Madrid (EFE) submissive” with EH Bildu and “more generous with the executioners than with the victims”.
The presence of 44 ETA members on the EH Bildu lists and the resignation of seven of them, those convicted of ETA murders, has focused the duel between Sánchez and Feijóo in the Upper House, which is being held in the middle of the electoral campaign on May 28 .
“When in Spain ETA is nothing, for you, ETA is everything (…) In their despair, ETA, even if it does not exist, is the only thing they have”, the President of the Government told Feijóo.
Shortly before, Feijóo had asked him to guarantee from the Senate that “his pact with Bildu is over” because “either he breaks with Bildu or breaks with decency.”
Sánchez accuses the PP of “lack of scruples”
The chief executive has listed a dozen “truths” to dismantle what he considers a PP strategy, that of using ETA in the face of its lack of proposals.
He has accused the PP of “lack of scruples” and has given as an example the attitude of this party after the 11M attacks, when, in his opinion, the Government of José María Aznar “lied, shamelessly maintained that lie and defamed the victims of this tragedy for an electoral interest”.
“No one could surpass that infamy, but you, with your words, seem determined to match it,” he told Feijóo in a sour and harsh face to face.
Sánchez denounces that ETA ceased to exist, except for the PP and Vox, and has recalled that the government of the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was the one that defeated the terrorist group and that the PP, from the Government, negotiated with ETA and “ they lowered themselves to infamy through the mouth of Aznar calling ETA a Basque national liberation movement”.
The rapprochement of prisoners or releases after the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco and the accusation of Zapatero of betraying the dead and the former Minister of the Interior Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba of collaborating with the gang have been other of the “truths” enunciated by Sánchez.
In addition, he recalled the words of the current PP campaign spokesman, Borja Sémper, when he said that the important thing was for ETA to end and that the future also had to be built with Bildu, or those of the popular spokesman for the Senate, Javier Maroto, who As mayor of Vitoria, he affirmed that his legs were not shaking for reaching agreements with the nationalist group.
Feijóo charge against Sánchez
Before, Feijóo had charged the head of the Executive for first reacting with “mutism” to the EH Bildu lists and later ending up criticizing the PP and being “more cruel” with the popular ones than with the nationalists.
According to Feijóo, “if it had depended on sanchismo, in the Basque Country there would be murderers in the institutions” for which “his face should fall with shame.”
“He has failed to thank the murderers for their very generous proposal,” Feijóo has also snapped, who has regretted that after 144 years of history the PSOE has ended up at “Bildu’s disposal.”
“If Bildu is not decent, it is not decent for you to agree with them, and if what is indecent is legal, it is in your hands that it is not,” Feijóo has also said, urging legislative changes.
For the PP leader, Sánchez is the “great electoral hope” for “rapists and pedophiles, seditious, corrupt, squatters and now also for those who went with ski masks and guns.”
“Otegi rightly said that his Government was an opportunity for Euskal Herria; It is an opportunity for Herri Batasuna, Sortu and Bildu, I will never be one”, added Feijóo.
In addition, he has asked that those convicted of ETA murders formalize their resignation before the Electoral Board and that this be extended to the rest of the 44 convicted because, if not, 37 will remain.
“Do you think it’s okay for those who pulled the trigger to leave and those who gave him the guns to stay?” he asked Sánchez. And immediately afterwards he has argued that the candidates “have resigned for their electoral convenience” and also for that of the leader of the PSOE.
After the debate, the teams of both parties have crossed reproaches again. In Ferraz they consider Feijóo an extremist “directed from Puerta del Sol” while in the PP they accuse Sánchez of having “crossed a rubicon” by saying that his party “did the impossible not to end ETA” and they wonder “how dares to attack Aznar”.