It already smells like a congressional election. But not the general ones, which Pedro Sánchez insists he has no intention of calling before 2027. It stinks of elections in several autonomies – Extremadura, Castilla y León and Andalusia in the next few months, for now – and Pedro Sánchez’s speech this morning was a clear example of this. The president started a sort of pre-campaign with a very elaborate denunciation in La Moncloa, with dozens of data, of the privatization and deterioration of public services in the autonomies of the PP.
Sánchez wants to contrast the progressive model with the conservative one and to do so he offered a lot of data, with a single idea: the coalition government gave 300 billion euros more to the autonomies, but those of the PP – which controls 11 of them – use them to give tax gifts to the rich and privatize healthcare, education and dependency. The president summed it all up by directly attacking Isabel Díaz Ayuso, whose partner did business with Quirón, the private healthcare giant. “They have transformed Madrid into a casino where Quirón always wins and the citizens always lose,” Sánchez said, to the indignation of the popular bench.
“This government has given the autonomies 300 billion euros more than Rajoy. So why are waiting lists and the quality of public services worsening? Because regional governments use this money for the elites, to do business, perhaps legal but immoral. Madrid has lowered taxes on the upper classes by 5,700 million euros, it has given 5,000 to contracts with Quirón. One euro in three of Madrid’s healthcare system goes to concerts With private clinics. And what got Ayuso? The opposite happened. Confidence decreased by 23 points compared to 2019. Therefore, more than 360,000 Madridians purchased private insurance, with an increase of 16% of euros went to concerts in private clinics.
Sánchez focused his speech on this ideological battle with the PP and Vox. “Defending Spain is not removing the white flag, spending 5% on defense or attacking immigrants, defending Spain means investing in public schools, investing in public housing, this is the Spain that is worth defending, the one of well-being, which our parents, our grandparents built, it is public Spain, you will not destroy it, we will not allow it”, he concluded.
The president also sent a very clear message to Junts, who has now announced the blocking of the legislature. “Spain has suffered destructive opposition, signed up to the absurd and surrendered to the far right. How else to explain why it voted against the revaluation of pensions? Against a labor reform that brought more employment and lowered temporary work to historic lows? Who reject a debt cancellation that could ease the financial burden of the territories they govern? Now it seems that other parliamentary groups want to sign up to that bloc,” he said, referring to Vox. “But, for the many reasons you find, what reasons are there for blocking a law that protects our children and adolescents in digital environments? What reasons are there for family law not to move forward in a country like ours which is suffering from a demographic winter? And the law of the universality of the national health system? We are talking about politics in capital letters”, he concluded, looking at the Junts deputies. Furthermore, Sánchez once again called elections in the Valencian Community, and he did so by appealing directly to the leader of Vox, which was very unusual. “Mr. Abascal, do not agree with the right, allow Valencian citizens to go to elections. The government will ensure that none of the PP and Vox agreements violate the rights and freedoms of Valencians.”
