.