Ready for sentencing
We will be 35 million free and independent citizen-judges issuing a sovereign verdict. On 28 May, the people demanded change. Polls and trackings predict that the opinion of the majority of voters remains intact. The Sánchez-Feijóo "face-to-face" has confirmed that the format is a labyrinth from the very first minute. The moderators become Chinese flowerpots. The guests talk about whatever they want without specifying anything. The solution has been invented in America since the 1960s. A journalist (or half a dozen) asking questions without mercy and without agreeing on questions.
The PP candidate, after his time on El Hormiguero and this "dialogue of the deaf", has revealed himself to be a normal guy, someone to trust. The PSOE representative has become a giant with feet of clay. And with lead in his wings. All is consummated.
In less than two months, a large majority of Spaniards will turn out to vote with a single purpose: to throw Pedro Sánchez-Pérez Castejón out of La Moncloa.
A dark five years
After the disappearance of Ciudadanos, the blocs are not moving. For the first time since 2011, the PP-VOX binomial would obtain an absolute majority. SUMAR, with its mishmash of acronyms on the left of the left, subtracts from the left of the left, and, with Podemos collapsed, leaves the PSOE naked. Not even the provocations of Otegui, Junqueras and Rufián, - "we will proclaim the republics of Catalonia and Euskadi at the same time to win the pulse of the state"- are going to re-establish the "tenebrous Sanchist five-year period". The Frankenstein nightmare's days are numbered. Fortunately for democracy. And for Spain.
The Antena 3 format was a failure. Letting two Spaniards manage the times reminds me of the "Sálvame" talk shows, all talking at the same time. "You manage them very well", insisted Pastor and Vallés. And so they did.
The president was as loud as if he were speaking in the Senate (31 interruptions); the aspirant, (15). The moderator had to ask the socialist candidate three times to please listen to him. But Pedro, as always, only listened to himself. Núñez Feijóo disarmed him simply with patience. With patience, arguments and data, some of them sown at random.
The first defeat was the economic subject in which the doctor should be an eminence. Triumphalism no longer holds true, neither the war in Ukraine nor the pandemic. The reality is that we have been the last EU country to equal the GDP of 2019 and we are still the first in unemployment. And in youth unemployment and school failure.
We still do not know the number of permanent-discontinuous workers, a labour oxymoron.
An objective fact: in the "Republican five-year period" (2018-23) Spaniards have lost 6,000 euros of purchasing power to reach the income of 2007.
The PP-VOX pacts no longer scare anyone after ERC announced that Pedro has been stripped of everything agreed - he has not had time for the referendum in Catalonia - and Bildu proclaimed that they were negotiating prisoners for budgets. Not only that: they got the prisons without the PNV having requested them.
In fact, the 140 ETA members transferred to the Basque Country are living a covert pardon, including Txapote, the murderer of Miguel Ángel Blanco, who has just celebrated 26 years since his execution. A parenthesis: his remains rest in Galicia after his grave was ransacked several times by Basque terrorists in Ermua (Guipúzcoa). Now Bildu, after shooting him twice in the back of the head, is tearing its hair out and asking for respect for the victims of ETA. It considers it unworthy that they use Txapote as a weapon against the president.
The "Solo sí es sí" law, described as a "technical error" by the PSP-C, with 1,175 sex offenders who have seen their sentences reduced by 15-20% and the 120 rapists and paedophiles who are on the streets because of it, has taken its toll on the people. Let's not forget the macho insults to judges and prosecutors.
If this is progressivism, let Don Pedro and his still minister Irene Montero explain it in the Moncloa.
The president of the Popular Party forgot to say that the reform, six months after the stubbornness of Unidas Podemos and the PSOE, went ahead with the votes of the PP and the PSOE, except for Sánchez himself (absent) and with the votes against of Yolanda, Irene and Ione.
Decent women do not forget either the pardon granted to convicted and confessed abusers such as Juana Rivas and María Sevilla. Montero herself has been sentenced to pay 18,000 euros to her ex-husband for repeatedly calling him an abuser. The podemisation of the PSOE now has these consequences.
Presidential blockade
Sánchez fell silent when the candidate reminded him of the suitcases of Delcy Rodríguez, the Venezuelan vice-president. By the way, where are those 40 suitcases unloaded in Barajas and full of gold, dollars and, perhaps, drugs? Nothing is known. And even less after the dismissal of the faithful squire Ábalos, now resurrected from among the exquisite corpses. Transparency. Where?
