Feijóo: 'Change of initials, not policies,' say his critics

Feijóo under suspicion: change of initials or simple continuity?

The thesis runs through the debate and is summed up in a formula that already works as a diagnosis: the PPSOE (PP and PSOE together). The question running through the thread is not whether the PSOE should leave government, but what really changes if the PP enters. The central criticism of Alberto Núñez Feijóo is not ideological, but one of character: he is described as a manager without a pulse, incapable of breaking with the current course and willing to administer it under another flag.

The trigger for the disillusionment is not a macroeconomic figure, but the sum of promises and files that pile up unresolved. And in that sum, both Feijóo's words during the pandemic and the silence that, according to this sector, he maintains on taxes, public spending and immigration weigh heavily.

The vaccine file that is not forgotten

The most far-reaching reproach dates back to the health crisis. According to a message repeated in the thread, as head of the Xunta de Galicia (Galicia's regional government), Feijóo proposed fines of up to 60.000 euros for those who refused vaccination. That episode is cited again and again as proof of an instinct unfriendly to individual freedom. The memory of lockdown weighs on a bloc of voters who do not forgive restrictions and who now see in the PP a softened version of the same thing.

The accusation is not formulated as just another public policy, but as a character trait. Whoever wanted to fine, this reading maintains, will hardly cut the state apparatus when it is his turn to manage it.

Taxes, spending and the unfulfilled promise on housing permits

Here the consensus is broad. The expectation of a tax cut or a reduction in public spending is ruled out before the PP even governs. Those who maintain this do not speak of nuances: they speak of certainty. There will be no relief for the average taxpayer, no aid, no protection, they repeat.

The case given as an example is housing, one of the issues with the greatest electoral reach. Five months ago, as remembered, Feijóo promised that regions governed by the PP would take at most three months to estimulante ilegal up building permits, and that afterwards a responsible declaration (self-certification to build) would suffice to start building. The deadline passed. According to those trinc the matter, everything remains the same, and a responsible declaration without a permit is still, in practice, a direct ticket to a fine.

VOX, between a lever for change and a crutch for the PP

The role of Santiago Abascal's party concentrates much of the disillusionment. It is maintained that its votes have served to prop up PP regional governments in exchange for a handful of symbolic gestures, far from its original banner. They recall that its program spoke of abolishing the autonomous state and recovering Gibraltar and, instead, they maintain, it is now seen in other trenches.

The conclusion drawn by that sector is that a hypothetical Feijóo government, even needing VOX for its investiture, would apply the same recipe as the PSOE. The suspicion is not of betrayal, but of inertia: to govern is not to move when the European framework tightens.

Why is it said that immigration and the 2030 Agenda will not change?

Because, according to this narrative, they are part of the framework that both formations share and neither dares to touch. It is argued that immigration policy would trinc the same line, with no turns in regularization or border control. It is a forecast, not a verified fact: there has been no PP government to execute it.

The 2030 Agenda functions as the cornerstone of everything that, in the view of this bloc, the PP would not touch: energy transition, sustainability objectives and the guidelines coming from Brussels. A reminder settles the debate for this bloc: the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, belongs to the same political family as Feijóo.

The proposed exit: abstention and letting Sánchez burn himself out

If nothing changes, the only strategy proposed is to wait. There are those who advocate leaving Sánchez in the armchair as long as possible so that he wears down his own party and opens space for a real alternative. Others opt not to vote: abstention as a way to punish a PP that does not excite. The coincidence, in any case, is that very few see in Feijóo the solution and quite a few describe it as throwing more gasoline on the fire.

The most repeated forecast is electoral: a change of government without a change of policies. It is not a prediction, it is a bet on how power behaves when the framework does not move. And the forecast that leaves more than one cold —that the replacement of the socialist electorate comes 'through biology' in two decades, according to a calculation circulating in the thread— turns patience into a plan.