Pedro Sánchez’s first rally in the pre-campaign of the Extremadura regional elections on 21 December was conditioned by an infinity of events that once again put the PSOE in tension due to the cases of corruption of Santos Cerdán and José Luis Ábalos, the two organizational secretaries who, until June, managed the daily management of Ferraz for eight years. The President of the Government ignored the corruption in the event, which coincided for a few minutes, after 7.20 pm, with the release of Cerdán from Madrid’s Soto del Real prison after 142 days of preventive detention while Sánchez claimed control of his Executive. The PSOE general secretary did not make the slightest reference, tacit or explicit, to the latest UCO report on his former right-hand man or to the anti-corruption prosecutor’s request that Ábalos spend 24 years behind bars for the mask conspiracy. Sánchez did not even refer to his brother, for whose appointment in the Provincial Council of Badajoz Miguel Ángel, territorial leader and candidate, will be tried in a month for alleged affair in a trial scheduled for February.
Sánchez’s speech, which will initially be the protagonist of three other events in Extremadura in the rest of the campaign, focused on the PP’s pacts with Vox in addition to the cuts made by María Guardiola in the Council and on the comparison with the Government’s economic data after the upward revision of the GDP to 2.9% and some of its star measures. “Guardiola’s first decision was a declaration of intent: to eliminate free school meals in school canteens. There are 2,100 cases of young people and their families in Extremadura, which clearly demonstrates the right’s priority: doing business while respecting people’s rights. This is why we must vote for the PSOE, to defend what is public. We need autonomous governments that defend the welfare state”, criticized Sánchez, who, as in his appearance last week in Congress, linked the PP barons with inefficient management.
“Guardiola refuses a reduction of 1,700 million euros of debt. It’s like if you go to the bank and they tell you that they will take away part of your mortgage and you say no, and then you go home to make yourself understood. Well, this is what Guardiola is doing in Extremadura… And it’s because they are all of the same stuff: Guardiola, Ayuso, Bonilla, Mazón who is no longer there, Mañueco… The first thing that the PP just needs to cut. They are bad managers”, he underlined this idea at an event held in Mérida. “In Mérida alone, the Spanish government has invested more than 100 million euros. María Guardiola’s government has invested absolutely nothing in the city in two years. On December 21st we find ourselves faced with a government that protects the population or that in two years has done nothing in Extremadura”, retorted the mayor of the capital of Extremadura, Antonio Rodríguez Osuna.
Sánchez also focused on the PP’s relationship with Vox, after Alberto Núñez Feijóo had warned on Sunday of a “lock” between the PSOE and the far right in the attempt to achieve an absolute majority, the great objective for which Guardiola brought forward the elections by a year and a half, while the polls predict a setback for the socialists. “Cuts, mismanagement and lies. This is what the PP and Vox offer. I’m telling you, PP and Vox, because Vox fills its mouth with reproaches to the PP, but supports it in power. And the more negligent it is, the better; otherwise ask the PP of the Valencian Community with Mazón at the helm. Faced with this model, the PSOE offers stability, capacity for dialogue and results. In the PP and Vox, however, there are many interests in making money with health, education and addiction, and there is only one way to defend them: the PSOE”, declared the president, who called for mobilization “to do what the PP and Vox didn’t know how, or didn’t want to, or couldn’t do”. The activation of abstentionists is currently the main problem of Gallardo’s candidacy, who risks governing two consecutive legislatures in Extremadura for the first time.
“We are here because Guardiola decided to press the red button because they told him so in Madrid, where they decided that these elections were good for Feijóo. But the Madrid gentlemen do not know that the decision will not be taken there, but here. They are very dishonest and thought they would catch us red-handed with the change of pace and that Extremadura is still the Extremadura of the Holy Innocents and that they would still deceive us”, said Gallardo, who, unlike of Sánchez, he did. He spoke at length about his trial and the president’s brother. “The right has invented a big lie that has hurt us personally. I don’t know if it is a coincidence or a strategy that, just a month after being elected general secretary and seven years after the entry of David (Sánchez) into the Provincial Council, an instrumental organization of the far right – the pseudo-union Clean Hands – presents a complaint based on an article paid for by the pseudo-media council of Extremadura that no one in Extremadura reads. What did they want? Who doesn’t know how to do it beating you at the polls tries to destroy you in private,” the candidate said. Gallardo called the president’s brother “a great professional who came to develop his talent, to generate musical wealth and who had to leave due to pressure from the far right.”
Gallardo drags behind the controversy that aroused his incorporation into the Extremaduran Assembly in May, obtaining the status of qualified person, after learning of his judicial proceedings for the alleged irregularities committed in the hiring of David Sánchez. “Leading the PSOE is not easy, but it is always worth it. We come to recover what is still recoverable”, reiterated the candidate, who also dedicated a few minutes to another thorny issue ignored by Sánchez: Almaraz. The future of the two reactors of the nuclear power plant, whose closure is scheduled for 2027 and 2028 and which the owner companies hope to extend until 2030, is one of the flags of the right against the PSOE. “Dear Pedro, thank you very much because the hoax about the nuclear power plant has also been denied by Guardiola. This week we learned that the Government is drawing up its extension and it will be extended if it is done with safety criteria. I am convinced that it will be done and can be done, but do you know why we want the extension? To continue with the gigafactory project promoted by Guillermo Fernández Vara”, he assured, before committing to allocating the 45 million that Guardiola will take from the owners of Almaraz for community teachers.
