The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, assured this Monday that “Vox is losing its grip on the PSOE” and that both have a “strategy” and a “objective” that coincide. “They want to separate the PP,” he said in an interview on Antena 3. Feijóo has criticized Santiago Abascal for his absence from the official events of the October 12 party and has applauded the presence of Javier Ortega Smith, while comparing Vox with EH Bildu.
Feijóo has expressed surprise at the attacks that, he says, he receives from Vox. And it has placed Abascal's party on the margins of the system. “Who hasn't come? You'll have to explain,” he said. “Bildu is not coming and the leader of Spain's third party has not come,” he said about Sunday's military parade and the reception organized at the Royal Palace by Felipe VI.
The PP leader recalled that at the 12O events there were Vox leaders, such as those who hold institutional positions or the party's spokesperson in the Madrid City Council, Javier Ortega Smith. The one who was co-founder of the party has gone in months from being general secretary to not having any relevant organic or political responsibility. Last September he supported Iván Espinosa de los Monteros at the launch of his political project.
But Feijóo has also denounced Abascal's “coincident strategy” with Pedro Sánchez. “I accept that each party has its strategy,” said the leader of the PP. “I'm not saying coordinated” but rather a “coinciding strategy” with a “coinciding objective.” “They disqualify the PP and the objective is to disqualify the leader” of the opposition, that is, himself.
Feijóo recalled that Vox abandoned at the same time the autonomous governments that it shared with the PP. “They all left on the same day. Many of the counselors found out through a teletype,” he said. The leader of the PP has modified his own promise of not assuming a coalition with Abascal as vice president if he needs it to reach Moncloa.
“We want to govern alone,” he maintained, but then clarified: “If possible, I will govern alone.” During the national congress last July, the PP tried to launch the idea that Feijóo was not going to agree with Vox or make Abascal vice president. The leader of the PP did not say it expressly, but his scribes looked for a formula to say something similar without being a total commitment. It was his number two, Miguel Tellado, who later assumed it in person.
The leader of the PP has maintained that his relationship with Abascal is cordial, although he has acknowledged that he has not met or spoken with him since before the summer. “I only ask that you not lie, that you do not say that I have agreements with the PSOE or that I intend to follow the PSOE's policy,” he said.
Feijóo wants a list of abortion doctors
Feijóo has also modified his speech on the voluntary interruption of pregnancy to support Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Yes, last week the leader of the PP said that his party must comply with the law, and, therefore, register doctors who are conscientious objectors to abortion. Madrid is the only autonomous community that does not execute this obligation.
Feijóo, in fact, has announced that if he comes to govern he will eliminate the legal obligation to register with doctors who use conscientious objection to refuse to perform abortions in Spain. “When it reaches the Government the list will be the opposite,” he said, to confirm that he will compile “which gynecologists and obstetricians are in favor.”
Already at the end of last week, the deputy secretary of Sectoral Coordination of the PP, Alma Ezcurra, labeled the registry of objectors as a “black list,” and said that her party “will never be in favor of a black list.”
The leader of the PP has even been compared to National Regrouping, Marine Le Pen's party and an ally of Vox through Patriots. “There Sánchez and there Vox,” he said. “Le Pen voted yes to the fundamental right of abortion in France,” he recalled, something that the PP opposes in Spain after having been proposed by the President of the Government.
“We have already said that abortion is a benefit of the system, regulated by Spanish laws, but we do not consider that it is a fundamental right in the Constitution,” he concluded.
Feijóo contradicts himself, at least in part. In 2022 she said: “Abortion is a right that women have within the law, and I am not going to change my mind.”