Trump, the outer enemy that encourages a minitregua in Spanish politics | Spain
The outer enemy is miracles. Spanish polarization has not disappeared, and the confrontation and distrust between the two large blocks remains very strong in almost all matters, but the dimension of the Threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs for the European and Spanish economy It is so colossal that space seems to be opened for a minitregua. Everything is small in the face of planetary bewilderment that is causing the new US president. Given the restlessness of thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of workers in a country as exporter as Spain, the national battle, with its dripping of judicial decisions, with their cainism and their battle to see who is harder in their disqualifications, pales and remains in the background.
Again, a Pandemia moment To place all the prominence in the government, which has already announced 14,000 million euros in aid, and strength to the PP to recalibrate its position with a employer who approaches the Executive again in search of shock aid and plans. The Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, the key man in this crisis, to which Pedro Sánchez has commissioned that he negotiate the plans with entrepreneurs and unions, autonomies and parties, has already been seen with the PP and will try to agree with them and other formations the first measures, which in principle will go to the Council of Ministers in the form of one or more decrees. It is expected that there is exchange of papers between groups this Sunday and Monday, before the Council, something that already indicates an important change in the relationship between the two great parties, although distrust has not disappeared and everything can be complicated in any curve.
« It is a very interesting moment. Everything is helped. Also in Europe, » summarizes a minister. “Nothing indicated that this would be a Europeanist legislature, there was a lot of skepticism. And yet, when we go to Brussels, all ministers listen European Unity Speeches, large joint plans. Even Eurosceptic theory ministers are added. It is the effect that Trump has. Everything changes and you have to relocate. The PP is also forced, although we do not believe anything as long as it continues to agree the budgets with Vox. If you want to make a change of truth, you have to start by breaking with them. ”
Trump’s blow completely changes Spanish politics. He had already made his decision to leave Europe alone, threaten to withdraw the US military umbrella that has worked with great symbiosis since the end of World War II. That had already turned the debate in Europe and Forced to Sánchez to ensure that it will accelerate compliance with the commitment to reach 2% of GDP In defense spending. This same Tuesday the government will approve 2,000 million eurosmostly for armament.
The turn is radical throughout Europe, and no one can pretend that it does not exist. The PP, which in the first weeks after Trump’s possession He tried to continue in his national agendahas been forced to enter fully to get away from US president, which is currently toxic material for all European politicians. Even its closest allies, such as the Italian Giorgia Meloni, who was in the inauguration of the Republican, such as Santiago Abascal, make balances to say that tariffs are an « error » although « not a catastrophe. » And in Germany, a conservative government breaks with the austerity that the CDU always defended and Approve with social democrats and green a fund of 500,000 million for infrastructure, 100,000 of them for policies against climate change. A movement that contrasts radically with the PP and Vox agreement in the Valencian Community, for example.
In this context, the government believes that there is a great political opportunity because citizens are checking the disastrous effects in the US of a direct Vox ally government government. Sanchez returns not only to the framework that has best moved in these seven years, that is, the difficult moments in which he defends the use of the entire strength of the State to protect companies and workers, as announced on Thursday in La Moncloa. Also that of the July 2023 elections, in which he managed to mobilize to the left to prevent a PP government with Vox.
Therefore, and despite the fact that the Executive is negotiating this time from the first moment the 14,000 million plan with the PP, to which it has given preferential treatment, Sánchez and their ministers demand that the popular ones who take advantage of this Antitrump moment to break with Vox. In that line, Diana Morant, Minister of Science and leader of the Valencian Socialists moved on Saturday. « Either you are with the producers and with the EU or budgets are being agreed in the Valencian Community with Trump’s partners. What else does it have to happen in the world so that Mr. Feijóo breaks with the outrages and returns to the path of the European Popular Party? Or with Vox or with Europe, » he claimed.