The abolition of the crime of sedition and the reduction of the embezzlement of public money, dismantling the Penal Code, to pardon the Catalan coup plotters of 1-O, has been another of the key points that he has not been able to explain. Because it formed part of Sánchez's own political survival pact and permanence in power in La Moncloa.
While he received these blows to his reinforced concrete jaw, the doctor continued to follow the same mantra: "You and Vox are the same; you only agree with the extreme right".
"The PSOE voted today in Murcia together with VOX to prevent the PP from governing". He did not remember that the Popular Party supported the PSOE and the PNV in Vitoria to prevent Bildu from governing and in Barcelona Collboni to prevent the arrival of Puigdemont's cover-up.
The truth is that the paperwork that Núñez-Feijóo signed live and direct, so that the Popular and Socialists would allow the most voted list to govern after the general elections is a proposal-trap: firstly because we live in a parliamentary democracy (majority of seats in Congress), and, secondly, because the only idea-strength of Sanchismo is that of "no is no".
Other low blows were delivered with the same mantra: "You have agreed with VOX and Spain is going to go back 20, 30, 40 years... We are committed to THE BEST SPAIN, the one of progress, modernisation and the EU".
Sánchez remained unmoved when the co-presenter asked Don Alberto - already a media phenomenon - if he was going to sign the pacts with Morocco and the change in the Sahara. All he had to say was: "I'm glad you asked me this question". The Galician man then passed on the assignment to the Socialist candidate. "Mr Sánchez, tell us what you have agreed with Rabat that has distanced us from Algeria and explain to us if you have signed the letter made public by Morocco...".
Sánchez blatantly lied by pointing out that he has already explained it several times in Congress. This is a lie. He never communicated his decision neither to the Council of Ministers, nor to the Parliament, nor to the King, nor to the leader of the opposition. Nor has he said anything in Congress. Then, he made the mistake of mentioning the Falcon...
-You always take the Falcon for a ride...",
- I'm sorry, it's you who drives around in the Falcon to take your friends to concerts and party rallies. I won't do it..."
The president was talking about transparency as if it was raining cats and dogs. He is very clean. But not very transparent.
Don Pedro denied three times the import of Liquefied Natural Gas to Putin; 24 hours later, the newspaper EL MUNDO assured on its front page that Spain is the country that receives the most gas from Russia (almost 31% of its imports). With that money Putin feeds the dirty war against the heroic Ukrainian people.
Nor have we heard anything about the content stolen from the president and four ministers through the Israeli Pegasus programme. The director of the CNI was dismissed by Margarita Robles, number 4 for Madrid on the PSOE list as an independent. We know that all independents depend on someone. And she is an advanced disciple of everything that smells of Sanchismo.
The moment of the "K.O," came when Núñez spat at her, hours after publicly obtaining the backing and vote of Zapatista minister César Antonio Molina: "You have had 40 ministers in five years. And you have dismissed and mistreated many of them; but, curiously, you have never dismissed any of Podemos. And do you know why? Because you have been a president mortgaged by your communist partners who boycott NATO meetings in Madrid, who support Putin after the invasion; a government that does not vote for its own laws. "You are a president who is neither free nor independent to lead the government of Spain..." He refuted without argument the free and independent... He is a clean man. As Brutus was honest after he assassinated Caesar.
Bringing up the slogan "Let Txapote vote for you" as a victimhood slogan was a textbook mistake. It is a phrase of the people, a people jaded and painfully fed up with lies, malice and manipulation, the very essence of Sanchez's own definition of Sanchismo.
Nor did he deny - náaa, náaa! - that he had promised to pardon the fugitive Puigdemont, who proclaimed the Catalan republic for 10 seconds and fled in a boot to his exile in Waterloo. It should be remembered that the Spanish socialists in the European Parliament are the ones who have most opposed Ciudadanos' proposals for the Strasbourg chamber to withdraw immunity from prosecution. The Attorney General's Office and the State Attorney's Office have already left Judge Llarena extremely lonely by asking for his repatriation.
