“Lotsagabe Bat Zara”. [“Eres un sinvergüenza”]. With these harsh and unusual words, the deputy of the PNV Idoia Sagastizabal to the PP parliamentary spokesman, Miguel Tellado, from the Tribune of Congress last Wednesday. It was during the debate of the Royal Decrees of the Government that, except with the exception of one, were lying by the majority PP-VOX-junts. The previous day, Tellado himself called “Take advantage” and “miserable” to the Basques, with whom the bridges are already completely broken. Everything, with the consent of a Feijóo that can hardly count on the five ‘Jeltzales’ votes if the time comes to take the step of presenting a motion of censure to Pedro Sánchez.
In the PP they have even threatened to denounce the PNV for “irregular financing.” The PNV response came through its parliamentary spokesman, Aitor Esteban, who has branded them as “neo -fascists.” Feijóo went out to the fore on Thursday to catalog as a “more satellite” from the PSOE to the PNV. A party that, he said, is “subject to Sanchismo.” The PP leader stated that when “they will be criteria again” they will return to the understanding with the Spanish right.
And it is true that both parties have historically understood each other, despite maintaining speeches that have been able to appear antagonism at some times by the territorial issue. Since in 1996 José María Aznar needed his votes and naturalized the then president of the EBB, Xabier Arzalluz, the programmatic and discursive coincidences have been common. In 2016 Mariano Rajoy resorted to PNV again to stay in power.
That pact broke in 2018. In just one week, the Basque nationalists went from supporting those that were the last PP budgets to knock Rajoy’s own government in the motion of censure that raised Sánchez. The Gürtel judgment and the possibility of an understanding of the PSOE, Podemos and Citizens to go to early elections, with EH Bildu booming, were sufficient reason to change horse in the middle of the race.
The arrival of Alberto Núñez Feijóo implied a change in the PP strategy to the Basque and Catalan right -wing nationalisms. The opposition leader imposed an approach to the PNV and also together. And looked for both for their investiture (failed) of 2023. to the ‘Jeltzales’ tempted them to direct the government industry policy with their own minister. For the fugitive Carles Puigdemont opened to the pardon.
“Someday I will tell what they came to offer us,” said PNV parliamentary spokesman at the time, Aitor Esteban. It was November 2023 and Feijóo had lost for only four votes since its alliance with Vox frightened the rest of the parliamentary arch.
In his own investiture debate, knowing his defeat, Feijóo deployed a double strategy that the PP leader has maintained for months: stick and carrot. At the national headquarters of the Madrid street of Genoa, they still had accounts of when the Basque right of the Sánchez government was fed up, aware that its five deputies can tip the balance in their favor in case of a hypothetical motion of censure, although in the Equation should always enter the ultra -right of Santiago Abascal. Anatema for the Basques, as they have repeatedly declared.
In Feijóo’s head and his strategists, and has fit until not so ago, the option that a “leftist” policy of the government frightened the PNV. And, in fact, it has happened in some moments of the legislature. This same December the coalition executive has harvested severe defeats in one of the subjects that tense the right: taxes.
But beyond sporadic voting on Venezuela or the taxation of energy companies, the PNV has maintained its faithfulness to the PSOE, with whom it also governs a good part of Euskadi. In recent months the tone between the PP and the Basques has been rising in aggressiveness, with Miguel Tellado to the head.
Tellado and Esteban had their first public confrontation months ago, precisely on Venezuela. “Clumsy, you are a clumsy,” he recriminated the second to the first on his Twitter account. “I don’t think the Basques represent that servile attitude of the group of Aitor Esteban. Very clumsy aitor, ”Tellado replied. In April 2024, the PNV and the PSE revalidated the Basque Government.
But the level of confrontation reached in recent days is new and surprising by the tone of one and the other. The PP decided to vote against Royal Decree Law with which the government wanted to raise pensions, the minimum vital income and maintain some of the measures of the “social shield” referring to basic evictions and supplies for vulnerable families, among other issues. The union with Junts and Vox knocked down the legislative package.
The justification found by Feijóo was the return to the PNV by the state of a building in Paris that the Nazis expropriated and delivered to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. A “palace” that the PP already negotiated to return to the Basques during the governments of Aznar and Rajoy.
And to spin this justification, the PP came out in Tromba against the PNV. Tellado has accused them this week of “miserable” and, basically, of selling in exchange for money to vote in favor of the decree that includes the return of the now famous palace. A few words that unleashed the ‘Jeltzales’ and caused Esteban’s response, first, and the toughest of Sagastizabal, later. The spokesman came to describe as “surprising” that the PP has the lawyer of clean hands in the Senate against the case against the attorney general.
Far from loosening, this Friday from the PP has abounded in the anger. Management sources said that “you never regret when you say what you think and what you think” and called the “socimi” PNV, that is, real estate company. The cataract continues: “Band of Okupas”, “Chantagers”, “Rotwoman party that cheats its voters”, “Farsa”. And even getting “very well with the Nazis.”
Feijóo is no longer left with the “institutional” relationship with the Lehendakari of which he presumed so much in his years of president of the Xunta, and who has tried to use several times since his landing in Madrid. But, as in other issues, the leader of the PP seems to have run over time and some attitudes of its leaders. The Basque President is no longer Iñigo Urkullu, whom his party separated to give way to a young Imanol Pradales.
The new Lehendakari left this Friday to replicate to Feijóo. Quite far from the usual institutional tone that likes so much in the PNV, Pradales said to see the PP in “extremist positions” and “populists” that “all they do is to remove possible agreements and pacts.” In politics nothing is impossible, but no one or almost no one has that both parties will be understood in the short or medium term.
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