There was a time when Alberto Núñez Feijóo avoided photographs with Santiago Abascal so as not to be penalized in the moderate sectors of the electorate. And there was a time, not so long ago, when the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, represented the same kryptonite that the leader of Vox for Feijóo. In the last campaign for the European elections, the PP privately acknowledged that it was a mistake for its leader to have opened himself to pacts with Meloni in Europe, because by doing so he was giving an advantage to the socialists, who had focused their campaign precisely on criticising the agreements of the PP with the far right.
Some things have happened since last June, the PP points out, explaining that Feijóo is now consuming his rapprochement with the far-right prime minister, with whom he meets this Thursday in Rome while praising her tough immigration policies. On the one hand, according to the PP, Meloni is not the same one who launched heated speeches at Vox rallies, because “she has moderated,” they justify in the Popular leader’s cabinet, and is fully integrated into the European club. “Meloni is already a politician mainstream”, they argue in Genoa. On the other hand, as other popular sources confess, Feijóo has set to work to try to reduce the political space for Vox with immigration, which has already escalated to the first problem for Spaniards according to the CIS, given the risk that the ultras grow in the heat of a growing phenomenon. Even if this implies embracing or, at least, temporizing, with the most radical policies towards migrants in European territory that Meloni represents.
Feijóo’s approach to the Italian prime minister has been gradual. The leader of the PP has been praising her migration policy for weeks, despite the fact that it includes highly controversial measures such as the construction of centres in Albania – which is not part of the 27 – to return migrants rescued at sea by the Italian authorities. Meloni has also managed to reduce immigration based on large investments in countries of origin, such as Libya and Tunisia, in conditions of dubious respect for human rights. And he has dedicated himself to making life impossible for NGOs to reduce the number of rescues in the Mediterranean.
Without going into those details, Feijóo has praised Meloni’s immigration policy, arguing that it “works.” The leader of the PP openly acknowledges his agreement with those recipes, although he is careful not to define Meloni’s model as his own. “As the British Prime Minister has confirmed, [Keir Starmer] A few days ago, [Meloni] has a migration policy that I think we should know with determination and precision because it works,” Feijóo argued this Thursday in statements to The Sixthusing the Labour leader’s visit to Rome this week to provide cover for his own outreach to the far-right leader.
However, the leader of the PP has deliberately avoided saying that what Meloni is doing is what he would do if he came to power in Spain. Asked specifically if he considered the Italian prime minister to be the model for managing immigration, Feijóo has ducked out: “My immigration model is the one that works. It is the one that combines legality and humanity. It is the one that distinguishes between regular and irregular migration, it is the model of the European immigration pact. It is precisely about proposing a policy, because Spain does not have one.” Sources in his office have indicated to EL PAÍS that the PP shares with the Italian prime minister “the work in the countries of origin” and “the request for help from Frontex”, but they do not mention the most controversial issues such as the centres in Albania or the harassment of NGOs.
The PP’s immigration policy has been getting progressively tougher, coinciding with the rise of ultra-right speeches against foreigners. In recent months, the party has defended sending frigates to the high seas to stop the arrival of cayucos (boats) – in the words of the parliamentary spokesman, Miguel Tellado – and Feijóo himself has linked immigration with crime. This last development did provoke internal debate, and some members of the leadership warned about the “mistake” of going deeper into this thesis, which the leader of the PP has not insisted on recently.
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More recently, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has differentiated between immigrants good and bad: On one side, he said, are the Latin Americans, so integrated that “they are not even immigrants” because “they pray the same religion”; and on the other side are those who have arrived from countries that “are culturally in conflict”, who “defend the ablationwomen staying at home or polygamy”. This is what has been defined as “feminationalism”, a discourse that discriminates against foreigners from Islamic countries by disguising the message with universal and progressive values such as women’s rights.
Feijóo’s trip to Rome is aimed, according to other popular sources, at the PP’s attempt to “reduce the space for Vox” in this field. Not only by getting closer to a figure who until now was linked to Abascal (with whom Meloni maintains a friendship), but also by entering fully into the fight for who will champion concern about the increase in the foreign population. According to the latest CIS barometer, published this Thursday, immigration is now the number one problem for Spaniards, ahead of unemployment, the economy, politicians or housing.
With this move, Feijóo is moving away from the centre, but the PP leader’s cabinet argues that other progressive prime ministers are also being inspired by Meloni’s recipes. The Labour Party’s Starmer, who this week travelled to Rome to study the Italian model, gives the PP the perfect alibi to present the hard line against immigration as a transversal policy without ideology. Some PP moderates also justify their leader’s rapprochement with the ultra-right prime minister with the thesis that Pedro Sánchez also showed a certain harmony when he met her in Rome last April as part of his European tour. “After what he said about dear Giorgia,” they ironically say, “we can afford it.”
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