Ex in campaign: Aznar sabotages Casado, Zapatero plays at home and Rajoy is like that

Up to 37 times Zapatero was interrupted by applause in his 24-minute speech in the central act of the campaign. He played with an advantage: he was at home. “León is getting better and better and it is almost impossible because this is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe,” said the former president on one of the occasions in which a devoted public cut him off. The socialist has taken advantage of his participation to take advantage of one of the PSOE’s flags: the decentralization process, which began when he was in Moncloa and Sánchez has promised to continue. “In two years, it is my prediction, with the support of the Government and Tudanca, the trend of population loss will have been reversed as it happened from 2004 to 2011,” he said. Depopulation has been a fundamental issue for socialists, aware of the damage that some of the platforms of Empty Spain can do to them.

But Zapatero also participated in small visits to municipalities in El Bierzo in which he spoke about very specific issues in the area to make it clear that he knows it well. “You have to open clinics where they have been closed, you have to guarantee face-to-face attendance and you have to thoroughly renovate a hospital like the regional one in El Bierzo.” “The PP must say here in Castilla y León, in León, in El Bierzo, if it supports the decentralization of State agencies and the Board to the different provinces.” “Today Ponferrada has a permanent cultural offer (…). The Ponferrada hospital has to undergo an immediate transformation so that it is the same as the Madrid hospitals “… “For one day, for one vote, for one seat there will be a historical setback that begins in Castilla y León, with Vox in the Government”, he said in his last appearance, in Burgos, when the socialists take it for granted that the only option that the PP has is to govern with the extreme right And that works in your favor.

And it was precisely Vox that was hidden in the appearances of Aznar and Rajoy, as it has been in the background throughout the PP campaign. But they demonstrated, once again, a different way of facing the competition that has come from the (extreme) right. Aznar’s FAES burst into the middle of the campaign to demand more harshness from Casado and recommend that he “learn” from what has happened to his party in Portugal, where he considers that “the friendly opposition has been punished without mercy.” Meanwhile, Rajoy claimed that people “are fed up with extremists, radicals, polarization, division and anger.” “People want a government that takes things seriously. The PP is a moderate party that wants tranquility, stability and certainty,” he said Thursday at an event in León, where he recalled that he had lived for ten years. “I came out like this because I lived in León for ten years.” Nobody knows what that means. But Rajoy is like that.

Rajoy presented Mañueco as an “adult politician”, which is what he causally claims in his new book, and the PP as a “serious party” and “not a gang of buddies who found a party.” Although he raised the flag of certainty and stability, it was Mañueco who unilaterally broke with Ciudadanos and called the elections a year ahead of time. “The PP is the only moderate party that is in a position to continue governing,” said the former president, who in addition to going for a “walk” to the city where he lived as a child, went to ask his own to go vote : “The others are going to vote and if you don’t vote, someone else will vote for you.”

Aznar also rehearsed his questionable comic version, but the one who didn’t like it at all was Casado. “We are going to win and we have to win. There are many times that I hear people say that we have to win so that I don’t know who gets to Moncloa or not, so that I don’t know who gets to the palace of I don’t know how many or to the convent of I don’t know what” . Hey, you win to do what”, asked the former president, who replied that “you win to build”. In the battle between Genoa and Puerta del Sol, however, everything is read in an internal key. But while he warned his that the debate could not be reduced to the battle to “get to Moncloa” Aznar recognized that it was in Valladolid where “almost everything or very important things” began, referring to himself and his conquest of the presidency of the Government. a united party, a strong, winning party, here a national, reformist, centered alternative was conceived, triumphant in the face of an outdated and failed socialism, and here a transformative project was conceived for Castilla y León first and for all of Spain later”, he assured.

Another contradictory message to the one he had sent to Genoa was asking for the vote in Castilla y León to wear Sánchez down: “Every vote that goes to the left is a vote that objectively serves to consolidate this coalition or whatever you want to call it, that Spain has to put up with it and that we Spaniards should not put up with it for one more moment or one more election”. “This government likes trashy liberals, trashy progressives with a ponytail or trashy hair,” he said, referring to Pablo Iglesias and the United We Can candidate in the region, Pablo Fernández. Despite claiming everything that began decades ago with his mandate in Castilla y León, he did not say anything concrete. Rajoy did mention the AVE. “Castilla y León has never been, nor is it, nor will it be to satisfy the populists and their lies. Castilla y Léon has not been, is not, nor will it be to satisfy any secessionist or anyone who wants to break the unity of Spain,” he said.

But Aznar, who was also not short on applause in Valladolid, where he began his political career. He really woke up the audience when he pulled ETA out of the hat. “We don’t like his government and we have to ask him who likes his government. It’s a question I have. I don’t know if it’s better to ask Sánchez to do something or not to do anything,” he said to finish off by saying that he does like it ” to those who are happy that he has led Spain to international irrelevance”, “to the secessionists, to those who struck a blow against the Constitution, against freedom and against Spain, to those who were later pardoned so that they prepare to give the next coup” and “those of Bildu in which those who previously ordered the killing of a terrorist gang are in charge, which is the same thing in this case”. “We are not going to accept any more blackmail or that they are former terrorist partners of the Government of Spain,” Aznar exclaimed to applause.

That is indeed the message that Casado likes, who also got a big smack from Rajoy, who in order to vindicate himself recognized that the Government’s labor reform “has changed practically nothing of what the PP did and that it got create 500,000 jobs each year. Will he be happy that he has gotten ahead thanks to a PP parliamentarian? “There was poetic justice, the workers won, social dialogue, employment, the dignity of the most humble. Spain won and the P, P lost,” was Zapatero’s reading.

And it has been in the Castilla y León campaign that he has broken in for the first time as former Pablo Iglesias, who continues to mark the line in Podemos, although Yolanda Díaz does not always agree, who succeeded him in the Vice Presidency of the Government. The former vice president acknowledged that now that he is not in politics he can “tell the truth” and those who did not sit well with his interventions went to the Socialists, whom he took the opportunity to poke at in his two campaign appearances for approaching the right to agree on the reform labor and for the position with respect to Ukraine. But in the campaigns the political game is understood and the exes are also forgiven.