Pedro Sánchez, more humble than usual;
Vox, without his wildest spokespersons;
the PP, repeating like a litany the word “moderation”.
The Andalusian elections had an anesthetic effect on Wednesday in Congress, which experienced a strangely calm control session: it did not leave a single outburst to report, and that – which should not be news – is always news in this Parliament.
The only one that could boast -and much- of the electoral result was the PP, but, with this new serious and calm party costume, the popular ones refrained from any exhibition.
The rest, with nothing to brag about, covered up as best they could.
And absent and the eternal verbena of Macarena Olona, failed Vox candidate in Andalusia, the groups dedicated themselves to a civilized discussion of the economy.
After the heavy Andalusian digestion, the President of the Government returned to find himself in Congress with a familiar situation in recent weeks.
Everyone, from his parliamentary allies to the opposition, urged him on Wednesday to take action against the price hike.
Each one in his own way: the right demands to lower taxes and the left, raise them to the big companies.
Sánchez brought a gift from home that he pleased the right-hand side of the hemicycle with, a reduction from 10% to 5% of the VAT on electricity, a measure long claimed by the right.
The economy became the theme of everyone, the PP, Vox, ERC and Ciudadanos.
Although the backdrop was the electoral hangover, as evidenced from her first words by the PP spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra: “Mr. Sánchez, you still do not react to the debacle in Andalusia.
While you add defeats, the Spanish multiply their problems”.
The president had a quote from José Saramago ready that was a way of admitting the electoral setback and at the same time reducing the euphoria of the PP: “The defeats have something positive, they are never definitive;
and the victories have something negative, that they are never definitive”.
Sánchez was much less emboldened than usual, although his conciliatory attitude involved some poisonous subtlety for the PP.
He congratulated the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno, to immediately highlight the recognition of the "legitimacy" of his Government.
The popular bench was immediately taken for granted, shook between murmurs and Sánchez stopped hinting: "I say this because you affirm that this Government is illegitimate."
In the reply, Gamarra went further in his interpretation of Sunday's results: "The Andalusians have been the spokesmen for the vast majority of the Spanish."
The president dodged the bull and closed his speech with the announcement of the reduction in VAT on electricity.
Gabriel Rufián was immediately waiting for him, who appeared with a list of prices, for gasoline, electricity, melons or watermelons.
“Enough of patches, enough of checks.
This can drag you and us”, warned the ERC spokesman, who ended up warning the president: “Do what you promised”.
In other words, a tax on large fortunes and electricity companies, policies that seek "a real distribution of wealth," Rufián explained.
Another bull that Sánchez let pass by.
Vox had to measure himself against the second echelon of the Government, so its leader, Santiago Abascal, was spared the visit to Congress these days of a certain discouragement in his ranks.
What was seen was the most restrained and technical version of the extreme right, with the well-known style of its spokesman, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, seconded this time by José María Figaredo, one of its youngest parliamentarians (33 years old) and even now unusual on these occasions.
Both questioned the two economic ministers, Nadia Calviño and María Jesús Montero.
They threw the most negative data in their faces, insistently asked to lower taxes and banished the triumphalist proclamations that have always adorned their speeches.
Espinosa de los Monteros did not even say this time that "only Vox remains."
He even quoted Rufián to support his arguments.
The Socialists slipped away what they could from the Andalusian electoral wave until they had to debate with Ciudadanos, again beaten at the polls.
There, neither Vice President Calviño nor, above all, the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, had compassion.
“I did not expect the lack of elegance of the President of the Government when appealing to the electoral results,” Calviño was reproached by the spokesman for the Liberals, Edmundo Bal, who, in turn, irritated the Vice President by telling her that “there in the blue bench lives very well”.
Apart from the economy, the other great spearhead of the opposition's strategy is to delve into the differences within the Executive.
The popular José Antonio Bermúdez de Castro tried it before the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, regarding the criticism of United We Can to the NATO summit.
The target seemed well selected because, as is known, Robles and her government partners do not exactly profess love.
Bermúdez de Castro punctured the bone and was unable to extract even the slightest hint of reproach from the minister.
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