Among other things, the electoral campaign in Spain revolves around, in its penultimate bars, around an almost philosophical debate on what is truth and lie. All as a result of an interview by Alberto Núñez Feijóo on TVE this Monday in which he repeatedly stated that the Rajoy government “had always revalued pensions”.

Although the mess, really, starts from a nuance that he added to that sentence: “According to the CPI”. This Tuesday, the popular candidate has accepted the error: “I do not lie, and if I say something that is not correct, it is not the result of a lie but of inaccuracy”. In an interview in Espejo Público, he has admitted that “there were years in which pensions were not updated according to the CPI.”

Said which, Feijóo has added: “I have accepted the inaccuracy immediately, because I do not like that the lie is installed; we have to rectify”. Later, he has contrasted his resounding slip, which the PSOE has elevated to the axis of the campaign, with the word of his adversary, Pedro Sánchez: “In my opinion, he does not distinguish the truth from the lie.”

Once the wrong was considered buried, the leader of the popular has once again clamored for truth in politics during another moment of his television appearance: “A good leader has to tell the truth to the people”. In this sense, it has vindicated the importance of “traceability”.

Asked about his main asset against the President of the Government, Feijóo has especially praised one: “I have been dedicated to the management of public affairs for 30 years”. On the other hand, he recalled that Sánchez “has only been an opposition councilor in the Madrid City Council” before arriving at Moncloa.

Regarding the final stretch of the campaign and the electoral result, the popular candidate has taken the victory of his party for granted: “It seems that he is going to get more seats and more votes than the PSOE” and has once again insisted on the main idea- strength that he left in his interview with EL ESPAÑOL: “I will call the PSOE to facilitate the investiture.”

In this sense, he has again marked distances with Vox: “I have nothing to do with that game”. And he has criticized that the green formation shows that it has “coinciding interests” with the PSOE. “What would the PSOE do without Vox, would it be left without an electoral campaign?”, he asked himself before explaining his theory on the distribution of votes and the disservice that, in his opinion, Vox does to the PP in some constituencies.

Apart from this, Feijóo has recalled for the umpteenth time that his main obsession is to govern alone. Because, in his opinion, “coalitions at this time are not the best for the country”. And to depend on Santiago Abascal, the popular candidate has once again entrusted himself to a “very powerful majority.”

The main leaders of the PP believe that it is possible to reach 165 seats. In fact, it is the goal set by Genoa to avoid any kind of coalition. Because “now it is more difficult to have an absolute majority,” Feijóo has acknowledged. Many factors influence, such as the presence of other parties in Congress, such as ERC or Bildu.

In any case, the popular ones continue to think that the current scenario has certain similarities with what happened in Andalusia a year ago. This is how Feijóo stressed today: “If we concentrate the vote of all those who want Sanchismo and the independence movement to stop governing, a very powerful majority can be achieved.”

The Murcian electorate moves on an ideological scale of “center right”. This is the conclusion of the pre-election survey carried out by Cemop of the University of Murcia and where it is predicted that the Popular Party will get more seats in the Murcian community constituency than in the 2019 general elections, while PSOE and Vox will drop in seats -Regarding the appointment with the polls four years ago-.

Cemop advances a victory for the PP on July 23 because “the candidate to preside over the government of Spain that provokes the most sympathy or support among the citizens of the Region of Murcia is Alberto Núñez Feijóo”. Specifically, the survey underlines that “for 33.5% of the people interviewed, Alberto Núñez Feijóo is the candidate they would like to be the next president of the Government of Spain.”

Such results have led the president of the popular Murcians, Fernando López Miras, to appeal to the “useful vote” to “avoid a blockade by a PP government” in Moncloa. At the end of the open board of directors held in Cehegín, López Miras warned that “it is possible that Vox will vote with Podemos, the Catalan separatists and Bildu to prevent the Popular Party from governing.”

