Sitting at a white table, like ping-pong, the props seemed to anticipate the give and take that they staged this Monday night Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijoó, in the only electoral debate between them of the campaign. The ‘face to face’ is a vibrant format, less corseted, but the exchange of ideas that should help Spaniards who still doubt their vote in the general elections of 23Jdid not occur.
Because from the beginning the two were entangled in one cascade of reproaches, in a data war, accusing each other of lying and without respecting the speaking turns. Between a permanent “it’s not true” that the president threw at him and the “no man that no” with which the head of the opposition responded. From “are you nervous” to “calm down”. At first Sánchez was more attacking but that feeling was offsetting. Probably the most restless must have been the spectators, given the impossibility of understanding anything. Every time the filmmaker showed a close-up split in half, with both on either side, they were talking at the same time.
Sánchez began with the defense that with him at the head of the Executive jobs have been created, there has been economic growth and inflation has been controlled more than in other European countries. Feijóo denied that the Spanish economy was like a motorcycle and maintained that it has been marked by “Podemos” and the “PCE”. “Aznar and Rajoy created more jobs”.
self management
But it didn’t matter almost the same as the topic. Many issues were discussed, without anything being clear: debt, pensions, housing, salaries. At least in the economic block. The two moderators did not moderate, Sánchez and Feijóo managed themselves. Whoever thought that arrogance would only be on the side of the president and that only he would go on the attack, was wrong. And the same happened with the control of the subjects. The popular candidate had prepared himself thoroughly.
When it was passed to social policy, there was not much improvement. Feijóo was asked about one of the news of the day -that the new president of the Valencian Courts, from Vox, did not fulfill her institutional role and departed from the concentration after a new murder-. But he did not answer. He wanted to combat it by bringing up the reductions in sentences for sex offenders from the law of ‘only yes is yes’ with concrete examples. “His problem with him is that he will persecute him as long as there are 117 rapists who have been released and 1,155 who have seen their sentence reduced,” he told her.
It was a very, very acrimonious debate, awkward and difficult to listen to. In this part, Sánchez focused directly on the PP pacts with Vox and the denial that the ultra-right makes of gender violence, despite the fact that there was another specific block on it. Feijóo, very offensive, asked him “not to divide with equality” and took the opportunity to propose an agreed abstention. Let whoever comes first rule.
The president replied that he should first ask Guillermo Fernández Vara, who will not be able to be president of Extremadura due to a pact between the second (PP) and the third (Vox). Feijóo repeated it several more times throughout the debate: “If you win, I will make it easier for you to govern”.
Sánchez insisted on the agreements with the extreme right and Feijóo replied with Bildu. He recalled that this Tuesday it will be 26 years since ETA kidnapped Miguel Angel White and that he will not agree with his heirs. The president defended himself by reading the profile -anti-vaccination, anti-feminism, against climate change- of the people that Vox has placed in the institutions, after the regional and municipal pacts, trying to convey that he has limited himself to parliamentary agreements. “I do not govern with Otegui or with ERC,” he stressed. “I am not governing with them,” he repeated on several occasions. They both had to be asked not to forget to talk about education and health.
the pacts
The socialist candidate was convincing in everything related to the feminist discourse and the setback that the ultra-right represents. “In Brussels they are concerned about a government with Vox,” he warned. But Feijóo cornered him with the decisions that he has made in Catalonia. With the changes of opinion about what he said at other times, with the pardons for those convicted of the ‘procés’, sedition removal and embezzlement reform. He accused him of “not respecting the Constitution” – “of all the presidents that Spain has had the one who has done it the least” – he told him – and promised to classify the self-determination referendum as illegal and recover the sedition because “the unity of Spain does not is negotiated”.
With this strategy, the Galician leader got away from the pacts with Vox to even ask his constituents to support him. That is probably why he was so harsh with Sánchez (and Sánchez with Feijóo). Some polls point to a drop in Santiago Abascal’s party and a useful vote for the PP. The same thing that happened in Andalusia. And the way in which the Galician leader seemed to address this electorate was using a harsher tone, far removed from his usual register. Depending on the minute that he was seeing himself, the president could appear to be the victim or the executioner. And the same Feijóo.
Sánchez did not forget to mention the corruption of the PP and presented himself as a “clean, free and autonomous politician“He slipped that his opponent was not, pointing out that he could demonstrate where each euro came from his checking account, referring to the exact amount of money that Feijóo receives from his party, in addition to his salary as a senator- and the trips that he has done “by land, sea and air”, in what was a veiled allusion to his rival’s friendship with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado (the photo of both on the boat).
In turn, the closure corresponded first to the president – the so-called golden minute. He said that it is not necessary to vote for the PP to end ETA because ETA ended in 2015, but it can end with the revaluation of pensions, the increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage, labor reform, equality policies, protection of LGTBI groups or the euthanasia law.
Feijóo’s appeal was more general. “I want to be president of the Government but not in any way.” For this reason, he called for massive support for the PP to put an end to the “blockades” and “blocks” that are gripping Spanish politics. A “strong majority, without the need to go against the extremes.”
hearings
The hearings will say this Tuesday how much interest it has aroused among the Spanish but both the PSOE and the PP have faced it as one of the great peaks of the campaign. Sánchez has not hidden that he gave it the utmost importance. He canceled a rally on Saturday in Extremadura and since Friday afternoon he has been locked up with his team. It is true that he also had to prepare for the NATO summit in Vilnius (Lithuania) that begins tomorrow and the EU-CELAC summit, next week in Brussels, but his second position in the polls forced him to take the appointment with great care. seriousness.
Feijóo has maintained his agenda, with a massive rally in Pontevedra, although he has not neglected his preparation either and reserved the afternoons of Saturday, Sunday and this same Monday for the ‘face to face’. The ‘popular’ candidate came with less pressure because he leads the polls and, beforehand, in Genoa they said they were content with drawing. That was not what finally happened. Neither for the tone used nor for the control of the topics.
Although there is unanimity in the demoscopic companies about the high probability that on 23J there will be an absolute majority of PP and Vox, post-electoral studies have shown that the debates move the vote. This was the case in 2019, despite the fact that the format was four (Sánchez, Pablo Casado, Albert Rivera and Pablo Iglesias), with a less exciting start. In April there were two, two nights in a row, the first on TVE and a day later on Atresmedia. The one on TVE had an audience of 8.8 million people, the second surpassed it with 9.4. According to the Sociological Research Center (CIS) in its post-electoral study, a 7.1% of the people who saw them changed their voting intention. The average of those who moved to another party is more than 600,000 voters.
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These movements were repeated in the second elections in November. With Santiago Abascal already on the set, there were 8.6 citizens in front of the television. On that occasion, the percentage of people who opted for another ballot was 4.2%, around 3.5 million.
We will have to wait for the field work on these elections to see how it could have affected, but what does not vary, one appointment after another, is that the Spanish decide the direction of their vote later and later. The most recent data is from the autonomous regions of 28M. 64.5% were clear about it long before the start of the electoral campaign; 10.2% at the beginning; 13.7% the last week; 3.3% in the day of reflection and 8.1%, the same day of the vote. Therefore, what happens the 15 days prior to the elections affects.