“It’s deluded for anyone to suggest that we could support a vote of no confidence that favors the PP given what that party has done to Catalan in Europe,” said Junts Secretary-General Jordi Turull, referring to the conservative party’s lobbying campaign against the recognition of Catalan as an official EU language.
“I can’t imagine ever teaming up with these people,” he railed.
The PP’s refusal to present a doomed motion against Sánchez allows Abascal, who is also president of the far-right Patriots party at the EU level, to imply that Spain’s mainstream political groups collude with one another.
Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, predicted that Abascal’s far-right party would seize the opportunity to argue that “the PP and the Socialist are two pillars of a single, fundamentally corrupt system.”
“We’ve seen the party benefit greatly from the argument that the political establishment is discredited,” Simón said. “Following the deadly floods in Valencia, Vox rose in the polls by arguing that neither the PP-controlled regional government nor the Socialist national government had been competent enough to handle the crisis.”
Pointing out that the current political drama in Spain is based solely on a preliminary investigative report from the elite Civil Guard’s Central Operative Unit (UCO), Simón said even more problematic scandals were likely to surface in the coming months and further undermine the government.
“Sánchez’s public apology doesn’t solve this problem and certainly won’t allow him to separate his government from the allegations of corruption,” he added. “That may theoretically bring Feijóo closer to taking power, but it also strengthens the far right and makes it all the more likely that the PP will have to depend on Vox to form an eventual government.”