The poll by the Murcian Center for Public Opinion Studies (Cemop) was carried out between July 3 and 13, after conducting 1,200 interviews, from which it can be deduced that Alberto Núñez Feijóo's PP will obtain 4 to 5 seats in the district of Murcia, compared to the 3 that it achieved in the last general. For its part, Pedro Sánchez's PSOE oscillates from 2 to 3 seats, despite the fact that in the last electoral appointment it obtained 3, and Vox “would reduce its representation in relation to 2019, by achieving 2 seats.”

The political candidacy of Yolanda Díaz with Sumar will save the furniture in Murcian territory with a seat. The results of Cemop also deny the theory of the demobilization of the electorate that is being circulated by some parties, having called the appointment with the polls in July, since the survey reveals that four out of five Murcians will go to the polls ” safely”.

However, the survey shows that 17.2% of the population of the Region of Murcia has not yet decided on their vote: “And of these, 21.4% doubt between the Popular Party and the PSOE, 18.2 % between PP and Vox and 16.6% between PSOE and Sumar”.

All of this has led López Miras to insist on asking for the “useful vote” next Sunday: ” The only guarantee for the Popular Party to have a sufficient majority and not depend on anyone and ensure a strong government alone is voting for Alberto Núñez Feijóo”.

The popular leader argues that the arrival of Feijóo to Moncloa will mean ” maintenance” of the Tajo-Segura Transfer or “fair financing” because the current model that provides funds to the autonomous communities will be reviewed. “The Spaniards want political change and want a serious, rigorous and solvent government with a president like Feijóo. In the Region of Murcia we are playing a lot”.

Yolanda Díaz: “I know Feijóo. He's a compulsive liar.”. Félix Bolaños: “If we remove Feijóo's cloak of lies, it comes to nothing. lie mercilessly”. Five days before the general elections, the coalition government raises its tone and comes out in a storm against the PP candidate, whom all the polls, except the CIS barometer led by José Félix Tezanos, show as the winner of 23-J.

The leader of Sumar and second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, has accused Feijóo of “making politics an art of lying”, as, according to her, she has been doing in Galicia for years – “she is used to” – before giving the jump to the leadership of the PP. “Yesterday we saw live and direct a candidate for the presidency who lies without shame,” Díaz criticized during an interview on RNE. “I have friends who vote for the PP who were embarrassed yesterday, they don't want us to lie,” she said. “We do not know of a political proposal for Mr. Feijóo.”

Almost at the same time, and on the microphones of another station, Onda Cero, the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, also charged against Feijóo in front of the journalist Carlos Alsina. “It is a clamor that lies without moving a muscle on his face, we saw it yesterday on TVE,” he said.

[General elections 23-J: last minute on 23-J]

Feijóo, “ultra-right”

Both Bolaños and Díaz refer to the interview that the popular candidate gave yesterday to the La Hora de La 1 program on Spanish Television, where he said that the PP had always raised pensions according to the CPI and insisted on it when the presenter, Silvia Intxaurrondo, accused him of giving false information and asked him to rectify. Then Feijóo qualified his statements by pointing out that “the PP raised pensions every year” without linking that rise to inflation.

Feijóo himself has admitted this Tuesday that during his appearance on TVE he committed “an inaccuracy” about pensions and the CPI, although he has defended that he did not lie in the debate, contrary to what Pedro Sánchez does in his opinion. “I have accepted the inaccuracy immediately because I do not like lies to be installed in Spanish politics (…) and if I say something that is not correct it is not the result of a lie, but of inaccuracy, and also I rectify it because I think it is good,” he argued in an interview with Espejo Público on Antena 3.

For Díaz, Feijóo's “inaccuracy” on TVE marks a before and after in the electoral campaign. a turning point. In Bolaños's opinion, Feijóo has been “lying” for weeks, also in the face-to-face with Sánchez, where the PP leader, in his opinion, “smeared everything with merciless lies”. For the minister, PP and Vox “are the same” because Feijóo “has gone far to the right” by “using far-right techniques”, that is, “lies, hoaxes, like what he said about voting by mail.”

“They embrace the right where they govern, reducing women's rights,” Bolaños criticized, something that does not happen in other European countries, he added. “Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen do not meet with the extreme right because they are a threat to democracy.”

