In Catalonia, Puigdemont is president. In the Basque Country, a government of EH Bildu. The economy is in technical recession and Brussels is not sending European funds due to Pedro Sánchez’s management. This is what the Spanish political panorama would look like if the bulk of the prophecies launched by the opposition in recent times had been fulfilled. The latest, on the governability of Catalonia, has also just been overturned by reality: Pedro Sánchez has not given the power of the Generalitat to the fugitive leader of Junts to “return the favor” of his investiture, as the Popular Party claimed.
The PP’s predictions are not limited to the traditional apocalyptic generalities about the break-up of Spain or the end of democracy at the hands of the PSOE. For some time now, specifically since Alberto Núñez Feijóo arrived at the leadership of the Popular Party, it has been recurrent that both the leader of the opposition and his team venture to go into detail about their bets and predict everything from election results to governability pacts in Catalonia or the Basque Country. Or even the future of the Spanish economy. And the percentage of correct predictions does not leave the talents for futurology that exist on Génova Street in a very good light.
1. Sánchez will make Puigdemont president
This is what the PP has maintained since Pedro Sánchez’s investiture and what it has defended most vehemently in recent months: that the seven Junts votes in Congress, key to the re-election of the PSOE leader as President of the Government, would be rewarded in kind in Parliament.
“Everyone agrees that Mr. Illa has little say in these elections, even if he wins. They will tell him what to do. And if they order him to make Puigdemont president, he will do it,” predicted Alberto Núñez Feijóo at the closing rally of the campaign.
On May 13, the day after the Catalan elections, spokesman Borja Sémper decided to keep the argument intact despite the victory of the leader of the PSC and current president, Salvador Illa. “Is anyone who knows Pedro Sánchez in a position to say that he cannot make Puigdemont president? Puigdemont has granted everything he has asked for, so why should it be any different now?”
2. PSC-ERC coalition
That gamble on Puigdemont being invested by the socialists became unsustainable as the days went by, even for Feijóo himself, who changed it on the fly to put all his chips on a coalition government between the PSC and ERC.
“What I think the leaders of ERC, and of course the PSC, want is to govern together in Catalonia and form a pro-independence coalition to try to maintain power in Catalonia and thus, through ERC, keep seven more deputies in favour of Sánchez in Congress,” he said in an interview on COPE on 18 July.
The PSC is now governing alone after the investiture of Salvador Illa with the votes in favour of ERC and the Comuns, so the Popular Party has once again refreshed its discourse. After the failure of its two prophecies, with the investiture of Salvador Illa and the situation of the Catalan independence movement in a parliamentary minority for the first time in 40 years, the PP now maintains that Illa’s will be the “most pro-independence” government in the history of Catalonia.
3. The PSOE will allow EH Bildu to govern in Basque Country
Before the Catalan elections came the Basque elections and the PP also cast its bets there. The main line of argument of Feijóo’s party during the 21A election campaign was in fact similar to that of Catalonia with the exchange of roles between Puigdemont and Otegi. According to the PP, it was the leader of EH Bildu to whom Pedro Sánchez, with the complicity of the PNV, was going to return “the favour”.
On the eve of the election, Feijóo himself encouraged the Basques to prevent “a farce” by Pedro Sánchez in the Lehendakaritza. In other words, a government of EH Bildu.
The election results gave the PNV a narrow victory in votes, which tied with EH Bildu on 27 seats. The Basque socialists, as they had already announced, did not make a pact with Arnaldo Otegi’s party and favoured the re-edition of a coalition government with the PNV.
4. The end of ‘sanchismo’
The political end of Pedro Sánchez has been a recurring bet in the PP since the times of Pablo Casado and even since those of Mariano Rajoy. But Alberto Núñez Feijóo may have been the most accurate leader of the Popular Party in his prediction.
“Sanchismo has 54 days left.” Not one more, not one less. This is what Feijóo solemnly predicted before the National Board of his party on May 30, 2023, in the midst of the electoral race for the June 23 general elections. That 54-day bet will now be 15 months old.
