• Cumbre Sánchez accuses Feijóo of "ignorance" and "insolvent" for accusing him of "paying homage to autocrats"
  • Cumbre Feijóo criticizes Sánchez for "paying homage to autocrats" and Moncloa calls him "ignorant": "Forget that here is the King"

While this Saturday Alberto Núñez Feijóo censured Pedro Sánchez for considering that "he paid homage to autocrats", coinciding with the celebration of the Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo, the President of the Government commented with the King moments of the appointment and both laughed in an accomplice way. In La Moncloa there is a major anger with the leader of the opposition for his attacks on the external image of Spain. Sanchez knows that this is a profile that has won the Galician, he feels comfortable and exploits it, but in the presidential complex they do not forgive that the PP seeks to damage the international image of Spain.

In Santo Domingo, Sánchez already arrived with a growing malaise, after Feijóo suggested from Brussels that he prefers the pension reform imposed by Emmanuel Macron, and that has generated a wave of protests and altercations, compared to that of Spain, agreed with the unions and the European Commission. In the Executive they consider that the leader of the PP "walked through the European Parliament like an elephant in a china shop." In the Government they increasingly use the trick of comparing Feijóo with Pablo Casado, arguing that the former popular leader did the same in Europe, but that the supposed aura of moderate of Feijóo did not glimpse that same line. In La Moncloa they also insist on the excellent relationship that Sánchez maintains with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, despite the fact that she belongs to the political family of the PP.

The leader of the PP, for his part, has accused the head of the Executive of wanting to "destroy" the opposition and of "manipulating" his words. Feijóo has thrown in the face of Sánchez to change his statements: Genoa has explained that he did not intend to criticize Sánchez's attendance at the summit, but that they referred to regimes such as Nicolás Maduro.

"It's funny, they have such a high democratic deficit that they want to destroy the opposition, they resent that we can talk, that we can give our opinion, they manipulate what we say. They change the meaning of our words and their fundamental objective is that there is no opposition in a democratic regime," said Feijóo, affirming that "the guarantee of democracy is the responsible opposition, not just an irresponsible government."

Meanwhile, in the Executive they do not stop remembering that in Europe now Spain has a role of relevance and Sánchez has led debates such as the reform of the energy market and opted for European funds... "A Spain with a voice in Europe", they remember from La Moncloa. Faced with the criticism of Feijóo in the Executive they contrast the image with the King and the Ibero-American countries, to which they add the agenda that Sánchez has as president of the Socialist International and that led him on Saturday to head the Forum of Progressive Governments with Ibero-American leaders, in which the president of Argentina also participated. Alberto Fernandez; that of Chile, Gabriel Boric; Colombia's Gustavo Petro; Portugal's Antonio Costa; the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro; the president of Bolivia, Luis Arce; and that of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, and Benedicta Lasi, Secretary General of the Socialist International, also attended.

That international agenda is an argument that the government opposes against Feijóo's criticism. Remember the photos of Aznar with Fidel Castro or that Mariano Rajoy, as president of the Government, also attended these Ibero-American summits, and that in 2010, when Zapatero did not go, he criticized him harshly. And the trip this week to China, at the invitation of Xi Jinping, and next week to Italy, to hold his first meeting with Giorgia Meloni, consider that it shows the "undoubted weight" of Sánchez. Or the last visit of the President of the Government to Ukraine, to visit Zelenski.

Faced with the criticism of the PP and its allusion to the "autocrats", in the Government they defend that Sánchez, as president of Spain, and also as the next president of the EU, must have as a "priority" the strengthening of relations with Latin America, but also with a country like Italy, despite the ideological distance that separates Sánchez from Meloni, for being a strategic partner. That the job as head of the Executive is to cultivate and strengthen relations with those in which there are political and economic interests.

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