In an article about Teresa Ribera’s appearance on Tuesday in Brussels, the Politico website asked if it had been “a shit festival” or a “troll festival.” The PP went to the vice president’s exam with a mud dump truck and convinced conservative MEPs from other countries to join in the stoning. “No other candidate (to join the European Commission) has been treated with so much disrespect,” said a Green MEP. Contrary to what is usual in these question and answer sessions, there were boos and applause. A revelry more typical of the Spanish Congress. The PP has exported kicks below the waist to Brussels as an unequivocally national product.
Wednesday was the day of the first appearance of a member of the Government in Congress dedicated to the DANA of Valencia. It was the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, who was in charge of showing his face, while Pedro Sánchez continued abroad with the climate summit and the vice president María Jesús Montero witnessed the session from her seat. It was part of the Government’s strategy in which it insists that the management of the catastrophe corresponds to the Valencian Government and that the central Government is there to help with whatever is needed. It is an answer that not even all members of the PSOE understand.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo decided to boycott the appearance and leave his seat empty. His party said that he followed the plenary session from his office. At the beginning of the session, almost one in four PP seats were unoccupied. His tenants arrived later. Since the boss wasn’t going to attend, it seems they had permission to sleep a little longer. Santiago Abascal arrived an hour late and did not stay long, although this is not new either.
What caught attention is that all that tension from Brussels was not transferred to Congress. Unlike many other plenary sessions, the PP decided to replace fury with a certain cynicism. In order to belittle Torres, it was not any of the group’s heavyweights who responded to him, but rather a Valencian deputy who never intervenes in the control sessions.
“We have tried to keep all this away from the political struggle, but it has not been possible,” said César Sánchez. You have to have courage to say that when its leader traveled to Valencia the day after the tragedy to affirm that the greatest responsibility for the tragedy resided in central Administration organizations (by the AEMET and the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation) having Carlos Mazón one meter behind him.
Verbal violence was conspicuous by its absence in the PP. There were orders to remain calm. “Citizens do not expect anger or electoral calculations,” Cuca Gamarra said later. What there was not was the stomach to defend Mazón and his dysfunctional Government. And very harsh words were heard. “The Mazón Government is up to its neck in shit,” said Àgueda Micó, from Compromís. “The lives lost are the responsibility of the Valencian Government of the Popular Party.” In addition, he showed the cover of Sunday’s La Razón, the one that featured the headline: “Feijóo will support Mazón so as not to give Sánchez a victory.” But there is no electoral calculation, as Gamarra said. Not at all.
The PP deputies endured these phrases without blinking. On another occasion, they would have jumped like wild beasts. In this plenary session, they dedicated themselves to looking very carefully at their cell phones, as if they were reading something truly interesting.
Minister Torres’ position was also to try not to increase the temperature of the tension: “You will not find any indication in this intervention.” He gave many figures to refute the idea that nothing has been done for the Valencians. 36,907 people rescued from life-threatening situations. 200,000 liters of water and 20,000 kilos of food distributed by the Armed Forces. 15,000 tons of belongings removed in the first 24 hours. 2,600 cars and trucks taken off streets and highways. On October 30, there were 600,000 Valencians without water. On Tuesday there were only 1,263 in four municipalities.
In the subsequent control session, the PP tightened the screws on Teresa Ribera, who is in Brussels. María Jesús Montero went from saying that “it was not the time for reproaches” to becoming boiling point in a matter of seconds and remembering the cases of the Yak-42, the Valencia Metro accident, the Prestige and 11M, the poker of great successes of the right. On another occasion, they should have called the riot police to control the anger of the PP seats. This time, it was a very quiet reaction and it lasted just a few seconds.
The party reserved low blows for its leader. The absent Feijóo appeared in the control session and soon came out to give a brief press conference. It was about focusing all the spotlights on Ribera, due to the works not carried out in the Júcar basin, once again as if Mazón were clean of dust and straw. The PP demands that the Government withdraw the candidacy of the Minister of Ecological Transition to the European Commission. Feijóo completely turned around what is happening these days in Brussels. “The Government must reflect on the pressure to which it is subjecting the European institutions, blackmailing them,” he said.
If we talk about blackmail, it is difficult not to include in that definition the warning that Feijóo sent to Ursula Von der Leyen, the German conservative who aspires to re-election as head of the Commission. He warned that the Commission must begin its mandate “without stain,” that is, without Ribera.
The negotiation of the Von der Leyen Government was the complicated task of balancing the interests of conservatives, social democrats and liberals together with the aspirations of each European Government and the profiles of the commissioners. It is not possible now to vote against Ribera separately. All names go in the same package. If the right votes against Ribera, the social democrats will vote against the others. It would be a great failure for Von der Leyen and would force him to start from scratch in the formation of his Cabinet.
The attempt to set the Commission on fire to save Mazón or ensure that, in the event that it is impossible for him to survive, the PP can demonstrate that it has sunk Ribera’s European career in return, reaches that level. A few days after Donald Trump’s victory in the US and when everyone agrees that Europe must be strong and not surrender to whatever comes from Washington, the PP believes that its interests are more important.
The Valencia tragedy has been a hard blow to the management image of the PP governments, which were the bastions on which Feijóo wanted to build a future electoral victory. It’s not just what happens to Mazón. Two hundred corpses and the EU Government are not going to prevent him from achieving his objectives.
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