5. The fall of the Government
Once the prediction of the end of ‘Sanchismo’ failed, the Popular Party went on to try to predict the fall of the Government. This is probably the opposition’s most stubborn bet. Only in the last political year has Alberto Núñez Feijóo assured that it would happen several times imminently and for various reasons.
First, he ruled that the government was born “broken” by the investiture pact with the separatists. Then, he said that the amnesty law was the “starting point of the separatist movement and the end of Sánchez.” And he also ventured that Sánchez would fall “for the same reasons that he managed to get the presidency, because of lies and corruption.”
6. Sánchez will allow a self-determination referendum
This is another of the opposition’s usual announcements in Congress. The Popular Party has been arguing since the last legislature that Pedro Sánchez’s territorial policy regarding Catalonia is not aimed at overcoming the independence crisis of 2017 under a PP government, but rather the opposite. And that is why he has already agreed to a secession referendum.
“We must be prepared for this referendum to be included in the agenda and for it to be able to materialise,” Feijóo said last week during another interview on Cadena COPE. When questioned about this question, the leader of the PP also gave details. “Yesterday some Catalan colleagues told me that what is going to be proposed is a referendum within the Statute, not binding. I think that is where the conversations of the new Government of the Generalitat are already going.”
7. Spain, in ‘technical recession’
October 2022. In the context of the post-pandemic and the beginning of the global consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Alberto Núñez Feijóo sounded the alarm. “We are just a few weeks away from entering a technical recession.” The leader of the PP predicted the economic apocalypse due to the economic management of the Executive.
The announced disaster never came and Spain consolidated itself as one of the eurozone economies that grew above average and where inflation fell the most. These figures have also accompanied the good employment figures and even the economic growth of families. “The economy is approaching collapse,” said the parliamentary spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, to follow the argument of her leader.
8. Limiting the price of energy: an ‘Iberian scam’
After many months of battle in Brussels to obtain the so-called Iberian exception, which would allow Spain and Portugal to limit gas prices for electricity generation, the Spanish achievement was, however, scorned by Feijóo’s party. The opposition again prophesied: the measure would only serve to finance the energy of the French, they said, even going so far as to speak of a scam.
“This Iberian pact… the Iberian scam, to be more precise,” mocked the general coordinator of the PP, Elías Bendodo, after suggesting that “the Government’s flagship measure is to subsidise gas and electricity in France”. According to Eurostat data, Spain has established itself as one of the countries in the entire European Union with the lowest inflation rate.
9. Brussels will cancel the sending of European funds
The PP even raised the issue of the fact that Spain’s receipt of European funds was in jeopardy due to the Spanish government’s management. “The Popular Party is concerned that the lack of implementation of the European funds of the Recovery and Resilience Plan will cause a loss of funds for Spain,” Feijóo’s party said in an official statement in July 2022. On June 12 of this year, two months ago, the Commission made official the fourth disbursement of funds, in compliance with the planned schedule.
10. Spain will disappear
It is not the most original but it is certainly the most ambitious of all the predictions made by the ranks of the PP. And it is from Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The president of the Community of Madrid claims to be convinced that the continuity of Pedro Sánchez’s Government and the existence of Spain are incompatible with each other. Either one thing or the other. So if Sánchez governs with pacts with the separatists, Spain as a concept is nothing more than a distant memory.
“If we allow Spain’s sworn enemies to decide its territorial integrity and those who have committed serious crimes and even those who have ended innocent lives to continue taking positions against all Spaniards, our coexistence and the country we know will disappear,” Ayuso said on January 1, 2023 in a New Year’s message full of good omens. It is likely that the Madrid president herself will now renounce her prediction and believe that Spain still exists, because a month ago she decided that her government would award the International Sports Award to the Spanish soccer team “for uniting an entire country with its values of team, effort and sacrifice” after winning the European Championship.
Source: www.eldiario.es
