Spain's Right Is Stuck: Feijóo and Abascal Still Don't Know What to Do About Sánchez

Spain's right has spent years predicting the collapse of Pedro Sánchez, and it never happens, while the alternative it offers still fails to take shape: Alberto Núñez Feijóo never quite gets going in parliamentary politics and Santiago Abascal never gets beyond the rally stage. The result is that Sánchez keeps governing while his rivals argue among themselves.

It is a scene that has repeated itself in Spanish politics for years. The right announces, with the solemnity of an eve-of-battle speech, that Pedro Sánchez is finished. That this time it's for real. That he won't survive this one. And Sánchez is still there. It is not a quirk of any particular month: it is the pattern. The prediction has gone unfulfilled for so long that it now works as its own literary genre.

## Feijóo and the internship presidency

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has spent years preparing to govern. That, in theory, is his selling point: management, moderation, majorities. In practice, his leadership has settled into a permanent holding pattern. Parliamentary politics demands negotiating, stitching together majorities, giving something to get something. And there Feijóo comes across as an intern president waiting for instructions.

The problem is not likability. It is decision-making. A leader who has spent years positioning himself for the job and, when the moment comes to build, just stares at the board, projects a feeling that is hard to disguise: that he doesn't quite know how this is done. The photocopier with no toner is a cruel image, but it captures the result well: plenty of paper, very little ink.

## Abascal and the permanent rally

Santiago Abascal has another specialty. Chest out, flag, shouting, reconquest. It is a format that works on stage and runs out of steam at the negotiating table. When it is time to do real politics, to build majorities and cut deals with people who think differently, the movie ends before the credits.

There lies the mismatch: one doesn't know what to say, and the other doesn't know how to do anything but shout. Between them they cover the spectrum of opposition, but they leave empty exactly the space that matters, the space of a governing alternative. And election after election, that gap is filled by the very adversary they have spent years trying to bury.

## The enemy turned Napoleon

There is one detail that reveals a lot. When the right describes Sánchez, it paints him as a Machiavellian strategist, a man who controls every lever and finds a way out of everything. They describe him as if he were Napoleon Bonaparte. And there the contradiction emerges: if he is that skilled, that capable of surviving any crisis, could it be that the problem lies with whoever is facing him?

Maybe Sánchez is no genius. Maybe he simply looks like a giant because, on the other side, there are two figures who never quite grow. The friendly press has spent years turning him into an immortal supervillain: every failure of theirs is one of his conspiracies, every majority that fails to materialize is proof that democracy has been hijacked. They never lose through incompetence. They always lose because the other side cheats. It is a comfortable way of avoiding responsibility.

## The alternative that never starts

The upshot of all this is a paradox. The right has turned Sánchez into the absolute protagonist of national politics and reserved for itself the role of extra. It has spent years trying to bury him, and the only thing it achieves is running his campaign for free.

Sánchez has flaws. Feijóo has excuses. Abascal has decibels. That is the tragedy, and also the explanation of why the announcement of the end of sanchismo (Sánchez's political movement) has become a ritual that never comes true. As long as the alternative never gets going, the adversary doesn't need to be loved. It is enough for him that his opponents remain this useless.