Likewise, Bolaños has despised the “new Moncloa pacts” that Feijóo proposes to seal in the new legislature that opens after 23-J. “In addition to lying, Feijóo cultivates cynicism”, he has asserted, since from the Government of Pedro Sánchez “we proposed 11 pacts and he did not accept any”. “To that document”, in reference to the agreements that Feijóo wants to promote, “I give the same value as to his word: none.”

Bolaños' cheer for 23-J

Asked about the polls, which give victory to the PP, Bolaños wanted to downplay the importance because “they are still predictions”. “In the last 30 years, the demographic consensus has almost never been right,” he lamented. “The polls have had an error of 20 seats, always against the PSOE, estimating the PSOE below,” he complained.

Despite what the polls say, the head of the Presidency has been convinced that the PSOE will win the elections and has even dared to cheer on the results. According to his forecast, the PSOE will win the elections and obtain between 135 and 150 seats, while the PP will remain with between 115 and 120 deputies.

“It is what they deserve and what we deserve,” Bolaños has resolved, who has denounced the polls, because “they do not stop being predictions” and, in his opinion, in the last 30 years, they have given an error of more than 25 seats, “almost always against the Socialist Party.”

A few days before 23J, the Spanish will have to go to the polls to choose the next candidate for La Moncloa coinciding with the summer holidays. As a novelty, the Central Electoral Board has exempted citizens who had a contracted trip before the announcement of the electoral call from being part of the electoral table.

The day chosen to celebrate the general elections in Spain was July 23, coinciding with the beginning of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU. This preview of the electoral process provides for an increase in voting by mail among citizens who will be away from their usual address.

As a result of the electoral process in July, many voters wonder why the general elections are held during the month preferred by citizens to go on vacation. Next, we tell you what it is due to.

The reason why the elections are held on July 23

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, brought forward the general elections in Spain to July 23, after the electoral defeat of the PSOE on 28-M. Therefore, the advancement of the elections has as a precedent the victory of the Popular Party in the majority of the Autonomous Communities and in the big cities in the last municipal and autonomous elections.

The deadline for the celebration of this electoral process in Spain was December 10, 2023. With the advance of the elections, Sánchez has assumed “the results” of 28-M in which the PP took control of seven of the 12 communities where there were elections.

[Can someone else pick up my ballot by mail in the general election?]

These electoral results clarify the disappearance of Ciudadanos and the collapse of Podemos, which has ceased to have representation in Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, the Canary Islands, Valencia and Cantabria.

“I have made this decision in view of the results of the regional and municipal elections. Many socialist presidents and mayors with impeccable management are going to be displaced, even despite seeing their support increase. These institutions will be governed by the PP and Vox,” said the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, in a brief appearance at La Moncloa.

Have elections ever been held in summer?

The electoral appointment with the polls during the summer has already taken place on two occasions. In this sense, these events have taken place during two electoral processes in democracy.

The first general elections in Spain that were held in the summer were in 1986. On this occasion, the general elections were held on June 22 and in these elections the PSOE won with almost nine million votes.

The next time general elections were held in Spain during the summer was in 2016. The celebration of this electoral process took place on June 26 and was due to the fact that after the Cortes did not invest any candidate, they proceeded to call a new appointment with the polls.

[What are the key dates of the electoral calendar for the 23J general elections?]

On this occasion, the winner of these general elections was the PP with Mariano Rajoy as candidate for the presidency of the Government, who surpassed the leader of the socialists, Pedro Sánchez. Almost two years after this event, Pedro Sánchez came to power after a motion of no confidence against the leader of the popular.

After the dissolution of the Cortes Generales, voters will decide on July 23 the next president of Spain.

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has stood up to the 33 Latin American leaders who traveled to Brussels for the summit between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and with whom he was going to hold a gala dinner. He has done it to attend a party rally in Huesca in which he has attacked Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

The socialist candidate has taken advantage of the mistake that Feijóo had this Monday in an interview on TVE, in which he assured that the PP had always voted in favor of revaluing pensions according to the CPI. That statement is not true, although Feijóo has insisted on it on several occasions during the interview, and he had to correct it later on Twitter, although by then his scuffle with the journalist Silvia Intxaurrondo had already gone viral.

