With the permission of the Argentine president, Javier Milei, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is the new protagonist of Spanish politics. The first day of campaigning for the European elections this Friday revolved around the leader of the extremist Brothers of Italy after a stumble, the day before, by Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The president of the PP gave a gift to the PSOE by opening an agreement with Meloni, who he said “is not comparable to other parties that are considered extreme right”, so he focused the debate on the issue the socialists wanted: the agreements with the extreme right. And they set out to take advantage of it. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and several ministers came out to attack Feijóo for showing himself willing to agree on the community institutions “with the European Vox” – although the PP already governs with the Vox Spanish in five autonomous communities – while the popular ones tried to control damage by attacking with some confusing statements from the socialist candidate, Teresa Ribera, about the alliances with Meloni’s group. On the first day of the campaign after several campaigns with recognized errors in the PP, party sources admit that Feijóo’s incident was a setback. There is discomfort about this in the party.
Electoral strategists know that controlling the campaign framework is essential. The first key is to master what you are talking about. That is why the leader of the PP surprised on Thursday by entering motu proprio on the issue that the socialists have defined as the axis of their campaign, the rise of the extreme right in Europe and the danger that the traditional right will surrender to these extremist parties. In the European elections, the PSOE is repeating the model that worked for it in the general elections of July last year, when it managed to mobilize the left by agitating the fear that Vox would reach the Government of Spain at the hands of Feijóo. The agreements that the Popular Party signed with the ultras to govern five autonomies served the PSOE’s argument on a plate.
For this European campaign, the PP’s plan is for it to be nationalized and revolve around the wear and tear of Pedro Sánchez due to the amnesty and the professional activities of his wife, who is being investigated by a court in Madrid. However, the popular ones recognize that the socialists have managed to dominate the framework, which has gone from Milei to Meloni without touching hardly any national issue. “The left beats us in setting the debates,” they admit with resignation in the PP.
Feijóo opened an agreement with Meloni in a colloquium at the Círculo de Economía in Barcelona, according to his direct team, because that was the position that the candidate to preside over the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had set just a few hours before in the debate of candidates to lead the European Executive. They argue that the leader of the PP did not want to contradict the main figure of the European People’s Party, who has extended his hand to Meloni taking into account that it is now likely that the two great European political families, popular and social democrats, no longer join forces and cannot decide not even with the liberals, as in 2019, who will preside over the Commission.
It also doesn’t hurt Feijóo that the European People’s Party whitewashes agreements with some far-right forces, because he presides over a party that has governed with the ultras since 2022. Just not at this electoral moment. Vox believes that the leader of the PP “improvised”, according to sources from the Ultra party Executive to Europa Press, due to “following Von der Leyen”. In Genoa, for their part, they tried to downplay Feijóo’s message: “This has nothing to do with the fear that Abascal would become vice president, Meloni does not mobilize in Spain,” the PP leader’s team insisted while the Popular barons deployed in their territories carrying out their own campaigns, mobilized to the maximum. “These are Andalusian elections, we are risking our bread and salt,” the president of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, claimed this Friday.
But the socialists want it to be a European campaign and to talk about the PP alliances in Brussels. The President of the Government responded this Friday to Feijóo from the same platform, the assembly of the Círculo de Economía in Barcelona. “Yesterday [este jueves] Feijóo said that he does not give up agreeing with the European Vox. It’s a shame, because when we understand Christian democracy and European social democracy, we manage to mutualize the debt, we make the joint purchase of vaccines, Europe works. I already told you that I am not going to sit down with Vox in that negotiation for the European Commission. When it is said ‘I agree to agree with the European Vox’, it is not only Meloni, it is [Éric] Zemmour, is the Swedish extreme right, that of Poland. That is incompatible with the approach of European social democracy. What Feijóo said that he was going to open up to the European Vox is very serious. “We are talking about markedly far-right groups,” said Sánchez..
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And he concluded, closing the circle between the 23-J campaign and this one: “What we did not want for Spain, we do not want in Europe.” In the afternoon, the socialist candidate Teresa Ribera accused Feijóo of coming out “from the bad part of the closet” after opening up to the pacts with Meloni and differentiating “between good far-rights and bad far-rights.”
The PP spent the first day of the campaign with damage control activated. They began by trying to avoid the setback by rescuing some confusing statements from the socialist candidate, Teresa Ribera, in an interview last Sunday in The mail, that had gone unnoticed. “The person you have to ask about Meloni is Mrs. Ribera, who in an interview said that she would be open to agreeing with ECR, which is Vox’s party in Europe,” said the popular candidate, Dolors Montserrat. In that interview, Ribera opened up to agreements with that group, of which Meloni and Vox are part, depending on “the arithmetic of the European Parliament” and “if the proposals they make are proposals in accordance with the values of more Europe, of respect for democracy, the rules of the game, since we will have seen a reintegration into European normality.”
Sources from the socialist candidacy later clarified that Ribera “has opposed, in Spain and in Europe, he opposes and will oppose any pact with the extreme right, with Meloni’s European Vox and with the ultras allies of Alberto Núñez Feijóo” and recalled who has precisely criticized Von der Leyen for the whitewashing of some extreme right, such as Meloni’s. But the Podemos candidates, Irene Montero, and Sumar, Estrella Galán, also joined the PP’s erosion of the vice president. Montero accused the socialist candidate of having launched her “particularly beloved Georgia” by declaring that the PSOE is “willing to make an agreement” with the extreme right of Georgia Meloni, while Galán asked her for explanations. In campaign, darts fly in all directions.
In the PP, in parallel and beyond the thesis of the leader’s cabinet, the leader’s error was received with discomfort. Although the majority of the party shares the substance of the thesis about Meloni, which they see as “normalized,” party leaders regretted the strategic failure of Feijóo’s words. “It was not the time to talk about this. Our strategy is to ignore Vox and everything it represents,” admits a member of the European candidacy. Late in the afternoon, Feijóo returned to discipline and ignored the ultras and all of Meloni’s controversy, while he worked on the anti-sanchista message. “What is happening in Spain is not normal. We cannot get used to abnormality. Spain has had good, bad, irregular presidents of the Government, but like this one, none, none. Not even Zapatero,” he said in Murcia. The PP does not want to talk about Europe, but about Spain, and specifically about Sánchez. “Our framework is to try to place the debate in national politics,” says this popular leader of the European list, “neither Milei nor Meloni interest us.” The entire start week of the European campaign has revolved around those two proper names, however.
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