Without raising his voice, “with all due respect”, but at the same time very clearly, Pedro Sánchez summoned his partners from United We Can (UP) in Congress this Wednesday to silence the differences within the Government.
The president thus reacted to a previous intervention by the UP spokesman, Pablo Echenique, who had demanded greater "courage" in his decisions to "stop the extreme right."
In an almost paternal tone, Sánchez rebuked Echenique: "What demobilizes the left is to work hard, sometimes more than it should, to underline our differences."
For the second time in two weeks, the president appeared in a long plenary session in Congress, six hours of debate with all the spokesmen.
Sánchez complied with the custom of reporting on the agreements of the last European Council and had to report again on the change of position on Western Sahara, in this case forced by the opposition.
It was to be expected that the president would spend more time on the first than on the second, an annoying matter for him.
And the groups themselves contributed to the task, unanimously opposed to the new position of the Spanish Government, but most of them tiptoed over the issue to dedicate themselves more to the economy and air the divergences between the members of the Executive.
Only the two Basque nationalist formations, PNV and EH Bildu, really tried to squeeze Sánchez with the Saharawi question,
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Echenique opened his speech with a warning, implicitly directed at the PSOE's dialogue offers to the new popular leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo: "We must avoid whitewashing the PP."
Then he demanded his partner not to abandon the defense of the right to self-determination of the Saharawi people, at which point he placed the central message of his speech: "That way, the people on the left would know that they are acting according to what they have voted for" .
That gave him the opportunity to demand "courage" from Sánchez with measures such as a transport bonus or special taxes for oil and electric companies.
References to the divisions in the Government – which again manifested themselves in the votes in Congress on Tuesday – had been constant in the speeches of the opposition, especially by the spokespersons for the PP, Cuca Gamarra, and for Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas.
Sánchez did not deny the division, but alluded to the tense relations between those two center-right parties in the regional governments that they have shared and shrugged: “If I compare myself with others…”.
Everything changed with the reply to Echenique.
Sánchez has never been seen spending so much time responding to his coalition partner.
Apart from summoning him to put an end to the disputes, he left another message: "I have to govern for all Spaniards, those who have voted for me and those who have not."
"I do not consider myself less progressive than you," he noted to Echenique.
And while he showed respect for his partner's anti-NATO stance, the president kept reminding them that even the Swedish Social Democrats have broken with decades of policy neutrality.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, this Wednesday in the Lower House. Emilio Naranjo (EFE)
Another thing Sánchez showed in the debate: his intention to confront Feijóo, uploaded to the cloud by the polls, even though he was not present.
Gamarra had launched his darts with inflation and clashes within the Executive.
“He asks us for a sense of state, does he also ask his government for it?” attacked the popular spokeswoman.
Sánchez spent a long time questioning whether the new president of the PP brings a more constructive attitude and reiterated some words that the day before he had already used before Feijóo himself in his first direct duel in the Senate, and that especially annoyed the popular : "You block social advances, you dedicate yourself to getting in the way, to making noise."
On the Saharawi issue, the president avoided replying to a statement by both Gamarra and the PNV spokesman, Aitor Esteban: that Morocco is behind the hacking of the chief executive's mobile phone.
Sánchez limited himself to defending the turn on the Sahara as the only "realistic" option, while stressing that Rabat has promised to collaborate more on migration policy and to banish its aggressive language on Ceuta and Melilla.
"If you are so convinced of your position, why don't you bring it here to vote?" asked EH Bildu deputy Jon Iñarritu, also without response.
Esteban, one of the most vehement critics of the Government's new position, also addressed the PP this time to accuse him of being "hypocritical".
According to him,
The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños (on the left), and the PNV spokesman in Congress, Aitor Esteban, talk this Wednesday. Eduardo Parra (Europa Press)
The PNV spokesman also entered fully into economic issues and, in the plain language that characterizes him, cried out against the "joke" of the European Commission, which continues without giving the green light to the regulatory framework so that Spain can curb the prices of gas.
"It will be soon, very soon," promised the president without further specification.
Sánchez reserved all his harshness for the Vox spokesman, Santiago Abascal, who had presented himself as the representative of the "people against the elite", mocking fears of climate change.
The president called him a "flat earther" and an "enemy of Europe."
In the two and a half years of the legislature, there are already dozens of government death certificates issued by the right.
Time passes, the Executive resists and the opposition is obstinate.
This time, Gamarra was solemn: “The Spanish want him to step aside.
It's up to you to make your ending a little more dignified."
Arrimadas even ventured that Sánchez is looking for a position in Europe.
Once again, the president told them to abandon all hope: “I will be until 2023 and I will present myself again.
It almost makes me embarrassed to say it.”
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