“He does not tell the truth or the doctor,” said Sánchez in Huesca. “The truth is that the PP and Vox have systematically voted against revaluing pensions,” he added, recalling that Feijóo went to the European Commission to say that the last reform addressed by the Government was “an error.”

[Sánchez plants Latin American leaders at the Brussels dinner for a rally in Huesca]

“Not a single vote can remain at home so that the lies of the PP with Vox lose [the elections],” the president insisted. “On 23-J we have to choose between those who have been working day and night to protect the people and those who, for four years, the only thing they have done is destroy, destroy and destroy,” he added.

In a similar line, the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, has pronounced. He has attacked Feijóo and has said that “by lying and hiding he is hiding even his sailor friends from us,” he added, referring to the photograph of Feijóo on a yacht with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado in 1995.

Brussels, Huesca, San Sebastian

The rally this Monday has been practically improvised. In fact, it was announced this Sunday together with the one that Sánchez will give tomorrow in San Sebastián. To go to him, the president had to travel from Brussels, a city to which he will return this Tuesday to follow the summit, and from which he will later leave for the Basque city.

It is a coming and going that aims to get some deputies in provinces where the Socialists see that there are seats in dispute. According to his calculations, there are deputies who will decide on 23-J by a handful of votes, and they are reinforcing their presence in those provinces, calling impromptu rallies by Sánchez to try to make the currency fall in their favor.

[Sánchez returns to the rallies to fight the most disputed seats and will start with Cantabria]

The importance that Sánchez attaches to events such as the one in Huesca can be seen in the fact that he decided to stand up to the leaders of LATAM at the gala dinner that took place in the Belgian capital at 7:00 p.m., and to which he had announced that he would attend , until he canceled it because of the rally, which was held at 8:00 p.m.

Sánchez had prepared the summit between the European Union and CELAC as one of the most important events of the Spanish presidency of the Council. It had been eight years since such a summit had been held and the objective is for both blocs to meet again and for Spain to claim itself as a bridge between Europe and Latin America.

In fact, on her last visit to Madrid, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that there were “many things at stake” in this summit and pointed to Spain as a fundamental actor to strengthen relations between the two shores. of the Atlantic.

In Moncloa they try to minimize the impact of Sánchez's decision. Although it is held during the Spanish presidency, the direction of that summit corresponds to the head of the European Council, Charles Michel, who is the host of the gala dinner.

“We have been working for more than a year. I will be present at all the formal acts. And in the informal ones, all the leaders fully understand that we are five days away from the general elections and that, therefore, I am going to make this extra effort to go to Huesca, to return at dawn and tomorrow to be here again with all the Latin American and European leaders”, Sánchez had justified himself this Monday when he reached the summit.

The municipal land that the City Council of Cáceres must transfer to build the giant Buddha has a value of 472,393.10 euros. This is stated in the extensive documentation on the project to which EL ESPAÑOL has had access.

Its official name is Plot 144 of Polygon 23. It is located next to the so-called Cerro Arropé (or Monte Arropé) and has an extension of more than 111 hectares.

Various municipal reports, consulted by this newspaper, confirm that, currently, “there are no municipal actions on it” nor “any economic exploitation of this asset is exercised”. It is a rural and non-developable land, for agricultural use, about 4.7 kilometers from the city center.

However, as indicated by a technical opinion, the entire farm is located within a ZEPA zone (acronym for Special Protection Zone for Birds), which is forcing the town council of Cáceres to re-evaluate the project and study ways of overcome pitfalls like this.

The farm is also part of the Natura 2000 Network. Each of its hectares has a value of 4,237 euros, so the total value exceeds 472,000 euros.

[The political relay stops the construction of the 47-meter Buddha in Cáceres: “It will not be done without guarantees”]

However, the installation of the statue of the Great Buddha, weighing 3,500 kilos and 47 meters high, would be environmentally viable and would not affect the limitations imposed on the land by its ZEPA status.