In La Moncloa they are convinced that this will not happen. Feijóo needs Vox not only in autonomies and more than a hundred municipalities, but in the future to reach the government and will not break with them, they analyze. That is why they believe that this new tone of the PP only obeys that it knows that there is a huge social rejection of Trump’s measures and that the entrepreneurs themselves are pressing so that there is agreement. « Now the entire planet Earth is against Trump. But the PP would only be credible if I hit the table and say ‘I am even willing to lose the Valencian Community but I break with Trump’s partners’. Those are the decisions that change politics and that make you win, » says another minister. « Sánchez has done some of those. But Feijóo will not do it. It is not his style and has the pressure of Ayuso. They fail to shake the fear of that competition with Vox to see who is more anti -Chista. »
Other members of the Executive show their surprise for the strategic failure of Feijóo by not calculating that this time of tariffs was going to arrive and not having postponed the budget agreements with Vox for later, not right now when the entire focus is put on Trump, to which Abascal continues to defend.
In any case, in La Moncloa they are convinced that a “very presidential” stage is now coming, with a lot of prominence of Sánchez, which this week travels to Vietnam and China to launch a clear message that the world is much larger than Trump’s homeland and no one is going to stop while the great hegemonic power of the last 80 years is enclosed in itself. « It is the time of the European Council, of the governments, of the presidents, » says another minister. « Sánchez is winner in these debates. Feijóo cannot compete there. If the agenda is international, the president has no rival. »
The vision of the PP
In the PP, on the contrary, they believe that Sanchez will suffer at this time of international turbulence because it does not have a solid parliamentary majority to approve any draft measure and needs budgets that cannot be carried out. « Parliamentary precariousness will devour it, » the popular predict.
In the Feijóo party they stand out as an important moment to understand his tone the meeting of his vice -secretary Juan Bravo with the Minister of Economy. The popular ones were satisfied with the format of the meeting with body – in which they were given a preferential treatment, because they were summoned before the rest of the groups and alone – and perceived “sensitivity” of the minister to some of his requests, such as that of involving the autonomous communities in the elaboration of the plan to respond to the tariffs.
After that appointment, in the PP dome confirm its provision to an agreement with the government. « The PP is not going to be supported according to what measures, when they occur. It is true that our thesis is that when Sánchez fails his partners, he does not seek us; but in the case of a state issue, if the government explains them and we can contribute, this will not be a context in which we are going to exhibit hostility, » they explain in the popular leader’s cabinet. « The situation is caused by an exogenous factor, Trump, which compromises our productive sectors, and there is a great uncertainty of Spanish companies and workers. We are not a teenage party, » they argue in the PP, which has received these days many calls from very worried businessmen.
The popular make it clear that it is not a turning point in their relationship with the Sánchez government. In other matters of state, such as the increase in military spending that Brussels claims, the distance between the PP and Sánchez remains the same as until now. « Supporting a government in which a part wants to leave NATO is not simple for us, » they argue in Genoa.
Feijóo sees an opportunity in this context, in addition, to wear his main rival in the right, Vox, caught in the incoherence of defending Trump despite the fact that the tariffs will harm the Spanish economy. In the popular leader’s environment they claim to have internal surveys in which the Santiago Abascal party has begun to stop its growth, which He had shot after the Dana de Valencia and Trump’s arrival at the White House, following the American president attack scene to Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, in the oval office. And the PP expects that recoil now to the tariff crisis.
Feijóo has shot at Vox this week, accusing them of « antipatriots » for continuing to defend Trump. But, in parallel, the popular hope to close the budgetary agreements soon with the extreme right in several autonomous communities, such as Murcia and Aragon, despite the contradiction it supposes. In Genoa they believe, on the other hand, that they do not wear out those agreements in their electorate and, on the contrary, that the problem would have in the voters of the right if they only shake hands to the PSOE and break with Vox. Feijóo follows its road map to the letter, in which it tries to make compatible grow at the same time towards the center and to the radical right. In La Moncloa they believe, on the contrary, that it is still involved in an insurmountable contradiction, because you cannot be at the same time with vox and against Trump.
