2023-12-13 23:23:12
First control session of the new legislature in Congress. Premiere for several ministers and also for the first attack lineup of the Popular Party with new faces with which to punish the Government. Reinforcements arrive at the front, which is not fresh blood in all cases, because some return to the trenches. Artillery fire to destroy the blue bank? Precise sniper shots on the ministers when they had to show their heads? Well no. In the PP they are going to have to intensify training. With this level, they do not go beyond the first round of the Champions League.
It was Miguel Tellado’s first day as parliamentary spokesperson for the PP in that gladiatorial combat that is the control session. Without Pedro Sánchez in the Chamber – he was giving a speech in the European Parliament – he should have asked the first question, but it seems that Cuca Gamarra is reluctant to leave his position. The fact is that Tellado, who has come to Madrid to distribute tow, had to face Yolanda Díaz and did not have the strength or knowledge to question her about economics.
Presumably great idea. I’m going to ask you about Podemos and your departure from the Sumar parliamentary group. Basically, to get a few laughs at the vice president’s expense. Skid. If Díaz has not told journalists everything he knows about his traumatic relations with Podemos, he will surely tell Tellado. In public. In a plenary session of Congress. Of course. A therapy session administered by the enemy.
The leader of Sumar did not fall into the trap. Tellado tried to do so by presenting Podemos as a “victim” of Díaz’s perfidy: “I think they are right.” In all of this, the five seats of the deputies of Ione Belarra’s party were empty. Since they did not intervene, they stopped attending. And they have given them very good entries in the chamber. Instead of sending them to the chicken coop with the new colleagues from the mixed group, they have placed them in the central area sharing a row with deputies from ERC and Bildu.
Although Díaz reproached Tellado for bringing him in “for anger and insult,” the truth is that the PP spokesperson was very soft this time. He is expected to run over an elderly woman while driving at high speed and then reverse to finish her off and steal her purse. Not the little jokes he tried to make on Wednesday. In his case, a day without having to take his blood-stained suit to the dry cleaners is a day wasted.
Cuca Gamarra demanded birthright rights in the session and congratulated Nadia Calviño for her election as president of the European Investment Bank (EIB) “because she has achieved what she wanted.” She meant to say that she needed to leave the country as soon as possible. Calviño, who has a character that a few Government ministers have suffered from, responded with almost aristocratic disdain: “Thank you very much for congratulating her, although she hasn’t even had the class for that.”
For a time, Juan Bravo was the economic brain of Feijóo’s PP. The first part of the expression was a bit questioned. Now he also appeared in plenary with a question about the amnesty, which is the typical topic that a Deputy Secretary General of the Economy and former Andalusian Minister of the Treasury always has on his mind. Sometimes it seems that the questions in the PP are distributed by the shortest straw method. Being sharp, María Jesús Montero responded with a blow when asked if she had “cheated the Andalusians with his salary by overcharging.”
That’s a story that this newspaper broke a year ago. As a director, Bravo earned more than 120,000 euros per year, almost double the normal amount, thanks to a bonus, a legal bargain that exists in Andalusia for officials who are promoted to these positions. It seems like a bit of an old issue, but we know that nothing is thrown away in politics. Everything can be used to drive it into the opponent’s head.
The game was not going very well for the PP, but then it was time for Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo. The great lady of moral superiority returned to the front line of combat in another episode of her unique career in the PP. She was signed by Casado to fight in the Catalan campaign for the 2019 general elections, she failed at the polls, which did not prevent her from ending up as parliamentary spokesperson. She ended up being eliminated from the position, so she continued to show her contempt for what she considered Casado’s low intellectual stature.
Feijóo kept her on the electoral lists against all odds. It is difficult to prosper in games if you go around saying that your boss is an idiot. The successor will believe that it will not take long for you to comment the same about him. In private companies, neither. But Feijóo prefers her within the party and with a relevant public role in the seats that were shaking him from the pages of the media.
With Álvarez de Toledo, grandiose and melodramatic phrases are guaranteed and that at least makes for impactful headlines. On Wednesday, she recovered her script, convinced that the future will always prove her right. “They will be nothing more than a humiliated parenthesis in the history of Spain,” she said of the socialists. The parenthesis has been in existence for five years and has just been renewed. The deputy fulfills her function, which is none other than telling PP voters what they want to hear.
In that environment of complying with the file, Esteban González Pons gave a more solid impression without getting carried away by histrionic details. The Minister of the Interior, formerly Judge Grande-Marlaska, was asked if he is comfortable “having fought against ETA” with the motion of censure in Pamplona that will give the mayoralty to EH Bildu with the support of the PSOE.
Marlaska said he felt “proud” that coexistence in Spain is better. He will not say it because of the atmosphere of recent years in the chamber. “The amnesty is consistent with that coexistence,” he highlighted.
The one who responded most directly to the news from Pamplona was Óscar Puente, who is not one of those who bite their tongue and count to a hundred. “I tell you without any complexes that I have no problem with a progressive democratic party in Spain taking over a mayoralty in a provincial capital of Spain,” said the Minister of Transport. The popular deputy Ester Muñoz wanted to provoke him – “Sánchez has put him in to laugh at his antics” – but Puente did not lose his head. It will be because he has promised Sánchez not to eat any deputy: “I see that they are still stung by that afternoon of September 26” (when it premiered in the chamber).
Stung and somewhat dull from what was seen in this control session. Feijóo should take them all to the Retiro to make them sweat by running first thing in the morning, like coaches do when the team can’t score a goal even into an empty net.
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