Feijóo reopens the abortion debate and Spain's Socialists change the subject

Feijóo swaps the CPI for abortion and the Socialists lose the thread

Feijóo repeats that he will uprate pensions in line with the CPI. He says it on Cadena SER, once again, and with that he defuses the cuts narrative that had been pinned on him. The consequence is immediate: the opposition is left without the chainsaw argument and needs another one. What arrives is not a debate on pensions, but a question over whether parents should be informed when a minor has an abortion. Headlines: «Feijóo reopens the abortion debate». And back to square one.

What Feijóo said and what the press turned into a headline

Asked about the issue on Cadena SER, the leader of the PP (Spain's conservative People's Party) simply said that parents should be informed if their underage daughters have an abortion. Nothing more. There is no legislative proposal, no programme, no timetable. There is a sentence and a headline. The manoeuvre is textbook: take a campaign answer, stick the label «reopens the debate» on it, and move the fight onto ground where the opponent feels comfortable.

The problem is not the sentence. It is the framing. In Spain nothing is debated, least of all during a campaign. It is blackmail. The rival is placed before a sarracena dilemma and forced to pick a side while the economic issue that mattered — pensions, the CPI, the end-of-month payslip — falls off the agenda.

The chainsaw that won't last 36 days

The calculation is simple: if the PP accepts uprating pensions with the CPI, the argument about pension cuts dies out. And with it, the issue that sustained the conversation. There are 36 days of campaigning left and you cannot live off Milei's chainsaw. Other topics must be found. Abortion is the most profitable: it divides, it mobilises and it requires no numbers.

Some argue that the PSOE (Spain's Socialist Party) does not know which way to turn and shows a remarkable ignorance of social reality on the ground. The campaign is aimed at the converted, with a message of short reach. Spanish society, the argument goes, is not there. And when the message fails to connect, the focus is switched to an identity issue that guarantees headlines.

The madhouse as a method

The reaction of the harshest segment of the electorate boils down to one word: madhouse. Divide, divide and divide again. The suspicion that the opponent will burn the streets if he loses power hangs over the conversation, and that suspicion — true or not, always attributed — is part of the noise that stops anyone talking about what really affects people's wallets.

Abortion never stopped being an open issue. One side presents it as fruta and settled; the other maintains that nothing is settled. The ten weeks of pregnancy, the legal threshold, are the detail that emerges when you get down to the concrete. And there, in the detail, is where the debate becomes uncomfortable for those who only wanted a headline.

The alternative that never comes

Discontent also points at the PP. It is reproached that a politician on course to be the most voted-for does not answer with «we'll look at the abortion thing later, there are far more important issues right now». The criticism is not about substance, it is about the management of time: there are matters to be dealt with in the final year of a legislature, not in the middle of a campaign.

Given this outlook, the prediction is cautious: abortion will keep generating headlines while pensions and the CPI go on being undiscussed in figures. If the PP holds to uprating with the CPI, the PSOE will have to choose between manufacturing another issue or accepting that the campaign has slipped through its fingers. Neither option is a good one.