The Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños, has urged the “democrats” to back the PSOE in the elections on 29 November to prevent ultra-right and fascist figures from sitting again on the Council of Ministers in Spain. Beside him, the Interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has warned that the right is already presenting itself without any dissimulation with a single candidate list, which he described as “a ballot of regression”.
“I want to call on the democrats and on people who know that on 29 November we are not talking about who governs, about mere alternation or not. We are talking about the fact that in our country, since the dictatorship, ultra-right and fascist ministers can be there again,” Bolaños said during the event to present the PSOE list for Madrid for the general elections of 29N. The event also included Marlaska, the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, and the Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function and Secretary General of the PSOE-M, Óscar López.
Bolaños emphasized that the appointment with the ballot boxes will be key to “avoid” the ultra wave being replicated in Spain, which he recalled has already broken into countries such as Brazil or the United States. “It is essential that on the 29th we all mobilize and know that what we are playing for in Spain is either to keep going with an agenda of progress or for a reactionary government to arrive with a multi- and massive-cut agenda with a chainsaw, with a flamethrower or with whatever they have in their hands,” the minister warned.
Along the same lines, Grande-Marlaska stressed that Spain is going through a “very complex” moment and called for broad participation to stop any setback. “The right no longer hides that it’s a single ballot, and that ballot is a ballot of regression,” he said, before distancing himself between a normal change of government and a regressive turn. “Alternation is positive, but not regression,” he insisted.
"What has happened in Brazil or the United States is a spur for us. Here, it is already being seen that the right and the far right have wanted society to get used to insults," Marlaska added. The Minister of the Interior has defended that the Executive of Pedro Sánchez has pushed forward measures of "social progress" and cited the increase in the interprofessional minimum wage, the vital minimum income, the rise in scholarships, or temporary employment regulation files (ERTE) during the pandemic as examples of that agenda.
When taking stock of the legislature, Marlaska has recalled that "in 2023, they thought that power already had to return to them and that it was theirs. And they have not forgiven that; we have seen it in some cases that have been taken to court, such as that of the woman and that of the brother of the President of the Government. It has been a very complex legislature because of those circumstances, but we have moved forward, we have done a lot of things."
For her part, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has claimed the decade of shared political work with Pedro Sánchez and has underlined that, in her view, the PSOE embodies "a project for Spain, a project of hope, a project of solidarity, a project of generosity, a project of empathy."
Robles has stressed that politics must focus, above all, on understanding and accompanying those who find themselves in a more fragile situation. Along those lines, she has defended that "this project of being with the most vulnerable and those who need it the most can only be carried out by a socialist government."
For his part, the minister Óscar López has taken aim at PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whom he accuses of having transformed his formation into a "copy of Vox" and of practicing "politics for extremists" instead of the "politics for adults" that he said he would represent.
In his remarks, López has warned of the effects of the right-wing and far-right cut proposals: "Chainsaws are very fun during election campaigns, but they wreck people's lives when they reach governments," he concluded.