The president of the Government and candidate for re-election for the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, has criticized the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, for not speaking English or having made an effort to learn it, and he also highlighted the lack of knowledge, in his view, that the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal, showed about the pension system. "These are the ones of the culture of effort," he said, with irony.
At the official start of the election campaign, during an event in Arnedo (La Rioja), Sánchez wanted to contrast the abilities of his Executive and its ministers with what he considers limitations on the part of the PP and Vox leaders.
To do so, he turned to Feijóo’s recent interview with the 'youtuber' Jordi Wild, in which the PP leader acknowledged that he does not master English and that he also has not made the effort to study it. Although Feijóo himself defended that a president of the Government in 2026 should be able to handle this language, he admitted that it is not his case and that he has prioritized the country’s internal problems over learning a foreign language. "I don’t know English, but I know how to govern and I don’t insult in any language," the 'popular' candidate has defended.
"These are the ones of the culture of effort, let’s see if it turns out to be true that Feijóo isn’t president because he doesn’t want to," Sánchez joked, who also took aim at Abascal for, in his view, showing a lack of knowledge about how public pensions work during his appearance on David Broncano’s program 'La Revuelta'.
"They’re just like that; one isn’t president because he doesn’t want to, and the other isn’t vice president because he doesn’t know," Sánchez said —who handles English fluently—, warning that in the general elections on 29 November the next vice president of the Executive will also be chosen, who could be Abascal or the socialist Carlos Cuerpo. "That one knows Economics and a few languages," he boasted.
Bringing up Marcial Dorado again
Along the same lines, Sánchez has once again reproached Feijóo for saying on Jordi Wild’s program that he was unaware that Marcial Dorado, with whom he was photographed on a leisure boat three decades ago, was a drug trafficker.
The head of the Executive, who has already used this image on numerous occasions to criticize the leader of the PP, has stressed that Dorado was arrested in 1990 and that the summer snapshots with Feijóo are later. "Today it has the holy balls to say that he didn't know in 1995 that Marcial Dorado was a drug trafficker," he has reproached.
Likewise, he has censured that Abascal has been the only one of the four main candidates for the Presidency of the Government who did not attend the program by Jordi Wild "because the public couldn't elect it," he has added.
And he has criticized Feijóo for shying away from an interview with TVE journalist Silvia Intxaurrondo. "And then I'm the dictator," he has said.
Asks for 75% voter turnout
Sánchez has called for the vote to stop the "trip to the past" that, he maintains, would entail a PP-Vox coalition government led by Feijóo and Abascal, and has set his goals for voter turnout and seats for the PSOE.
The socialist leader has called for mobilization to reach a "75% voter turnout" on 29N and to secure an absolute majority of "176 seats".
Rally in Pamplona
Hours later, at another rally held in Pamplona, Sánchez has maintained his attacks against the two leaders of the right. He reproached Feijóo for his proposals on housing and that the PP voted against the royal decrees approved by the Government.
He also criticized that this same Friday Feijóo said that the nearly seven million euros allocated by the Community of Madrid for the purchase of a penthouse was not "that much money". "Our Housing policy is to laugh at people and we are not going to allow that next November 29 with our vote," he has said.
Regarding Abascal, he has criticized that, when asked about Francoism, he said he had no opinion, while he usually refers to Sánchez as a "dictator". "Who has no position on Franco has a position on Franco," he has added.
Sánchez has reiterated his commitment to entrench in the Constitution the revaluation of pensions in line with the CPI if he continues in La Moncloa and has referred to the current situation in Paraguay to warn about the plans of the opposition.
Thus, he has emphasized that the leader of Vox is "a friend" of the country's former president Santiago Peña, who favored moving pension funds to a private bank that later went bankrupt, causing the loss of those savings.