The president of the PP Alberto Núñez Feijóo yesterday in Gernika defended “autonomism” as the political formula endorsed by the Constitution and tested during the last forty years of democracy in Spain. An all-out defense of autonomous Spain confronted by the “plurinational Spain” demanded by the Basque and Catalan independence parties willing to endorse Pedro Sanchez with a new investiture.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo framed his defense of “autonomism” in the Palacio de las Juntas of Gernika where the tree that symbolizes the Basque charters is located. The leader of the popular Basques participated in the event commemorating the 44th anniversary of the approval of a Statute that in Euskadi only the PP and the Basque PSOE celebrate. After presiding over an honorary aurresku and before listening to the official anthem of Euskadi, Feijóo called on his institutional and organic officials to “defend and practice autonomism.”
The leader of the PP wanted yesterday to “claim Basque autonomy” when the pro-independence parties raise their “minimum” demands to support an investiture of Pedro Sánchez but, at the same time, when the Basque PP itself faces the replacement of Carlos Iturgaiz by Javier de Andrés. Feijóo in Euskadi not only displayed his “constitutional Galicianism” but also praised the Statute of Gernika as a guarantee of respect for “one’s own identity”, “citizen coexistence” and its “inclusion in other political frameworks” like the Spanish Constitution.
Feijóo’s emphasis on “autonomism” as an instrument of political and social cohesion becomes one of the pillars of the PP’s argument in the face of Sánchez’s negotiations with Junts, ERC and EH Bildu, the independence partners that demand self-determination referendums and the amnesty for those accused of the Catalan separatist process. The leader of the PP described yesterday in the Basque Country as “ignonymy” that the political future of Spain could be in the hands of Arnaldo Otegi -whom he did not expressly mention- after the publication by EL MUNDO of the police documentation that links him to half a dozen kidnappings and one murder.
But, in addition, Feijóo wondered “what gesture has Bildu had with the victims of AND» or those that the independence parties have had with the «Catalans accused of demonstrating against» the process. “Neither the PP nor the Basque PP will ever leave these citizens alone,” Feijóo emphasized when remembering “victims” of terrorism and the political exclusion imposed in Catalonia and in the Basque Country.