"Our duty is to tell the Spaniards who are worried that they are doing the right thing"

“Our duty is to tell the Spaniards that they are worried, that they are doing the right thing. They have cause for concern. The moment is delicate for all the countries of the world, for those of the EU and even more so for Spain”. This is how the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, pointed out this Monday the main lines of the opposition work that he will lead in the new political course that begins these days. Despite the figures provided by international organizations or the Bank of Spain, Feijóo has insisted on describing a catastrophic economic and social situation without comparison in the rest of Europe and whose only solution lies in some recipes, his own, that he has not exposed.

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Feijóo offered his first press conference on Monday at the party's national headquarters since he ran to succeed Pablo Casado as head of the PP, half a year ago. The leader of the Spanish right wanted to highlight from the outset the "unity" that is breathed, he said, in the party, after the turmoil that led to an unprecedented coup in the PP and that unseated its president after a hard public confrontation with the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. “The PP is a united party without internal problems”, he assured.

The PP will gather next September in Toledo all its parliamentary public representatives (autonomous, national and European) in an appointment that will serve as the launch of the long electoral pre-campaign of the determining appointments with the polls of 2023. The first stop, the municipal and regional, will be in May. After pointing to Pedro Sánchez for "electoralism" when announcing a series of public acts to vindicate the work of the coalition government, and a day after describing him as "egomaniac and authoritarian", Feijóo has called on his people to "try to dignify Spanish politics , calm the debate and make it polite”.

Immediately afterwards, the leader of the opposition has made a catastrophic x-ray of the situation in the country whose origin dates back, he said, to "semesters ago". It does not matter if the Spanish economy grew twice as much as the EU average in the second quarter of the year, or four times more than the OECD average, as reported by the agency this Monday. In the PP they see Spain in ruin. And they encourage the Spanish to pay that feeling.

Feijóo has said that he is "concerned" about the economic situation and, despite acknowledging that "all of Europe" is the same, he has said that "Spain is the country, or one of the two or three European countries, in the worst economic situation". "They have called us a catastrophic and doomsayer party", he assured, adding: "The same ones who described us as such, now recognize that we are facing a moment of extraordinary difficulty and that we must prepare for a complex autumn and winter".

"There are no indicators that allow us to be calm," he said, although there have never been so many contributors to Social Security nor has unemployment been so low since 2008. Feijóo has assured that in Spain "there is already rationing of some foods" due to the increase of the prices of the shopping basket, that 2022 has been "the worst end of summer in recent decades" and that the next one will be the "most expensive school year" also "in recent decades".

A situation, he said, that "stresses the families' accounts." To this is added "the increase in mortgage prices" which, he has pointed out, will continue because the ECB is going to raise interest rates again. He has also pointed out his "concern about the situation of the Spanish economic fabric", with the "year-on-year growth in industrial prices" as one of the main problems.

"President [Pedro Sánchez] it has no right to compromise the future of future generations”, he said about the increase in public debt. And he has settled: “Our duty is to tell the Spaniards that they are worried, that they are doing the right thing. They have cause for concern. The moment is delicate for all the countries of the world, for those of the EU and even more so for Spain”.

“We arrived late and badly”, he assured, because “the Government has decided that all the sacrifice for the loss must be assumed by citizens, freelancers and companies” and that the Executive “does not accompany”. “First denying and then sugarcoating the crisis that is looming in the fall was a serious mistake. We have lost a lot of time ”, she has pointed out.

Feijóo has announced that in the coming weeks he will present an energy saving plan that has not advanced any specific measure, although he has indicated that it will focus on reducing consumption by public administrations. As usual in Galician, not a single word addressed to economic and business agents, or to the regional governments. The responsibility lies only with the coalition government.