Pedro Sánchez ends the three-day US tour with the feeling of total success. In his balance sheet press conference, the president has not indicated any concrete investment commitment from the large funds and technology companies with which he has met, including Blackrock, the largest fund on the planet, or Apple, the company with the highest market value. of the world - in both cases he saw his top managers - but he was convinced that he has managed to move forward at a key moment in which decisions will be made for the next few years. Later, in an informal conversation with journalists, Sánchez pointed out that he hopes that in the autumn these large investments will begin to materialize around the European recovery fund.
However, when he returns to Spain, the harsh reality of tension with the opposition awaits him.
At the press conference, Sánchez has taken for granted, more clearly than ever, that the PP is willing to indefinitely block the renewal of various constitutional bodies.
And he has made it clear that he does not plan any drastic movement beyond "remembering, remembering and reminding" the Popular Party of its obligation to renew them.
More information
Sánchez rules out recovering the law to renew the Judicial Power without the PP
Sánchez wants to make Spain "the Hollywood of Europe"
Between the press conference and the subsequent informal conversation, it has become clear that there are not many expectations in La Moncloa for a negotiation this summer. Sánchez spoke from Palo Alto, where he ended his visit in the heart of Silicon Valley, with Félix Bolaños, Minister of the Presidency, after his round of talks with the spokesmen of the political groups, and both conclude that the PP has no intention to unlock. Sánchez still publicly launches messages that they trust in a rectification - "let's hope they reflect for September" - but it is evident that La Moncloa considers the bridges with the PP broken and only believes in pressure from the judicial world due to the collapse that may come in the next months.
The president does not plan to call Pablo Casado this summer, contrary to what happened in 2020, when they had practically closed the agreement in a discreet way and the leader of the PP backed down at the last moment. “Minister Bolaños tells me that it does not seem that there is no will of the PP to comply with the Constitution, despite the fact that he proclaims himself constitutional. We have not renewed the Judiciary for 961 days, whose current composition arose from elections in 2011 with an absolute majority. That is already prehistory. It is a block that does not make sense and is unprecedented. And it does a disservice to democracy ”, he insisted.
Sánchez shows a very clear turn in the background and in the forms after the change of Government, and this trip, the first since he renewed half of his Executive, has been a clear test. If before the president avoided the press, avoided appearances as much as possible, limited questions and had hardly any huddles, in the United States it has been the opposite. The closeness to the press has been remarkable, with daily huddles, and the president himself has expanded the number of questions at the press conference to seven when his team wanted to close it.
But beyond that detail, which coincides with a change in the communication team and in the President's Cabinet, the tone is also different. Sánchez and his new government are determined to speak positively, focus the agenda on the economy and the recovery fund and try to escape the shock posed by the opposition.
Faced with a phrase from Casado, who had described Sánchez's trip to the US as "embarrassing" because it did not include a meeting with President Joe Biden, Sánchez tries to avoid the controversy and get out of the tension. That seems to be the strategy for the coming months and the axis of the change of government. “Faced with so much noise and verbiage, the Government advances. We are coming to the US to speak well of Spain, to place it on the radar of large investment fund investments. The parties will have to decide on which side they stand, on the side of recovery and speak well of Spain or remain in tension and confrontation ”, he assured.
Sánchez thus culminates with the trip to the US the complete turn that he wants to give to the legislature to get out of the hole in which the PSOE and the government itself got into the disastrous result in the Madrid elections. All this, and the internal tensions in La Moncloa between two wings, the one headed by Iván Redondo and the one headed by Carmen Calvo, both outside the Government, have been left behind and now Sánchez and his renewed team will try to completely change the agenda, although the PP and the very dynamics of Spanish politics, with the permanent tension in Catalonia, will not make it easy for them.
The president emphasizes that on this trip, contrary to what has happened other times, no one has asked him about Catalonia. And he has seen fifty people, many of them with important interests in Spain and even some Spanish, such as the CEO of Hewlett Packard, Enrique Lores. Sánchez, who gave the press conference at the headquarters of this company in Palo Alto, is clearly comfortable talking about economic content and guaranteeing investors and specialized media such as Bloomberg that Spain “is an open country where foreign investors are welcome. ”.
The big funds asked him about the labor reform and the housing law, issues that concern them for their interests in Spain, but he tries to reassure them by presenting himself as a moderate social democrat who travels to the heart of capitalism, New York, to the capital of the world. audiovisual, Los Angeles, and the epicenter of technology, Silicon Valley, guaranteeing political stability and reforms approved by Brussels that will not collide with these giants. Sánchez, who in Spain does talk about the few taxes that these companies pay in Europe - Netflix and Apple, which he has seen these days, are especially symbolic cases of this phenomenon - here he has not raised the matter in his public appearances and neither in meetings.
The president is determined to provide facilities and above all to suggest that Spain is a country in full modernization where there are many possibilities for the audiovisual industry, for technology, and even for aerospace. With Tim Cook, from Apple, he spoke, for example, about that great audiovisual pole that he wants to do in Spain, until turning it into "the Hollywood of Europe", something that interests Apple TV, and also artificial intelligence projects, which also Apple could join.
Sánchez does not carry millions in his suitcase for Madrid, but he does have the conviction that they will come when everything that has been pointed out in the meetings is finalized now among the technical teams. The turnaround is complete and to top it off Sánchez takes advantage of the summer, a favorable moment because the opposition does not have the speaker of Congress, now on vacation. On the return, in September, the battle will return, but the Government will try to maintain this new tone and consolidate the economic agenda. Then you will see if you are able to maintain this line or if the opposition drags you elsewhere.