• Politics The presidents of Andalusia, Madrid and Galicia stand up to the amnesty: "Sánchez has broken equality"

If this Saturday Alberto Núñez Feijóo accused Pedro Sánchez of "corruption" for "exchanging votes for impunity", the leader of the PP took another step this Sunday in his offensive against Pedro Sánchez's concessions to the independentists, now with the amnesty put in black and white in his investiture agreement with ERC. In front of the symbolic Serranos Towers in Valencia, the PP wanted to take the pulse of the streets again and capitalise on the mobilisations against the erasure of the Catalan independence process. And he has succeeded, because in front of a crowded square, Feijóo has challenged the socialists critical of the amnesty to move from words to deeds, in a clear message to leaders such as Emiliano García-Page who have not hesitated to openly question the policy of pacts with the independentists.

"If there are socialists like these, let them prove it with facts, because if they only talk and do not prove it with facts, they are the same as Pedro Sánchez. Nothing," said the president of the PP, trying to rub salt in the wound on the weekend that the socialist militants have been summoned to a consultation to ratify Sánchez's investiture agreements. Without further specificity, Feijóo thus left the ball on the playing field of the socialists critical of Sánchez, to whom he has somehow implied that they should not support his investiture in the Congress of Deputies with their vote. What's more, the PP leader has ventured that Sánchez's presidency "will be nothing". "But Spain will continue and the PSOE will be nothing," he insisted.

The event in Valencia, in which Feijóo was accompanied by the leader of the Valencian PP and president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, and the mayor of Valencia, María José Catalá, is the first organized by the party in the street after the signing of the pact between PSOE and ERC to project the message of social rejection of amnesty. against which a legal battle is also promised. The Popular Party, in addition, increases the pressure on Sánchez on all fronts when the tension over the negotiation with Junts is at its maximum.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Carlos Mazón, in Valencia this Sunday. ALBERTO DI LOLLI

And the truth is that thousands of people have crowded one of the busiest tourist spots in Valencia - 20,000 according to the PP and 10,000 according to the Government Delegation - far exceeding the limits of the square next to the entrance towers to the historic center of the capital and collapsing the adjacent streets. In fact, in the central square, tourists mingled with astonished faces drinking beers with the sellers of Spanish flags for the last-minute stragglers. Among the crowd, which chanted "Spain is not for sale" or "Sánchez to prison" to the beat of revival music, there was no lack of a Vox flag. Neither did the posters of "Sánchez, lunatic" or "You will not destroy Spain".

Feijóo has already made it clear that he intends to continue agitating the streets against Sánchez: "We are going to continue to proclaim more forcefully that no one is more than anyone else in the Spain of freedoms. No matter how much someone wants to be prime minister after losing the election."

"We're not going to pass a single one," he shouted to a packed crowd. In this sense, he has promised to "defend Spain" by land, sea and air, that is, from all Spanish and European institutions. "We are a democratic party that wins at the ballot box and convinces in the streets", he stressed, to warn that "never in all our democratic history has it been claimed that there is less democracy in Spain". "The resources," he said in reference to the cancellation of the Catalan debt, "are resources to finance the independence movement."

The hosts, Mazón and Catalá, have also not spared criticism of Sánchez. "When we thought, how naïve, that everything was done, today Spain is humiliated, the law is humiliated, the Constitution is humiliated and the King is sought to be humiliated," lamented the president of the Generalitat. "This is the Valencia that shouts for Spain. Not in our name, that is the message we are sending today," the mayor said amid shouts of "no to amnesty" from the attendees.

  • Valence
  • Generalitat Valenciana
  • PP
  • Pedro Sanchez
  • CKD
  • Vox
  • PSOE
  • María José Català
  • Alberto Núñez Feijóo
  • Amnesty