“In Spain there have always been solo governments even if they had no absolute majority. That is the government that Alberto Núñez Feijóo wants and that is the commitment acquired by the PP.” This was addressed on Tuesday the general secretary of the PP, Miguel Tellado, the debate on an open Vox coalition after the XXI National Congress of the Party for the inconcrections of Feijóo and its leaders. On Monday none wanted to formalize the “commitment” in front of the cameras. Today he has done it, on behalf of the party and not its leader, the newly elected 'number two'.
“The PP's commitment is a solo, unique government,” Tellado reiterated during a wave interview. The Secretary General has carefully chosen, as we usually, the exact words he wanted to pronounce. Throughout the long conversation he has not said at any time that Feijóo assumes said commitment in the first person, but that the chief of rows has a queencia, a “desire.” And that it is the PP who undertakes to execute it.
Tellado tries to set the controversy self -impulsed by the PP around the agreements with VOX and that reached their boiling point yesterday when neither the new parliamentary spokesman, Ester Muñoz, wanted to express in a publicly public the rejection of Feijóo to a government in coalition with the ultra -right.
“I want a solo government,” Feijóo said during the closing of the conclave. In the same speech he also said: “We are not going to make a sanitary cord to Vox. It is the third force of the country, its voters deserve respect and I am not willing to corner them.”
Feijóo thus raised “wanting to” govern alone, but did not set a clear commitment about it. At the same time, he said to be open to “pacts” with the entire parliamentary arch, from Junts to Vox. His only express exception is EH Bildu.
On Monday, expressly asked about the possibility that Santiago Abascal can be vice president of Feijóo, Muñoz cleared: “We are going to wait for elections and see the deputies we have,” he said in Telecinco.
Faced with the doubts, the journalists already asked in the afternoon up to three times directly to Tellado. And three times the secretary general avoided giving a clear answer. Only after the press conference, and in conversation with the Secretary General already without cameras, Tellado said that Feijóo has acquired the “commitment” to govern alone, although they have not expressed it in public.
The PP address authorized to publish and attribute to Tellado what was said in that conversation, normally informal and whose content cannot be reproduced. The Secretary General said with the microphones out that “Feijóo's commitment is that there will be no coalition government.” And he reiterated: “Feijóo's commitment is alone. There will not be a coalition government.”
“I regret not having been clear enough in my first press conference as as the new general secretary of the party,” Tellado Tellado said on Wave. “But I will take advantage of the green microphone to clarify what some believe that I have not made clear, and I accept criticism,” he added. Its clarification has meant to modify before the recorders the statement he made without microphones without now to propose two parallel realities. On the one hand, the “desire” of Feijóo; on the other, the “commitment” of the PP.
“Collaboration” with the ultra -right
Tellado has resorted to the recent history of Spain, since the democratic restoration after Franco's dictatorship, to affirm that “there have always been solo governments even if it had no absolute majority.” “Thus was with Felipe González, with José María Aznar, with Mariano Rajoy and (José Luis) Rodríguez Zapatero,” he said.
A kind of unwritten norm, according to the PP of Feijóo, for which the party that wins the elections must govern yes or yes, and that the right has breached remarkably in recent years. Without going any further, Juan Manuel Moreno in Andalusia in 2018 lost to Susana Díaz and ruled with the help of Citizens and Vox. The same happened in 2019 in Madrid with Isabel Díaz Ayuso and José Luis Martínez Almeida, in Castilla y León with Alfonso Fernández Mañueco or, already in 2023, in Extremadura with María Guardiola and in many capital and large cities throughout Spain.
“The one of (Pedro) (Sánchez has been the first coalition government of the history of Spain,” said Tellado, who has ignored those that occurred in the democratic period prior to the civil war. “The year 18 that leaves the motion of censure and then the one that forms in the year 2023,” he added. After the motion of censure of 2018 the PSOE ruled in parliamentary supports. 2019 and 2023 elections when two joint executives were formed, with Unidos Podemos and with adding.
“Does this mean that from the PP we are establishing a sanitary cordon around voice, as they demand from the PSOE?” Tellado has been self -asked, to respond: “No. We understand that if in Spain there must be a sanitary cordon towards some political formation, that is Bildu, it is not vox. Vox is the third political force of our country and I believe that in that sense it deserves all the respect, especially its respect.
“This is over from the walls, this ended to divide Spanish society by two and I think the time has come to aspire to more,” said Tellado, who has claimed the voters “of the center -right” that return to the PP to the levels of the 11 million votes that Rajoy touched in 2011.
The Secretary General has affirmed that without Vox's agency in 2023, Feijóo would be president. Either with an absolute majority or external support. He has also recognized that the PP negotiated with Junts in 2023 and that the amnesty for Carles Puigdemont was on the table, although it was rejected. Tellado accused in 2024 of lying to the journalists who published that this had happened.
Tellado has tried to change the objective of the self -imposed post -election pressure for Feijóo, who addressed without setting up this matter in his congressional speech when there are no elections in sight. “No one would understand that Vox was an impediment to political change in Spain,” he said. “Not even your voters,” he added.
The secretary general has said that the PP will “collaborate” with the ultra -right. “Agreements with Vox, yes, of course,” he said. “We are forced to listen to us, to understand each other,” he said.
Then, the PP parliamentary spokeswoman, Ester Muñoz, said Tuesday that in the event that Alberto Núñez Feijóo achieves power “there will not be a government of the Popular Party or PSOE ministers, as Vox says, and there will be no government of the Popular Party with Vox Ministers, as the left says.”
Vox, more “sense of state” than adding or we can
Asked about his “discrepancies” with Vox, Tellado has chosen to go on tiptoe and has given generic answers. “We are different matches, we are different matches and, therefore, we have different positions on certain matters,” he said, to affirm: “But I respect vox much more than to add and I think it makes more sense of state vox than adding. Without any doubt. It makes more sense of vox state that we can, without any doubt. Vox has a sense of state and Bildu has none.”
Tellado has argued that “there are key issues” in which PP and Vox “agree” and that “those agreements are good for the country.”
Retrieved, Tellado has responded that “the programmatic differences are on the table.” “We defend the territorial model of our country. We believe in a plural and diverse Spain. And Vox is probably a party with a centralist vocation that we do not share,” he said, to affirm that the four absolute majorities of Feijóo in Galicia offer him “a peripheral vision of Spain,” he added.
A few weeks ago, Feijóo said that before he was “in the corner” of Spain and that since he arrived in Madrid, “the center of the countryside”, he sees everything “more clearly.”
Tellado has also said that “in immigration policy Vox's positions are more extreme than those of the PP”, although Feijóo has hardened more if the ideology of his party in the weekend congress fits. Its allusion to the deportation of people in an irregular situation and the link that made migrants and security put the compromisarios standing.
The Secretary General has assumed the ultra discourse that accuses governments and mafias of the irregular arrival of people to Europe. “We are against illegal immigration, of that which promotes certain governments with the effect policy called or that promote mafias that traffic with people even putting their lives in danger.”
Tellado has marked distances with Vox's proposal to start mass deportations. “There is a foreigner legislation in our country. You have to apply it. There are regularization mechanisms for all those people who come to Spain, they have been living with us and what they want to live and work in our country,” he said.
In Congress a popular legislative initiative is processed to regularize hundreds of thousands of people working in Spain without papers. The PP voted the admission to process, but then has been reluctant to continue with parliamentary process.
Tellado has also said: “Health assistance is universal in our country and therefore, denying health care to any person is not possible with the legislation we have and therefore is nonsense that anyone considers it.”
