Feijóo and Sánchez initiate a warm thaw between the PP and the PSOE

As usual with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the most relevant political meeting after being elected president of the PP, the one he held this Thursday with Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa, can be interpreted in various ways.

You can see the glass half full, because the door is opened to unblock the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary after three and a half years;

or it can be seen as half empty, because the shock in economic policy was resounding.

The focus can be put on the fact that Feijóo did not say "no" to the 11 agreements that Sánchez proposed to him with a detailed document, but rather "I need more time, let me look at it."

Or it can be pointed out that at this moment La Moncloa lacks any guarantee for the renewal of the Judiciary, and that in the most imminent matter,

the validation of the decree of the shock plan in the face of the economic consequences of the war, Feijóo said that he will not support it if there are no more tax cuts.

In short, there was a beginning of thaw, but lukewarm and without closing a single agreement.

At the end, the PP leader was clear: "[It was] a cordial meeting, but much less fruitful than I would have liked."

The Government sought to convey optimism: "It has been a fruitful meeting," said the spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez.

And on the plane that took him to Morocco, in an informal conversation with the journalists, Sánchez also focused on the positive, which is the tone, although he reproached Feijóo that in the appointment he had "concreted little" because "he needs to land in the topics".

Pedro Sánchez received the new leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on Thursday in La Moncloa. Andrea Comas

In the PP they complained that the president only gave them the working document with the 11 points during the meeting, but in La Moncloa they replied that the head of the opposition did not bring any paper, not even the one with the proposal to lower personal income tax .

On the plane, Sánchez admitted that he had rejected this idea, and recalled that no European country has opted for generalized tax cuts, but for measures such as those that the Executive is promoting: selective cuts in taxes, especially those related to the energy, and aid such as the 20 cents per liter discount for gasoline.

At the appointment, according to Sánchez, an issue that Feijóo ignored at the press conference flew over: the shadow of Vox, which on Monday will arrive for the first time at an autonomous government, that of Castilla y León, hand in hand with the PP.

The president explained to Feijóo that in Europe there is a lot of concern that the war could encourage the extreme right, and asked him for a clear strategy against Vox, according to what he told journalists.

Sánchez demanded that the leader of the PP choose between defending the state pact against sexist violence, in which the popular are but not Vox, or support the law of domestic violence that the Santiago Abascal party wants to promote in Castilla y León and that it is in their government agreements with the PP.

The president asked them not to support that law, because it goes against the State pact and the consensus already established on sexist violence.

Feijóo, according to Sánchez, explained that both are compatible, something that the Government does not share.

This relationship with Vox will be the most delicate issue in the coming months.

Thus, the first meeting between the President of the Government and the new leader of the PP has resulted in a timid advance, according to the expectations with which the Executive and the main opposition party arrived at the meeting.

After three hours of meeting in La Moncloa, the closest thing to an agreement was the pact to "resume the talks" stopped on the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, whose mandate has expired since December 2018.

Feijóo and Sánchez, during their meeting in La Moncloa.

andrea commas

The president of the PP confirmed that the contacts are resumed immediately and that the renewal is going to be done "quickly", but he did not clarify if before June 12, as the Government proposed.

On that date the Constitutional Court has to be renewed, and the Executive wants to take the opportunity to make a package with both.

Feijóo maintains the bet of the previous leadership of the PP to change the method of electing the members, but he did not clarify if this includes the demand of the popular former president Pablo Casado that the law be modified so that 12 of the 20 members are chosen exclusively by the judges.

In La Moncloa they have seen Feijóo much more willing to renew, but again the leader of the PP has asked for time to be able to talk about it in his party.

In fact, the interlocutors for this negotiation were not even named.

Feijóo's priority was to focus the debate on the economy, according to Sánchez because he wants to confront him on this issue.

The leader of the PP took as a great proposal a forceful reduction of taxes.

Faced with the government's refusal, he slipped that he does not see it possible to support the royal decree of measures to mitigate the consequences of the war, although he did not clarify whether he will vote against or abstain.

Feijóo has the inconvenience that he acts as leader of the opposition from outside Congress, and he is going to take advantage of all the public windows to present his alternative.

Yesterday he did it in La Moncloa.

In his long speech after the meeting with Sánchez, he spent more than half an hour explaining the PP's economic proposal.

Basically, this consists of a general reduction of taxes, including personal income tax, as well as a "significant adjustment of economic behavior", which includes a plan to rationalize the Government's bureaucratic spending, although it did not detail what specific items it would cut.

The word “adjustment”, always delicate in a country that suffered a very hard one between 2010 and 2014 —including the one made by Mariano Rajoy, with a sharp increase in taxes and cuts in spending on health and education— Feijóo associated this time with reducing “ superfluous spending”, without specifying what would go down to compensate for the drop in collection due to lower taxes.

The popular leader also proposed using 7% of European funds to pay for tax deductions for citizens, an idea that, according to Feijóo, Sánchez has been willing to study, although the president told him that he is not at all clear that Europe can authorize such an initiative.

The Galician baron wanted to focus on the economy, where he is going to focus his opposition strategy to the Government, and he avoided the rest of the 11 points of possible pacts that the president had presented to him.

However, in La Moncloa they insist that the entire meeting revolved around that document, among other things because Feijóo did not contribute any other.

The leader of the PP was open to closing the negotiation for the change of the requested vote and to modify article 49 of the Constitution to replace the term "disabled" with "disabled".

In short, the meeting was much better than Feijóo's own public communication, which focused on the differences.

The most solid at the moment is therefore the change of tone, and several open doors.

Moncloa is satisfied, and the PP does not convey discomfort either.

A new time seems to begin, but there is still a long way to go.

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