The day the 21st national congress of the PP began, on July 5th last year, Alberto Núñez Feijóo summoned Borja Sémper to his office. The leader of the PP wanted to propose to the PP spokesperson that he renew his position, despite being aware that his profile as a free verse and representative of the moderate wing of the PP sometimes caused him problems. Sémper’s response to his proposal left him stunned.
―I think you should reconsider, because I have pancreatic cancer.
The Basque deputy, 50 years old, revealed to his boss at that moment the diagnosis of the serious illness that has kept him away from politics for the last ten months, and which he has successfully overcome. Not without going through a “dark tunnel,” as he himself recounted this Tuesday at an informative breakfast he led to announce his return and which filled the elegant hall of the Four Seasons Hotel in Madrid.
Feijóo introduced him with visible emotion. “Borja does not raise his voice, he raises politics,” praised the PP leader, before confessing that he “missed him.” “His critics sometimes reproach him for a moderate attitude, but let’s not confuse formal elegance with lack of character,” Feijóo emphasized, who then sat down to listen as his spokesperson said he had “some temptation to retire” from politics during his sick leave. “But the temptation lasted little,” Sémper recalled. “I decided that quitting was not an option. Especially when you have the opportunity to contribute to change,” he explained. “I return for the second time alongside the person I believe in most, who is Feijóo.”
The Basque deputy returns to the political arena with the intention of “not participating in circuses and shows” after having observed from outside the “degradation” of public life. “Three days ago the leader of the third force called the president shit,” he emphasized referring to the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, “and two days ago a minister said about the opposition leader ‘how disgusting this guy is,’” he quoted referring to Óscar Puente. “My party is not immune to this degradation and decadence,” confessed the PP spokesperson, but argued that “the same degree of responsibility cannot be assigned to those who govern as to those who do not.”
During his absence, the PP has signed several government pacts with Vox and has ceded to the far right an identity conceptual framework, that of “national priority” for public aid, which Vox presents as discrimination against immigrants so that Spaniards have preference in access to the welfare state. Sémper, one of the PP leaders most reluctant to agreements with the far right, defended today that “it is much better for citizens that the Popular Party governs without forming a coalition with other political parties, including Vox.”
But immediately after he specified that he also believes “it is unfair to condemn the Popular Party to only govern with an absolute majority” and defended the agreements in Extremadura and Aragón, including the so-called national priority. “I have read the pacts in depth that we have reached in Aragón and Extremadura, and I have not seen any element that makes the Popular Party deviate from its position and framework,” he argued. “Vox, which is an adversary of the Popular Party, naturally, intends to make readings, in my opinion erroneous or mistaken or interested, of those pacts, but the pacts say what they say and represent what they represent.”
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The PP spokesperson also argued that the “national priority” gives “advantage” to applicants for aid and access to public housing based on the length of registration, and emphasized that it does not discriminate based on origin. “Here neither skin color nor place of birth matters,” he stressed. Sémper also maintained his defense of immigrant regularization as he did when the Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP) reached Congress and the PP supported it. “We approved an initiative that intended to open a debate. We wanted to open a debate, but it was taken away from us because it was done outside Congress, which is why it seemed irresponsible to us.”
His discourse on the migratory phenomenon questioned the approach of both the left, “open doors,” he said; and the right, “dehumanization of the immigrant.” “Both are wrong. We believe the alternative is rigor. Our party is humanist and reformist, believes in the dignity of the human being regardless of where they were born,” he specified, but also believes “that borders must be controlled,” since “disorder and uncontrolled immigration” can cause “integration problems in some areas.”
Sémper answered several questions from the press before an audience in which, besides the PP leadership, former politicians from Ciudadanos, such as Albert Rivera and Begoña Villacís, and from the PSOE, such as Ander Gil, former president of the Senate who now works in a consultancy, were seen. “Any more questions? These people have a life,” joked the Basque deputy, who was somewhat tense having to deal again with the contradictions of the PP.
Sémper does not want the condition of cancer patient ―although now cured― to define him from now on, just as he never wanted his condition as a victim of ETA terrorism to do so. “I don’t think an illness defines you. It’s part of life. But I know there are many people who find comfort in that I have spoken naturally about an illness full of euphemisms,” he reflected. And he closed his return to the front line of politics with advice that silenced the audience before bursting into loud applause. “I close with this inviting and encouraging you not to believe you are immortal, to take care of yourselves and get check-ups,” exhorted Sémper. “And to be happy, because time sometimes presses.”
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