Sánchez challenges Feijóo to six face-to-face debates until the elections, one per week

After a first shock and a week to digest the electoral defeat of the regional and municipal elections, Pedro Sánchez has presented this Monday the guidelines of his electoral campaign and among them is a movement to put pressure on the PP and above all to raise the issue of the framework of the plebiscite against the president in which the municipal ones were transformed. The PSOE leader wants a crossover campaign with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP candidate, and for this he offers up to six face-to-face debates between now and the elections, one per week. He so he has proposed it in his intervention in a conference organized by eldiario.es at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, in Madrid. The problem with this strategy is that it depends on Feijóo, who, since he is a favorite, will want at all costs to avoid debates in which he runs many risks.

Sánchez explained that he is willing to hold six face-to-face meetings in six large media outlets, and in addition to other four-person debates if Sumar and Vox are considered, the two forces fighting for third place. In Spain, since the Congress was fragmented in 2015, face-to-face debates have disappeared. The last one was precisely that year, between Mariano Rajoy and Pedro Sánchez. The president maintains that with the current data ―among them the 40dB survey. for EL PAÍS published this Monday― which show a greater concentration of votes in the two big parties, it is evident that there are only two people with a real chance of being president: Feijóo and Sánchez. And that is why we must return to face to face and also in an unprecedented number, up to six. The maximum in Spain has been two, but nothing has been assessed, there were several years with only one debate and some with none, because the PP, when it was a favorite in 1996 with José María Aznar, did not want to debate Felipe González. The big problem with this issue is that, unlike other countries, there is nothing regulated. Pedro Sánchez is willing to force and even look for Feijóo’s empty chair if he does not dare to debate, and challenges him to do so next Monday. Moncloa already has four debate proposals on the table and hopes to have more.

Along the same lines of seeking contrast with Feijóo, who in La Moncloa sees, according to the polls, as a weak candidate, who needs mobilization around anti-Sanchism because he has no strength of his own, Sánchez has insisted that he openly rejects the framework that is being proposed by the PP of “Sánchez or Spain”. That is why he has started his intervention. “The PP repeats the slogan of Vox, or Sánchez or Spain. It is dangerous. It is to accuse all PSOE voters of being anti-Spanish. In other words, if one is Spanish, he can only vote for one option. PP and Vox have their way of loving Spain. The rest of Spaniards have our way of loving Spain. All the ballots are from Spaniards, each one wants the best for their country”, explained Sánchez, who stressed that the PSOE is precisely “the only party that has the word Spain in its acronym”. “Another thing is that we each have an idea of ​​Spain. We believe that the best Spain is the one that saves Doñana, the one that protects the Mar Menor, the one that leads renewable energies, the one that does not shy away from problems as Rajoy did. The one that protects the elderly, revalues ​​pensions. The one that creates employment with rights. Where growth is shared. The one that builds its unity on respect for diversity. What is the real choice? The choice is clear, either Sánchez or Feijóo, or Feijóo or Sánchez. There are only two possible presidents. It is still curious that a party does not even mention its leader in its slogan and does mention its rival”, the president concluded.