The new star of Genoa 13 assured that he would repeal the Law of Historical Memory, that he would restore the crime of sedition and embezzlement in the Penal Code, that he would equalise the salaries of the Guardia Civil and National Police with those of the nationalist security forces and asked his opponent that the Electoral Law be expressly reformed so that terrorists, coup plotters and embezzlers would not be allowed on the lists. (He could add rapists, paedophiles and drug traffickers for the same price). The figure is simple: political and permanent disqualification.
Great point in supporting ALS sufferers. The PSOE and Podemos have paralysed the law since 2021, this is their "social shield".
The invincible PSP-C looked like a broken toy. It was knocked out. No punch, no ideas. It's the end, folks. The nightmare has lasted 1,775 days and 1,774 nights. And a month and a half more... as acting president. Let's say his reign lasts until September.
Shortening the time
Twenty-four hours after Britain's prime minister loses the election or resigns, 10 Downing Street is occupied by his predecessor. Not here; it takes more than two weeks to recount votes and resolve challenges.
Once the elected officials have been proclaimed, it takes too long to form a government. Between one changeover and the next, negotiations are delayed and delayed, preventing audits from being carried out to find out how the accounts stand and what the inheritance received is. The cases of Cantabria, Extremadura, Murcia and Aragon are scandalous. The administrations are paralysed and the citizens, meanwhile, are putting up with grotesque spectacles.
Salary rises - always excessive until unemployment does not fall below double digits - are the first decision of mayors, councillors and councillors. Pecuniary and poltronas. A bad example.
This should be regulated in the same way as electoral debates on public television and the end of the day of reflection. Banning polls in the last 7 days makes no sense in the age of telecommunications and social networks. They will do nothing. They will see.
Real problems
As the moderators of Antena 3 deserted as referees, the dialogue descended into chaos where the protagonists were, in this order, VOX, ERC and Bildu. By the way, María Chivite has delayed the composition of her government in Navarre because she will continue to rely on Otegui's party. But Sánchez passes this screen until August.
The truth is that in the heat of the night, the 6 million viewers could not talk about the shopping basket, making ends meet, housing, mortgages, squatters, the Spanish that cannot be studied in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencia and the Basque Country; about education -that which allows students who have not passed the whole course to pass with the Celáa Law-; about the drought -with the marshes and the reservoirs that have been flooded with water-; about the drought -with the drought in the Basque Country-; about the drought -with the marshes and the marshes that have been flooded with water-; about the drought -with the marshes and the marshes that have been flooded with water-; of the drought -with reservoirs below 35% on average, of fires, of desalination plants, of irrigation, of water transfers, of nuclear energy, of European funds -Calviño still hasn't told us how much and to whom these funds have been given-; we know nothing about dependency, of aid to the desperate self-employed, of toll motorways from January onwards that Sánchez denies after signing it with Brussels, of reducing the deficit and the debt, of pensions, of immigration and of civil servants. And the universities.
We know that if he wins, Feijóo will dismiss Tezanos, the master of the CIS, but he will not accuse him of embezzling public funds; we know that he will not repeal the section on positive discrimination in favour of women in the Law on Gender Violence that violates our Magna Carta - "all Spaniards are equal before the law" (Art. 24).
Nor was there any talk of the colonisation, the hijacking of the Institutions. Congress, Senate, TC, CGPJ, RTVE, Public Prosecutor's Office, State Attorney's Office. And the BOE. The decrees - some of them unconstitutional - have been the socialist way of governing. Nor of the abandonment of the countryside, livestock and fishing. The real problems do not exist.
Electoral programmes
We have been campaigning for five long years. Propaganda and sectarianism have invaded and divided the whole of society. It has been the best work of its mandate. The witticisms of SUMAR undermine the credibility of a whole programme written in a weekend, which has had to be corrected instantly. The universal inheritance (18,000 euros at the age of 18) was calculated annually at 8 billion. Two days later, it had risen to 10,000. The 200 euros per month per child up to the age of 18 exceeds 43,000 euros per Spaniard born after January. I stop here because Yolanda is a joke if they didn't promise all this with taxpayers' money. Yolanda is already blessing the Catalan referendum to satisfy her Comunes partners. Thank goodness this is not about politicians but about improving people's lives. She still hasn't explained why she cancelled Irene Montero. The thing about throwing journalists out on the street... for not agreeing with his ideas, is great.
