In the final stretch of the campaign, the PP will deploy a strategy aimed at dismantling the moderation of its main rival at the polls, Ana Pontón, a “wolf in sheep's clothing”, as defined by those closest to Alberto Núñez Feijóo.. The BNG candidate, with almost 20 years of experience in Galician politics, has equaled Alfonso Rueda in rating, surpassing him in cases such as that of the CIS. Neither in Genoa nor in the PPdeG are oblivious to the strength with which the Bloc is surfing the campaign. “Is Pontoon strong? Yes. No one can deny that,” conclude different voices from the national leadership.. That is why there are sectors that urge both Feijóo and Rueda to stop shooting Pedro Sánchez in the remainder of the campaign.. With José Ramón Gómez Besteiro “about to crash”, the only objective should be the nationalists.

The image of transversality and the moderate verb of Ana Pontón, the BNG candidate for the Xunta next 18-F, has little to do with the letter of the formation's electoral program. The document includes clearly pro-independence demands such as the right to self-determination or that the decisions of the Constitutional Court have no effect in Galicia, in line with the approaches of Bildu or ERC, parties with which the Bloc participated in coalition in the last European elections.. In the nearly 200 pages it proposes the creation of an economic agreement like the Basque one for the design of its own taxation, banishing Spanish from schools or having the capacity to veto decisions of the central Administration that are detrimental to the region..

Alfonso Rueda picks up the gauntlet and will also attack the duality of the BNG in the remainder of the campaign. In Monday's electoral debate, Alfonso Rueda also reproached Pontón for his links with ERC and Bildu, with whom they participated in alliance in the 2019 European elections.. “I'm not going to allow it. The BNG was, is and will be against ETA,” the nationalist candidate defended herself when the president of the Xunta recalled that the Block was one of the parties that shared a banner with Bildu in a demonstration in favor of the prisoners of the terrorist group. last January.

One of the arguments that Rueda has used throughout the campaign is that the Bloc is nothing more than a “branch of the independence movement.”. In the popular leadership, a new term was coined to refer to their maximum rival at the polls: “Bildu Nacionalista Galego”. “One of the reasons why I ran for office is to prevent my autonomous community from being presided over by the BNG.. The Bildu model, the Esquerra Republicana model and others transferred to Galicia. “I put my hands on my head,” Rueda defended at the beginning of the year in an interview in El Confidencial..

For his part, Feijóo has also begun to delve into this strategy. The leader of the PP has installed his headquarters in Galicia these weeks to lend a hand in his successor's campaign and follow in the wake of absolute majorities that he himself inaugurated in 2009. Beyond the messages in a national key, with the amnesty as key to the vault, Feijóo will focus on exposing the weaknesses of the BNG. “Who rules the party is the UPG [Unión do Povo Galego]. And, if they have not modified the statutes, the UPG continues to be a Marxist-Leninist party,” he stressed this Friday on EsRadio. The leader of the BNG comes from the aforementioned formation, with a communist matrix and still the majority in the Bloc.

The president of the popular parties did not stop there, and insisted on comparing the BNG with Bildu and ERC. “They went to demonstrate with the ETA prisoners. Now they hide, and do not want to talk about the matter. In their electoral program they talk about the imposition of one of the two official languages in Galician schools. And they also say no. Are these gentlemen sovereignists? Yeah. Are they going to propose a referendum? They have it in their program,” stressed the Galician leader, with a basic message: if the BNG governs, Galicia will be in the same situation of “fracture” as Euskadi and, above all, Catalonia..

Pontón's image is the best asset that the BNG plays with, which has reduced the size of its initials on the electoral posters and has left all the prominence to the candidate, boosted thanks to the space conquered from the PSOE and after having put an end to the tides. Pontón has been able to penetrate a society that is more Galician than nationalist, but its electoral program leaves no room for doubt and can clash with a wide spectrum of society.. The training defines four strategic objectives and the second aims to build “a Galicia that is stronger and prouder of its identity, reinforcing the decision-making capacity of Galicians, advancing our recognition as a nation and our self-government.”.

Galician “nation building”

Under the title A country that is master of itself, the first axis into which the program is divided concentrates some of the most profound and significant proposals for that Galician “nation building” advocated by the Block.. The BNG's main proposal regarding self-government involves an update of the Statute of Autonomy, the only one along with the Basque Statute that has not been reformed, which includes “the recognition of the right to self-determination”. For the BNG, the State of the autonomies does not recognize Galicia as a “political subject” and with “real decision-making capacity” on issues such as the economy, territorial organization, social, cultural or linguistic model..

“This should be one of the great debates in Galicia, as it is already being at the state level,” defends the program. It is one of the maxims that all nationalist parties have put on the table, once parliamentary arithmetic has made them essential for Pedro Sánchez.. The idea is the same that the leader of Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, has expressed on numerous occasions, and that the PNV managed to include in the investiture agreement, that of negotiating a new Statute that includes national recognition, in this case of Euskadi..

The BNG program also advocates a “new attitude towards the linguistic question, which is reflected in the real recognition of the language”. The objective is to guarantee “the right to use our language at all times and everywhere, also in all institutions”. The document goes one step further and includes the promise of repealing the law that regulates multilingualism in non-university education and developing a new standard that guarantees “total linguistic normalization” through an education “entirely in Galician.”.

The Block also defends a “review of the central institutions with influence in Galicia”, in such a way that the community has the capacity to “veto” on those issues that “relevantly affect the interests of our country”, as well as a ” reformulation of the Constitutional Court” so that the decisions of the guarantee body are left without effect on autonomy. The list of proposals also includes the “direct presence of Galicia in European and international institutions”, the suppression of the provinces and the “full and exclusive” assumption of powers in matters of public and road safety.. That is, create its own autonomous police.

BNG's dangerous friendships

The ties between the BNG, Bildu and ERC are not new. The three parties participated together in the 2019 European elections.. It was the formula that they also used in 2009, but that failed in 2014. Five years ago, they presented themselves as “the voice of stateless nations”. Pontón, representing the Bloc, was one of those in charge of presenting the coalition. Furthermore, it is not unusual for the three parties to operate together in the Congress of Deputies.. Last October they signed a joint declaration to attack the monarchy and the Constitution coinciding with the swearing-in of Princess Leonor.

It has not been the only significant movement of the entente. If Junts sought the support of the PNV to, as soon as the legislature began, register two investigative commissions, one on the 17-A attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils and another on the so-called Operation Catalonia, ERC had the support of Bildu and the BNG. The Republicans presented a commission on Pegasus with the signatures of the Bloc and the nationalist left. The joint action of the three was also a common trend during the last legislature. Among others, BNG, Bildu and ERC voted against the labor reform, one of the star measures of the coalition Executive and which went ahead due to the error committed by the PP deputy Alberto Casero in the vote on the norm..