2023-07-06 23:59:50
The electoral campaign for the general elections on July 23 begins now. A countdown whose starting signal coincides in an unusual way with the festival of San Fermín, before an election that Pedro Sánchez called by surprise after 28M and that will take place in the middle of July, with a good part of the Spanish already immersed in the summer vacation.
It is the first time in a democracy that a general election has been held so late in the summer, an issue that raises questions about participation, although Sánchez himself stated in his interview with Jordi Évole that he expects it to be high. Also criticism from the opposition, as well as, in recent weeks, some fear in more than one of the possibility of being called to the polling station -you can check here if it has touched you-.
In any case, the 23J campaign officially kicks off after an intense pre-campaign in which the President of the Government has lavished himself on various television sets to fight against an appointment with the polls in which most of the polls herald a victory for the People’s Party.
It has been precisely in ‘prime time’ where, at the expense of the socialist leader and the candidate of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, seeing each other’s faces on Monday in the Atresmedia electoral debate, the main ‘body to body’ has been disputed of the pre-campaign, although delayed: from the set of ‘El Hormiguero’ and one day apart, both candidates exchanged all sorts of reproaches, as you can remember in the video a few lines below.
The PP-Vox pacts mark the pre-campaign
This same week both candidates have attended the Ana Rosa Quintana program. There, the PP leader explained his criteria for agreeing with Vox, assuring that he sees it as “logical” to do so wherever they need their votes to govern. A declaration of intent that contradicts the scale that the ‘popular’ leader himself had established just a few weeks ago based on the percentage of votes obtained by the ultra-right in different regions.
Precisely one of the issues that the pre-campaign has focused on is the pacts of the ‘popular’ with Vox in the context after the regional and municipal elections last May. An issue that also came to light this week in Sánchez’s interview on ‘Telecinco’, where the Prime Minister asserted that “it is not true that Feijóo has agreed more with the PSOE than with Vox”, as argued the day before by PPP candidate.
And it is that the ‘popular’ have agreed governments with the extreme right in numerous town halls -where Vox has already eliminated the LGTBI flags from municipal buildings or the word ‘Equality’ from the councils- as well as in the Valencian Community, which will have a vice president of the extreme right, and Extremadura, despite the initial refusal of the PP candidate, María Guardiola, who finally swallowed her words and gave advice to the party of Santiago Abascal.
This is how the candidates start the campaign
Now, there are two weeks ahead of the electoral campaign that are expected to be as eventful or more eventful than the pre-campaign. In this appointment with the polls, a new political actor also comes into play, Sumar, the platform led by Yolanda Díaz, who is running for the first time in these elections after intense negotiations with Podemos that finally came to fruition at the beginning of June in an agreement of coalition -not exempt from reproaches on the part of the purple formation- to go together on 23J.
The current Minister of Labor has thus achieved her objective of bringing together the formations to the left of the PSOE in a project that, if the forecasts come true, would break into the Congress of Deputies not far behind Vox, which -everything points- it would be the third force in the Lower House. On the other hand, Ciudadanos did not appear, who after the disastrous result of 28M chose not to run in these elections, in such a way that the orange formation, formerly the third force, will completely disappear from the chamber.
In this context, we recall who are the heads of the list of the main parties in these elections and how they have started the campaign:
Pedro Sanchez
The current President of the Government and candidate for re-election, Pedro Sánchez, began the campaign this Thursday with an act in Madrid and this Friday he presents the electoral program of the PSOE, also in the capital. The socialist leader has cleared his agenda for the weekend to prepare the debate that he will face Feijóo on Monday at Atresmedia.
In the Casa de Campo Convention Pavilion in Madrid, before an auditorium full of 1,400 people, Sánchez addressed citizens dissatisfied with the agreements between PP and Vox in autonomous communities and town halls, given the possibility that they could govern together in Spain. Thus, he has warned about the setback that in his opinion an Executive of the two forces of the right would mean by pointing out that their leaders, Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal “are the tunnel of time.”
