The two great (and only) protagonists of the inaugural day of the 21st National Congress of the PP were this Friday, former presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, summoned to clothe Alberto Núñez Feijóo in his re -election in a conclave in which he has no rivals to lead the party or for the ideological and statutes, after the step behind Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The ex -president offered two speeches in which they ignored their own past, with multiple cases of corruption that affected their governments, imprisoned ministers and others about to sit on the bench, to take advantage of the scandal of José Luis Ábalos and Santos Cerdán and discredit the current coalition executive led by Pedro Sánchez. He liked more Aznar, as we usually, in this type of acts. Rajoy even generated surprise with his self -defense.
The president of the Conclave, the mayor of Badalona, Xavier García-Albiol, came to say at a time that the PP “not only does not forget its presidents” but also claim them. But neither in the Plenary of the Congress, nor among the compromisarios, nor in the program there was a trace of Pablo Casado, the only leader chosen by primaries banished by the today president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in 2022, precisely for trying to investigate the alleged corruption of Ayuso.
Feijóo himself intervened by surprise to present the former presidents and claim a PP past from which the most recent has been erased. Aznar and Rajoy harangrated the plenary with their attacks on “Sanchismo.” “In this party we are proud of our referents and our referents can be proud of our party,” said Feijóo, who considered that “the PP is united” and that Aznar and Rajoy “were a future that was worth it.”
He then took the word Aznar and dedicated his speech to load against the “corruption” of the leftist executive. That was the central thread of the intervention of those who have seen corruption dotted 13 of the 34 ministers he appointed during his time in La Moncloa, between 1996 and 2004. Two of them, Rodrigo Rato and Eduardo Zaplana, who became their vice presidents, have even stepped on the prison.
Aznar fantasizes with Sánchez's imprisonment
Forgotten all that, now the former president considers that the 'Koldo Case' “is not a matter of three or four golfs” because “the structural golferry of Sanchismo exceeds.” “More and more Spaniards resist that these feminists so fond of their nieces take them for cousins,” he snapped this Friday, causing laughter among the public. “If you negotiate budgets in a prison, you associate with presidiaries and agree to an amnesty with criminals do not surprise you to end in jail because that is your atmosphere,” he told the current president of the Government, ignoring the situation they have gone through their narrower collaborators dotted with corruption.
“In Sánchez's Spain, criminals write the law and the government violates the right. They released Etarras because they were making room,” he continued, again by the members of the PP among the public. He also defended that the “urgent change in Spain” means “that criminals stop being in the offices legislating and become in jail.”
Aznar commissioned Feijóo an arduous task, which will be raised this Saturday as leader of the party for assent and without rivals. “We must concentrate in our acronym the confidence of a national majority to the right and left to achieve an objective that exceeds these acronyms,” he said. And it went further, because the work that in his opinion must undertake the current leader if he wins the next elections is “sitting the basis for refounding constitutional coexistence in Spain.”
“It is about closing the passage to territorial fracture and canceling the democratic success of the transition. In the next envite we will play the historical validity of the nation, the Constitution, judicial independence, freedom of information and the rule of law. We play the credit of Spain in Europe and the world. We play more a change of country than a change in the country,” he concluded in the most tragic section of his speech.
Rajoy and his fight “against corruption”
After Aznar, whose intervention was very applauded, Rajoy's turn was. The first president expelled from the Government after a sentence for corruption against his party also put himself as an example of the fight “against corruption.” The triple condemnation of the PP for profiting from the Gürtel plot, which caused the motion of censure of Pedro Sánchez, which replaced him in the Moncloa in 2018, did not regret it in the lectern.
“I'm not going to talk too much about this issue of corruption. You don't deserve it,” he said. But Rajoy took the opportunity to try to wash his past image a bit.
The former president spoke of the motion of censure that he lost: “Back in 2018, I went to those who know (in reference to Sánchez) and said: 'To give lessons you have to be very sure. And he continued: “That motion was the first act of 'Frankenstein' and of all the institutional and moral deterioration that we see now. It was tried to mask with a sentence what was smooth and plainly the history of an ambition without limits. It had to come as it were. Just as today you have to stay as it is.”
Rajoy concluded with a closed defense of his management: “When we had problems, we got together and what we did was harden the laws to improve the fight against crime. Now that there is a black hole, the laws against judicial independence have endorsed.
But Rajoy also dared to give political cleaning lessons despite other causes that affect his stage, such as the creation of the Political Police directed by his Interior Minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, to attack his political rivals, according to the National Court and for which Anticorruption asks for 15 years in prison to whom he was his minister and intimate friend.
The former president spoke of Leire Díaz, the former socialist involved in audios with corrupt entrepreneurs to whom he offered alleged benefits of the Prosecutor's Office that did not occur. In his opinion, “never” had been seen in Spain “an outstanding socialist militant wrapped up by the secretary of organization of his party creating an interest union with characters of doubtful condition to organize discredit campaigns against judges, prosecutors and civil guards.” “I had not seen it at least,” he said. “This is something incredible. It is amazing. It is amazing. They are not known for something like that or similar,” he added
According to the National Court, the Government of Rajoy organized a Parapolical Group under the orders of its Interior Minister, Jorge Fernández, who manufactured false evidence against political rivals, as leaders of Podemos or Catalan independence. In addition, according to the judicial instruction, the Parapolicial Group tried to destroy the evidence of the historical corruption of the PP known as 'Gürtel case' that kept the one who was treasurer of the formation, Luis Bárcenas. These operations have already been judged by the Supreme Court.
At the same time, Francisco Martínez, the 'number two' of Interior with Rajoy, expects trial for spying on Bárcenas and has been arrested again in the framework of investigations against the Alcasec computer pirate. And former minister Jorge Fernández faces a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
Background apart, Aznar's speech liked it a lot, hard and moderate. The appeal to a broad, transversal majority, “from right to left”, enfarza with the objective pursued by the PP of Feijóo, although the hardness of their words can move away moderate voters, according to party leaders. Rajoy's speech caused some stupefaction among members of the management when some of his closest collaborators are waiting for trial.
After the interventions of Aznar and Rajoy, most of the compromisarios came out in stampede of Pavilion 10 of IFEMA where Congress is being held until Sunday. Just a few stayed to the debate of the presentations that, theoretically, should be produced throughout the afternoon. A finding that, more than a congress, the PP has organized Feijóo an act of political relaunch that already puts him in the race to dispute the Moncloa when the time comes.