However, the recently elected new mayor, Rafael Mateos, from the PP, demands that the project be carried out “in its entirety”. That is to say, that not only the enormous statue be built, but the rest of the facilities that should surround the enormous figure: a monastery that will house Buddhist monks and part of the relics of Buddha, an interpretation center, gardens that mix oriental vegetation with La Extremadura, a craft shop... Otherwise, the City Council would stop supporting the project.

And so Mateos conveyed it to the members of the Nepali delegation that several days ago visited the city of Extremadura, a World Heritage Site since 1986.

The delegation was made up of several members of the Government of the Asian country and the mayor of Lumbini, the hometown of Buda. Also, representatives of the Lumbini Garden Foundation, one of the promoters of the project and which set out to raise some 20 million euros from private donations to cover it.

The Nepali delegation asked Mateos to “expedite” the construction of the Big Buddha. For his part, the PP councilor insisted that they will demand “transparency and guarantees” and “that the project be fully executed.” “Cáceres does not want to be left alone with the statue,” stressed the mayor.

There is still no date for the Plenary Session of the City Council to be held in which the transfer of the farm to the Lumbini Garden Foundation should be approved. The assignment would be “temporary and free” for a maximum period of 30 years.

A legal report from the City Council warns that certain bureaucratic obstacles “should be resolved and clarified” before agreeing to the transfer. The approval of the Junta de Extremadura is also required.

“We want to proceed with caution”

According to the most recent data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Cáceres has a population of about 95,000 inhabitants.. It was the previous municipal team, from the PSOE, who chose the farm that must be ceded for the installation of the enormous figure. As planned, it would be the largest seated Buddha statue in the world.

“We want to be cautious and have guarantees,” Mateos, recently installed in the City Council, told EL ESPAÑOL by phone last Friday. “That the project be carried out as a whole, in its entirety,” stressed the new councilor, who assumes that it is a plan as exotic as it is complex and ambitious. “Cáceres does not want to be left alone with the statue,” he stressed.

Mateos also remains in his idea that the construction “does not cost money to the people of Cáceres”, beyond the transfer of the municipal property.

“When we are confirmed that the land is capable of hosting the project and the Lumbini Foundation guarantees that it continues and that they confirm that they have those commitments, then go ahead, but always the complete complex,” explained the new councilor. by phone to EL ESPAÑOL.

Thanks to this project, Cáceres is now a “sister city” with Lumbini, the birthplace of Buda and from which the foundation takes its name. In fact, both cities are part of the list of World Heritage Sites , recognition granted by Unesco.

The Junta de Extremadura, when it was chaired by the socialist Guillermo Fernández-Vara, also gave its endorsement to these constructions. In fact, the leader was invited to visit Nepal, but only the previous mayor of Cáceres, the socialist Luis Salaya, attended. After the trip, the Great Buddha was presented at the Extremadura stand at the Fitur 2020 Fair.

The exotic project fell to Cáceres after the political relief in Madrid frustrated the aspirations of the Lumbini Foundation. In 2019, after José Luis Martínez Almeida became mayor of the capital — replacing the leftist Manuela Carmena — the PP team refused to welcome the giant statue in the capital.

Moncloa and the PSOE have launched to use the errors of Alberto Núñez Feijóo about the increase in pensions in the stage of Mariano Rajoy to try to undermine the credibility of the PP candidate.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo began the final stretch of his campaign this Monday with a solemn speech, from the Moncloa Lighthouse, the Madrid viewpoint, in which he proposed new “Moncloa pacts”. In total, he put on the table five agreements to be ratified during the next legislature with a PSOE that the leadership of the Popular Party assumes that it will no longer have Pedro Sánchez at the helm.

Pedro Sánchez returns to rallies in the last days of the campaign. The PSOE leader had designed a strategy with a large presence in the media, but with few public events. However, the President of the Government will now focus his efforts on the provinces in which up to 14 seats are at stake on 23-J.

The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal filed by the Spanish Police Confederation (CEP) against the royal decree of October 11, 2022, which approved the Regulation of Selective Processes and Training of the National Police.