Sánchez has asked for the confidence of a vast majority of Spaniards, – “perhaps many of them who have never voted for the Socialist Party”, he pointed out. In addition, he has warned that the pacts between these formations are the “dark movie trailer”. On the other hand, he has indicated that in the last 20 days, because of these agreements, there has been a setback in the public debate of 10 years.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo
The PP candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has started the campaign this Thursday in his hometown, Os Peares (Ourense) and has subsequently traveled to Castelldefels (Barcelona) to put up posters. This Friday he will be in Seville and Badajoz; on Saturday he will travel to Zamora and on Sunday he will hold a rally in Pontevedra, where he launched the campaigns that led him to an absolute majority in Galicia. However, Feijóo has reserved Monday to prepare the ‘face to face’ with Sánchez.
The leader of the Popular Party has asked this Thursday, from Castelldefels, the Catalans and all the Spaniards “not to put intermediaries” in the future Government of Spain and offered himself directly to those who voted for Vox and who want an Executive ” solid” and that your ballot paper “doesn’t get lost along the way.
The head of the opposition, on the other hand, has accused Sánchez of “lying” for promising citizens that he would bring former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to Spain when, as he has stressed, what he promised is to “pardon” him. In his opinion, he “returns the Sanchista lie to the streets of Catalonia and Spain again.” This has been pointed out from Castelldefels -before about a thousand attendees, according to party sources-.
Yolanda Diaz
The second vice president and leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, has also chosen Galicia to start the campaign, giving the starting signal to the electoral race from A Coruña, accompanied by the former mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau. This Friday she will be in Zaragoza, supported by leaders of the Chunta. During the weekend, she will be in Valencia, and on Sunday in Andalusia. Yolanda Díaz, from A Coruña, has announced that she has sent a letter to the rest of the candidates for the Presidency of the Government so that they commit to signing, before the end of the electoral campaign, a pact “against censorship and in favor of artistic freedom from the country”.
Together with candidates from Sumar in Galicia and with the intervention, surprisingly, of the actress Marisa Paredes, Díaz has urged the rest of the candidates to sign a commitment that “politics does not have to get involved in artistic creation” or in the “cultural contents. “Culture is not key to the country and should not be directed. What you have to do is defend it, that it be free and independent, that it can fly”, he recounted during his speech, after recalling that he has heard the PP say that it has a commitment to culture.
“On 23J you have to vote to defend the revaluation of pensions, so as not to work beyond the age of 65. We must defend pensions and our rights,” Díaz already pointed out at the end of the act. The minister has asked the citizens “something small”: “We are doing our job. You have to do your part: there are 15 days left, kick the Galician cities, talk to the whole world, mobilize your people to vote to add because if we are not big, there will be no progressive government. Voting to add is worth double: to win rights and to have a progressive government.”
Santiago Abascal
The far-right candidate, Santiago Abascal, who has his sights set on entering the Executive after the precedent of the regional and local pacts with the PP, opens the campaign this Friday in Valladolid, a symbolic square for being the seat of Government of Castilla y León, where Vox has the Vice Presidency. During the campaign, he will visit 30 cities and participate in 24 rallies accompanied by the provincial candidates.
Abascal has affirmed this Thursday that Feijóo “has more interest” in “getting rid of” Vox than in “liberating” “the Spanish from the plague of socialism” and has assured that, after the appointment of 23J “there is only one more vote for to expel” Sánchez: “We will build an alternative”.
The far-right, who has participated in a public event in Almerimar, in El Ejido (Almería), has said that Vox is “extraordinarily concerned” about a “decentred” Feijóo and has made him ugly by saying that he is going to “repeal sanchismo” when “he intends to do it by agreeing with Sánchez”.
In the following search engine you can consult the electoral lists of all the parties that concur in the general elections:
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