Spain. PP and PSOE start campaign focused on Ceuta and housing

Othe two largest Spanish parties, PP and PSOE, today hold the first campaign rallies for the early elections of November 29, which want to focus on Ceuta and immigration (people) and housing (socialists).

The President of the Popular Party (PP, right), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and Prime Minister in office, Pedro Sánchez, scheduled rallies for this Saturday, the first who will make candidates in the elections of 29 September.

Feijóo will be in Madrid today, after having symbolically launched the pre-campaign on Wednesday with a trip to Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in North Africa where at the end of July more than 70,000 people entered illegally, with thousands remaining in the city.

Ceuta “is the symptom of the decline, corruption and lie in which the country plunged” with the management of Sánchez, said Feijóo in Ceuta, stressing that the city was the destination of its “first move as a candidate” and will be “the first dossier on the table of the Council of Ministers” if the PP reaches the Government.

Feijóo considered that “Ceuta did not recover normality” and the only solution is that “the 15,000 people who invaded the city illegally” at the end of July and continue in the enclave leave Spain.

Sánchez will be in Dos Hermanas in Seville today, a municipality considered a PSOE fief, which has ruled the town in absolute majority since 1983.

The leader of the PSOE and Prime Minister called early elections on Monday after the parliament had ‘sucked’ measures for housing with which the Government had advanced in the face of continuous demonstrations with thousands of people on the streets triggered by the eviction of the elderly Maricarmen Abascal on 23 September.

Sánchez launched the pre-campaign early on Tuesday, when the Council of Ministers again approved the housing decrees 'drummed' by the plenary of Members. With Parliament dissolved, the diplomas will now be voted by a permanent committee of parliament, where the parties who voted against no longer have a majority.

“If the majority of Parliament, as it did, turns its back on citizens in one of the issues that worries them the most, such as access to housing, then citizens should elect a new parliament and, until that happens, the government will continue to rule,” said Sánchez on Tuesday.

“ I think it is time for Parliament to look more like the street,” he added on Friday in an interview with ElDario. es, the first who awarded as candidate in the elections on 29 November.

Housing, on the one hand, and Ceuta, immigration and border control, on the other, are the themes that predictably mark the pre-campaign and the campaign of Spanish legislative, taking into account the speeches of political leaders following the call for elections.

In these days Feijóo and Sánchez also issued warnings and suspicions about the electoral process.

PP leaders considered that the mail vote, which Spanish law allows all voters, may not be reliable, while Sánchez said there might be foreign interference, through digital space.

Feijóo announced on Wednesday that the PP will propose to the Central Electoral Board (similar to the National Elections Commission) additional measures to give more guarantees to the mail vote, saying that he trusts the postmen, but not the directors of the public company Correos, which he himself presided between 2000 and 2003.

The PP leader stressed that a former president of Correos, appointed by Sánchez, and a PSOE militant who worked in the company are being investigated on suspicion of trying to interfere in court cases involving former party leaders and Sánchez's family members.

Same interview with elDiario. es, Sánchez considered that the right and the far right are casting these false suspicions on the mail vote for “fear of losing” and for wanting to “cut off the voting rights of millions of workers”, who on Sunday of the elections cannot go to the voting tables.

Sánchez admitted, on the other hand, to be concerned about the possibility of foreign interference in the elections, because of the positions he has taken in recent years on international issues, such as the war in Iran or Gaza, which has been used to him by the US and Israel.

The leader of the PSOE said that these interferences may not be “only from nations, but also from non-state actors”, referring in concrete “oligarcas” owners of large digital platforms, such as Amazon’s president, Jezz Bezos, who publicly criticized the Spanish Government’s measures for housing, positioning himself in a debate “that gets a little distant from them”.

The most recent polls give victory in the November 29 elections to the PP, but without an absolute majority, which would reach an alliance with the Vox (extreme right). The two parties have assumed that they will collide to remove the PSOE and the left of the Spanish Government.