The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, responded this Wednesday in the control session of the Executive in Congress to questions from the PP, PNV, and UPN, a day after the Lower House rejected the decree extending the freeze on rents and a few days before the start of the electoral campaign for the Andalusian elections, which will be held on May 17. In addition, Sánchez tried to ease tensions with the PNV after the crisis generated between the Basque socialists and the nationalist party over an image generated with artificial intelligence disseminated by the PSE on the social network X. The parliamentary spokesperson for the Basque Nationalist Party asked the head of the Executive about the Government’s “priorities” and how it would address them given the “parliamentary arithmetic” of the Lower House. Before talking about the Government’s priorities, Pedro Sánchez criticized the pacts between the PP and Vox, whose “priority,” he says, “is xenophobia, racism, confrontation, polarization, and segregation.” That is the only thing the Popular Party and Vox can offer in the territories where they are governing.”
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“The priorities of the Government of Spain were set eight years ago. To grow, create jobs, redistribute that growth among the working middle class of our country. And it is also to face the digital and energy transformations,” Sánchez enumerated before highlighting that another of his Executive’s objectives is “to defend a multilateral order that guarantees peace and stability in the world as a guarantee of the prosperity of nations.” To achieve this, Sánchez spoke of the need for “constructive oppositions that think about the general interest and not the partisan one.” Faced with this, the PNV spokesperson recalled the importance of maintaining good manners and respect between parties: “Perhaps your only priority for the remainder of the legislature is to build a wall against fascism and Trumpism, and it is legitimate and necessary, I acknowledge that. That is also our goal, but we will not achieve it if, in addition to the substance, we do not take care of the forms and do not respect each other. You will know how you want to reach the election, whether you want company or not,” Vaquero criticized in a veiled reference to the crisis opened this Tuesday by the tweet published by the PSE.
Sánchez then made a gesture to the Basque nationalists, stating that until then he wants “good company like that of the PNV” and reviewed some policies promoted with the support of the Basque parliamentary group, adding that to achieve his Government’s priorities, “dialogue” and “consistency” are needed: “To achieve all these priorities we need dialogue, and I appreciate the dialogue and the constructive position of the Basque Nationalist Party, we need consistency because many of these transformations require time and we also need constructive positions. And I always thank the PNV for having that constructive position.”
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The Popular Party registered, as usual, a generic question that its president would pronounce (“What interests does this Government serve?”), but finally focused on corruption and the doctors’ strike. “Today two milestones coincide that perfectly portray how you have governed while your right-hand man is sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court. Today there is another day of doctors’ strike in Spain. The trial of Ábalos is a trial of your Government. For that alone, you would not deserve to be sitting there. But furthermore, you do not solve people’s problems. You are responsible for the biggest doctors’ strike there has been in Spain,” Feijóo denounced.
Sánchez replied to the PP leader by stating that he had provided “1,000 million euros to the autonomous communities to finance public services” and criticized Feijóo that “what the autonomous governments of the Popular Party, boosted by Vox, are doing is swelling the waiting lists of public health to make business for private health.” The President of the Government defended that his Executive is dedicated to “serving the social majority of this country.” “And we have always done that with your vote against, standing aside. We serve the majority, you, Mr. Feijóo, serve the usual ones, the elite of this country,” he criticized.
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