Sánchez and Feijóo open the electoral year with a bloody dialectical duel

Pedro Sánchez mocked Alberto Núñez Feijóo and mockingly called him an "international statesman".

"Every time you talk, the bread goes up," he laughed.

The leader of the PP branded his adversary as "insensitive and irrelevant", accused him of being the first president to take "a step back in the just fight of feminism" for the

and blurted out: "To you he only cares about resisting and destroying the adversary”.

The biggest disqualifications flew this Tuesday over the Senate chamber in a fierce dialectical duel between the President of the Government and the head of the opposition, as an appetizer of what the interminable electoral year that has just begun can bring.

For two hours, Sánchez and Feijóo pummeled each other without regard, without compassion, without truce.

The leader of the PP fully exploited the slips and contradictions of the Executive with the

.

The president evoked the worst memories of past popular governments and demolished Feijóo's management in Galicia to the finish: "With his departure from the Xunta, the Galicians have won and all the Spaniards have lost."

The Sánchez who had dazzled the left with his speech against inequality two weeks ago in Davos took a new step forward this Tuesday.

The president has been accentuating the leftist tone of his speeches in recent months and this time he went further than ever.

He outlined an exhaustive amendment to all neoliberal policies, attacked big businessmen and bankers who "increase their benefits, pay millionaire bonuses and do not increase the wages of workers", took the opportunity to announce the 8% increase in the minimum wage up to 1,080 euros and finished off: “It is time to face the many injustices that the system has.

This is not being anti-establishment.

The anti-system thing is to close your eyes to inequalities”.

This time the opposition could not accuse Sánchez of practicing triumphalism.

Rather the contrary, the head of the Executive gave himself up to a surprising analysis of Spain's weaknesses: lower social spending and lower tax collection compared to the European average, the loss of purchasing power of workers or a "welfare state receding in many territories”.

Of course, the president's objective was not to make self-criticism, but to point out the management of the PP in the autonomous communities four months before the elections in 12 of those territories.

Thus, he went on to detail the hardships that afflict the health and education systems, powers of the regional governments, and rounded off the denunciation of "a plan to weaken, if not undermine, the welfare state,

In the reply, Feijóo entered the direct attack without preamble.

His first sentence was to reproach Sánchez for having launched "the most serious criticism of the welfare state in our country."

He reprimanded him for using that speech when the Socialists govern "13 of the 17 autonomous communities."

In reality there are 11, a slip that the leader of the PP repeated by making the president ugly three times that in his mandate "he has dismissed 40 ministers" (there were 18, 40 is the total number of members of the different Executives).

Outside of those slips, Feijóo was more forceful than ever in his duels with Sánchez.

This time he did not dodge almost any subject, including the economy, which he had somewhat abandoned, and even the international projection of the head of government, one of the issues in which he feels stronger.

Feijóo reproached him for the fact that Spain is the only European country that has not recovered GDP prior to the pandemic and was ironic about the president's claims that Europe copies his proposals: "This would be the only class in which all the students copy the last one" .

But where the leader of the PP concentrated all his artillery was in the

.

He maintained that the reduction of sentences as a result of its application was decided knowingly and that Sánchez did not stop it so as not to inconvenience his partners from United We Can.

"It was not the result of a mistake, it was the result of his insensitivity as president," he said.

"When are you going to apologize?"

More information

The Government agrees to raise the minimum wage by 8% to 1,080 euros

The beating continued in Sánchez's counter-reply, who spent 40 minutes disqualifying his adversary personally and politically.

He kept recalling statements of his in which he predicted that Spain would go into recession or that Europe would reject the so-called Iberian exception to limit gas prices.

And he stopped very especially in his management in Galicia, to accuse him of cutting health personnel by 1,300 positions and reducing 900 beds in hospitals.

Feijóo shied away from combat at this point and limited himself to boasting that Galicia had the lowest mortality rate in the pandemic.

For the rest, he continued hitting: "You only think about power games, you understand that you can lie and agree to anything with whoever."

Then Sánchez arrived with another portion.

And there are still 11 months to go before the elections.

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