It is truly sad to see how the People's Party (PP) is meandering, without ideas of its own or firm proposals, simply doing all it can to criticize Pedro Sánchez's concessions to the Catalan pro-independence parties. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has turned the PP's discourse into a repetition of the same arguments with which he stood and lost as the candidate to be Spanish prime minister at the end of last September, and now he appears trapped in a circle from which he neither wants nor is able to emerge. It could be summarized as follows: Sánchez has held on to the leadership of the Spanish government because he has ceded control of Spanish politics to the exiled politician Carles Puigdemont.
Thus, the four corners of the quadrangle in which the Galician moves are the following: amnesty law, Waterloo, the break-up of Spain and the end of the Spanish Constitution. In the end, everything with the aim of presenting the current PM as a puppet of the goals of Catalan independentism, which, from everything one can see, is far from being the whole truth, since the press releases of the political agreements reached are a long way from a publication of a law in the state's official gazette, whose content and date are still far from being known.
But the political right, heavily fuelled by the right-wing parts of the media and judiciary, finds in this framing a way to project cohesion and tries to use it for a major street mobilization. This is the main new development for the right: it is trying to occupy the street with protests of all kinds against the political agreements with the pro-independence parties. The scene of action is therefore no longer the Congress of Deputies or the Senate, but the street itself, appealing to conservative feelings over the spectre of an end to Spain as a single state.
Feijóo has turned the PP's discourse into a repetition of the same arguments with which he stood and lost as the candidate to be Spanish prime minister
It is still quite a novelty that at the moment when there has been a loss of mobilization by the supporters of independence, it is those of the opposite sign who are trying to increase the urban tension. It already seems clear that in the Galician autonomous election on February 18th this will be the most important aspect. A strategy which, in addition, will serve to cover up the low profile of the current president of the Xunta de Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, and which will provide Feijóo - who until May 2022 held Rueda's job in Galicia - with more media space.
But this strategy will not help the PP in the Basque election, to be held simultaneously with the Galician vote, and it also remains to be seen if it will end up crushing the Socialists in the European parliamentary elections in May, or if the EU polling day ends up being a boomerang that leaves the Socialists and PP in a technical tie. Something that would be more than enough for Sánchez to stay afloat.