Madrid (EFE).- The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, believes that in the electoral expectation for next Sunday “Catalonia is going to be decisive in the socialist victory”, although he recognizes electoral wear and tear because there are “people who have not understood the decisions that I have made” with respect to this autonomous community.
In an interview published this Sunday by the newspaper La Vanguardia, the president is emphatic regarding a self-determination referendum in Catalonia because “in the Constitution there is enough space to solve the Catalan problem.”
Pedro Sánchez is “persuaded that Catalonia is going to be the vanguard of that Spain that is advancing for the next four years. Spain needs four more years of progress, and if we talk about Catalonia, multiplied by 40. That is why I insist, I believe that Catalonia is going to give victory to the PSOE”.
When questioned about the loss of votes that his political management with respect to said territory may cause, Sánchez points out that he has had to “make risky decisions to guarantee coexistence.”
“I know that there are people who have not understood the decisions I have made in Catalonia, who have not shared them, but my duty is not to think about the next elections, but to think about the next generations”, asserted the socialist leader, who considers that “today Catalonia is infinitely better than it was in 2017”.
On the referendum in Catalonia
The process towards a possible referendum in Catalonia in Sánchez’s opinion “is going to require a lot of time, determination, patience and generosity. What Catalan citizens need is to turn the page, live together and also channel the greater desire for self-government that a part of Catalonia may legitimately have, but always towards possibilist positions ”although he acknowledges that the positions today are very far apart.
“The independence movement is in a self-determination referendum. And that is not going to happen because there is no constitution in the world, not even the Spanish one, that allows a segregation of a certain territory,” says Sánchez, who believes that “within the Constitution there is enough space for us to move forward and give a definitive solution to the situation we found ourselves in 2017”.
About the surveys
He affirms that the polls must be analyzed, “but we do see a dynamic, an orientation that sees a drop in the PP and a rise in the PSOE. We are facing very open elections and I am convinced that we are going to win them”.
“We are in open elections and the PSOE is growing in daily support. We are naturally concentrating the vote on all those voters who are not only progressive, but also those who share something fundamental and that is that Spain does not go backwards and continues advancing”, he declares.
Pedro Sánchez is convinced that “the PSOE is going to be the first political force and that we are going to win the elections and that there will be four more years of policies of progress.”
What we want is to culminate and consolidate the reforms, says Sánchez, “and the agenda that the PP has, let alone Vox, in the event that they govern, is a setback, a regression in all these advances.”
In his opinion, “here we are not talking about alternation, as has happened in other electoral processes. Here we are playing if Spain continues to advance, as it has done for the last 40 years, sometimes to the right, other times to the left, or we get into, I insist, a dark time tunnel that we do not know exactly where it will take us ” .
About the face-to-face debate with Feijóo
Analyzing the debate last Monday with Núñez Feijóo, the president denies that there has been a strategy error and focuses on the behavior of the popular leader in the face of lies or the blatant use of terrorism or the laundering that is done to the Vox pacts in everything that has to do with gender equality or the protection of the LGTBI collective.
“The PP is muddying politics, generating disaffection, among other things, so that this electorate does not mobilize far beyond the progressive one, which allows us to have a much more resounding victory,” says the socialist leader.
Regarding the possible errors in his management, the President of the Government believes that “we have not had a simple legislature. I think that clearly an error was those unwanted effects of the law of only yes is yes, but as I blurted out to Mr. Feijóo, a legal error that can be corrected is one thing, and another thing is to give in to machismo, as the PP has assumed ”.
Sánchez “dreams” of achieving full employment, with 8 percent structural unemployment, of being a reference in ecological transition and digital transformation, and “that we be the vanguard in gender equality rights and also in rights in favor of diversity ”.
“I think we have the best country in the world,” says Pedro Sánchez.
Sánchez shares jokes and confidences with La Pija and La Quinqui: I can’t with reggaeton
The President of the Government and leader of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, has shared jokes and confidences with the protagonists of the podcast “La Pija y la Quinqui”, such as his preference for indie music and his rejection of reggaeton, that as a teenager he wanted to be a player of basketball or that he misses driving.
Sánchez has shown himself to be very relaxed and smiling in this interview, broadcast this Sunday but which was recorded before the electoral debate on July 10 with the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
His most unusual interview
It has been the most atypical interview of all the ones he has done so far due to the casual tone of this podcast, one of the most fashionable today and directed by two 23-year-olds, Carlos Peguer and María de los Ángeles Maturana, who invited Sánchez to the end-of-season program via Twitter.
Without any questions related to current politics, the interview has revealed facets of Sánchez’s personal life, such as his musical tastes.
“I can’t with reggaeton,” declared the president, who has confessed his admiration for singers like Rosalía and Taylor Swift, whom he considers “great artists.”
Hobbies of Pedro Sánchez
A follower of indie music and artists like Caroline Polachek or Bronquio, Sánchez likes to go to festivals (the FIB is one of his favourites) and he draws up his music lists based on discoveries on podcasts like the one on Radio 3.
He admits that he was not aware of the existence of the “La Pija y la Quinqui” podcast and has not wanted to reveal which of these two characters he feels more identified with.
“I was born and raised in Aluche and Tetuán, they are popular neighborhoods in Madrid. I don’t see myself posh or posh, nor quinqui, for my generation it has a very different connotation ”, she said.
As for the series, he has recommended ‘The loudest voice’ and has commented that he is currently watching ‘I don’t like driving’, although he has indicated that in his case it is an activity that he likes “a lot” and that he misses. less.
As a teenager he wanted to be a basketball player, but he never said that he wanted to be president of the Government, a job that he assures is “very good” because it allows him to “do things for your country”, but in which there is “a lot of pressure”. and that hardly leaves him free time.
In the interview, in which he ate pizza with the interviewers and gave them a bag with commemorative objects from the Spanish presidency of the European Union, Sánchez joked with some of his media nicknames, such as bizcochito or Perro Sánchez.