Abascal is running amok in these elections. He has spent half of the campaign pinching Feijóo when the adversary is one and his name is Pedro. That a family earning 70,000 euros and with four children should not pay income tax is science fiction. They have got rid of the liberals and their aversion to the press is similar to that of SUMAR. The PP believes that the time has come. Their moment. With ten days to go to the polls it leads the expected change. Its programme is coherent, but it never fulfils its promises. Let us remember Montoro.
Sánchez, after strolling through all the platforms, his time has come. Spaniards have realised that his victimhood is a sham. And that his mistakes are extraordinarily serious. An amateur statesman.
He has legally disarmed the Nation, he has surrendered to the enemies of the Constitution, he has ignored King Felipe VI and he has lied like nobody else. The president does not lie; his is a change of opinion, of course. The reference he made to Adolfo Suárez that he would not legalise the PCE is false. He promised to hold elections with all the parties legalised. And he kept his promise. And González is a misrepresentation; it is true that he said "NATO, NO for starters". But he called a referendum not to leave but to stay.
His lamentations about the persecution of the press, when he has bought from EFE to RTVE through the Prisa Group, A3 and Telecinco, Eldiario.es and 20 other digital media, support the conviction that he is the indispensable man. Let the world stop, I'm getting off! These unfounded accusations, of which he does not name a single name, are a reflection of the fact that he is a character who has run out of stories.
This doctor in love with himself has been very lucky. He can't go out on the street because people lose respect for him. He never had empathy; he thinks that being tall and good-looking entitles him to be loved. Just by halving his 750 advisers and reducing the number of ministries by 15, it would be desirable for him to lose the elections.
Except for the president of Renfe and another civil servant, who he dismissed as responsible for the trains from the north not entering the FEVE tunnels, he has not been able to take responsibility for anything. Neither for the "technical error" of the Sánchez-Montero Law which is now taking its toll, nor for the Tito Berni or Correos scandals.
We will take a close look at the responsibility for the postal votes for 23-J arriving at the ballot boxes on election night. There are more than 2.5 million of them.
The president has just been reprimanded for the second time for using national and European institutions to disqualify the PP and VOX. Today he has repeated this from the NATO summit in Vilnius. He doesn't care because he treats Spaniards as if we were fools.
Meanwhile, he buys the "pax catalana" for 1.144 million euros from Aragonés for infrastructure in Cercanías until August while he dismantles those of Madrid and prepares his great pending revolution with forceful measures: withdrawing Francisco Franco's Gold Medal for Work, awarded in 1953. Presumably he will go down in history for the Law of Yes is Yes and for exhuming the remains of the man who won the Civil War from his model and political reference: Francisco Largo Caballero, "the Spanish Lenin".
Sanchismo has been, above all, a placement agency for supporters and militants. Now, Grande-Marlaska, who has still not reinstated Colonel López de los Cobos in his post despite the Supreme Court ruling, is placing his new "spies" inside the state administration, from Spanish embassies to international institutes and organisations.
Objective: to undermine the PP and to have well-paid observers so as not to forget the way back... to power. The socialists are very bad losers. And Sánchez will never admit defeat.
These elections in the middle of July are a lifeline so as not to give an account of the 28-M disaster to their militants. The party bodies are dismantled. Moncloa has never shared a political decision with Ferraz. Neither in the previous elections nor in this one. Sánchez against everyone. The voters will vote their conscience. It will again be a vote against Sánchez himself.
Some analysts believe that Sánchez is only Zapatero's messiah to return to the longed-for and glorious Second Republic. We believe that there are still serious socialists like Emiliano García Page who will not allow "more tension" to be generated again and, above all, to break up Spain.
One last consideration
Compatriots: Go out and vote en masse on 23-J. The elections have been imposed to save one man. The Nation, Spain, is what is important. It will be hot: OK. Sánchez will have broken the holidays of many families. True. Vote in self-defence.
Freedom, democracy, the Parliamentary Monarchy, our Magna Carta and our privileged position with Brussels, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East are at stake.
We, the orphans of Ciudadanos, have an added responsibility because we can tip the balance to one bloc or the other. Our 1.5 million votes can overturn these elections and change the course of history. The time of the adventurers who call themselves progressives is over. Vote in freedom.
Antonio REGALADO runs BAHÍA DE ÍTACA at:
aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com