Feijóo and Rajoy return to the square where their victories were forged and are confident: "We will win again and with more difference"
Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Mariano Rajoy are completely dedicated to the Galician campaign, in which they burst in with their own caravan to reach every corner of the community and ask for the vote for Alfonso Rueda's PP. As a starting signal, they went to what is now their “talisman” place, the Galicia bullring, in Pontevedra, which they attended for the first time 15 years ago, in February 2009, in Feijóo's first campaign.. The bipartisan coalition – a coalition of PSOE and BNG – then governed and, from the opposition, they filled the arena and then the elections. They repeated in the regional elections of 2012, 2016 and 2020, all with an absolute majority for the popular ones, and they wanted to return to “recharge their batteries” for this new campaign, convinced of a new victory: “We will win again and with more difference.”
“Alfonso, to this square, one enters as a candidate and leaves as president of the Xunta, I tell you,” Feijóo encouraged Rueda, his successor in the party and in the Xunta in what is his first campaign as a candidate.. For his part, Rajoy, after remembering that he has been active in the party for more than 40 years, added: “This bullring brings back the best memories for me.”
Rajoy dedicated one of his famous reflections to the bipartisan that governed in 2009. “They ruled here then. Sorry to say they ruled. Those that you remember were here then and, if you don't remember, it's the same because no one misses anything.”. He recalled that, after those regional elections in which they debuted in these bullrings “they stopped governing, they are still waiting; and what they have left…”. Then, the PP won and “that changed things a lot for Feijóo, for me, for the PP and also for Spain”. Then five more times came in general and municipal elections and also Rajoy's victory.. “Some say that it is a talisman for the PP and it is true,” he delved.
Feijóo focused his intervention in a Galician key, in which “Alfonso Rueda is the answer that Pedro Sánchez does not want to hear on February 18” and “Alfonso Rueda is the answer that nationalism does not want to hear on February 18”, but he did not forget of current state affairs and wanted to contrast Rueda's model with that of Sánchez in Spain, since “the Government of Spain is an embarrassment for Europe and that of Galicia is an example for Spain.”
Galician politics is, according to Feijóo, that of “honesty and sincerity”, in the face of the “shame” of Pedro Sánchez. “While Sánchez only looks out for his own interest, Rueda only looks out for the interest of Galicia,” he praised his candidate and successor, from the tranquility of a campaign in which he does not appear, but in which a lot is at stake, the future of his party.
“A Puigdemont with another name”
Galicia, Feijóo pointed out, “does not need a Puigdemont with another name here” and, however, Spain does need “more public servants like Alfonso Rueda”. Feijóo defended a PP Government “so that Galicia works” and did not hesitate to compare: “Less selfishness and more generosity. Less frivolity and posturing and more responsibility. Less sovereignty and more autonomy. Less fracture and more 'together'”. That's what these elections are about for the leader of the PP. “Less Sánchez and more Rueda” and even went so far as to state: “There are more reasons now than in July to vote for the PP.”
Rueda, for his part, also asked for a “massive vote” and “a boost for our absolute majority”, a comfortable victory for his party so that “the same thing that is happening in the Government of Spain” does not happen in Galicia.. The candidate for the this community “we want our model, which is the one that works”. A model that is a guarantee of “unity, respect, responsibility, normality, humility and effort.”
The auditorium was delivered, with 14,000 people according to PP sources, arriving in 200 buses and private cars from places as far away as Ortigueira, O Barco de Valdeorras or Ribadeo. Feijóo harangued them all, certain that “the answer is going to come out of here, with our batteries charged” and asked them: “Let's vote for Spain to follow the path that Galicia has always shown.”
“Let's vote for the nonconformity of always wanting to improve,” he asked them, warning that they cannot be carried away by the heat and confidence of the polls, despite the fact that all of them except those of the CIS of the socialist José Félix Tezanos guarantee him a fifth majority. consecutive absolute. And he defended the need to guarantee the Rueda Government so that “the friction and fragmentation of others” do not enter this land.
And he also sent a clear message in defense of continuity against the change that the left wants to promote.. “We ask for the vote so that no one comes to change us because we are what we want to be, we do not have any complexes.”