At the beginning of the decisive week for the negotiations between PP and Vox in the Valencian Community, Alberto Núñez Feijóo moved the entire executive of his party to Melilla to hold the routine meeting on Monday. The meeting in the autonomous city had been scheduled for days and expected the popular leader to resume his harsh speech against immigration, a flag he has tried to wrest from Santiago Abascal’s party in recent months. And with whom he will now have to deal in Valencia to invest in president after the resignation of Carlos Mazón. With a play on words, this Monday Feijóo softened his message about foreigners and used Melilla as an example of “coexistence” between “cultures” and “religions”. At the same time, Vox pushes with anti-immigration postulates to offer its support to a candidate in Les Corts.
During his visit to Melilla, Feijóo presented the “contract” with the autonomous city that Genoa will stipulate if it reaches La Moncloa after the general elections, scheduled for 2027. It was during the announcement of this commitment that the opposition leader praised the city of Melilla, with 90,000 inhabitants, as a paradigm of integration. “We cannot condemn the political periphery, a territory of the nation where coexistence between cultures, religions and languages is built every day,” the PP leader said in a meeting with supporters after the steering committee meeting. “You are the perfect laboratory to inspire policies of tolerance in Spain,” added Feijóo.
The speech of the PP leader followed that of the president of the autonomous city, Juan José Imbroda, who governs with an absolute majority after having regained power in the latest regional elections. Imbroda also focused on the “integrative” model that Melilla represents with respect to Vox’s policies. “Today Melilla is a center of national interest, a city of peace and integration,” proclaimed the president of the autonomous city. “Here we don’t tolerate each other, we respect each other. The Muslim, the Hindu, the gypsy, everyone is respected. To be in Spain you have to respect all religions. Those who make a tortuous use of religions have no forgiveness either from God or from men. Against these, in front”, added the popular leader in a veiled allusion to the ultra formation.
The visit to Melilla takes place the day after the closing of the Andalusian PP congress, in which Feijóo insisted on asking for a useful vote for the popular party against Vox without making express mention of it. He did so less than a month after the start of the electoral campaign in Extremadura, which will then be followed by Castilla y León and Andalusia. The leader of the PP thus seeks to take revenge against the Abascal team while he needs the ultras in Valencia. Thus he muffled the direct confrontation with the president of Vox in public.
“Sánchez breaks the independence of the judiciary”
In his speech, Feijóo also referred for the first time to the words of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who this Sunday, in an interview with EL PAÍS, assured that the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, is “innocent” of the charge of revealing secrets for which he is on trial. The PP leader accused the chief executive of these statements, which imply “interference with the Supreme Court” and “violation of the independence of the judiciary”. “This has never happened in 50 years of democracy,” Feijóo underlined, underlining that the fact that “the president of the government interferes before the Supreme Court is a symptom of a lack of quality and democratic ethics”. And he considers the legislature “exhausted” after Junts announced that he will no longer support government initiatives in Congress: “They are finished and all that remains is to fight before the judges and torpedo the autonomous communities.”
