The president of the Popular Party and candidate for the Presidency of the Government, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, accused this Sunday Pedro Sánchez of "playing with fire" and fueling social confrontation after the disturbances recorded during the night of Saturday in the center of Barcelona. At a pre-campaign event held in Salamanca, where the PP gathered its main candidates for the Congress of Deputies for the general elections on November 29, Feijóo questioned how the president of the Government can talk about peace when, in his opinion, he has contributed to deteriorating coexistence in Spain. The popular leader took advantage of the incidents in Barcelona, the protests recorded in A Coruña, and the migration crisis in Ceuta to build one of the central messages of his speech: the need to recover security and coexistence.
"The Spaniards do not hate each other and want to live together in peace", Feijóo stated before the officials and militants gathered at the Center for the Performing Arts and Music (CAEM) in Salamanca, convinced that the elections on November 29 will allow that desire for change to be taken to the polls. The leader of the PP has intensified his criticism of the Executive and attributed to what he calls the "disciples of the wall" a strategy to increase tension in the streets. Although he has politically linked these incidents to Sánchez's discourse, he has not provided evidence that the Government or the PSOE organized the disturbances, which are being investigated by the security forces.
Feijóo links the disturbances in Barcelona with Sánchez's political strategy
The serious altercations recorded on Saturday in Barcelona have fully erupted into the electoral pre-campaign. Feijóo began his speech condemning the looting, fires, and clashes with the police that occurred around the Plaza de Catalunya, while expressing his solidarity with the affected neighbors and merchants and with the agents who participated in the security operation. The popular leader also conveyed his support to the mayor of Badalona and head of the PP list for Barcelona, Xavier García Albiol, whom he has backed in the face of the episodes of violence and the security problems that his party denounces.
According to the latest report from the Mossos d'Esquadra, the riots left 128 people detained, of which 72 are minors, in addition to 14 agents of the Catalan police injured, four of them seriously. Emergency services carried out 33 interventions to extinguish fires of urban furniture and damages were recorded in 23 commercial establishments. The police investigation focuses on a call disseminated through social networks, especially TikTok, and its subsequent organization through messaging groups.
In light of these events, Feijóo has accused Sánchez of contributing to a climate of political division and has linked the incidents in Barcelona with other situations of tension recorded recently in different parts of the country. In his speech, he explicitly mentioned Ceuta, A Coruña, and Madrid, presenting them as examples of a deterioration of coexistence that he attributes to the actions of the Executive. The president of the PP maintains that the Government is using confrontation as a political tool in light of the upcoming elections, while asserting that change must occur through voting and not through episodes of violence.
The speech represents a continuation of the criticisms he had already expressed during the night of Saturday, when he defended that political differences must be resolved through arguments and not through violence. In Salamanca, however, he has raised the tone of his accusations against Sánchez, whom he politically blames for the climate of tension he describes.
The leader of the PP supports the women of Ceuta who are demonstrating in Madrid
The situation in Ceuta has also taken a prominent place in the rally. Feijóo began his intervention by conveying his support to the women of the autonomous city who this Sunday demonstrated in Madrid to demand measures against the consequences of the migration crisis at the end of July. The mobilization, called by the platform Mujeres Caballas, brought together thousands of people in a march from Atocha to the Congress of Deputies, where the organizers have called for increased security and solutions to restore normalcy.
The popular candidate has established a parallelism between the concern for security expressed by the Ceuta protesters and the disturbances in Barcelona, two events of different nature that he has integrated into his criticism of the Government's management. The protest in Madrid has counted with the participation of the president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas (PP), who has denounced that the city continues to go through an "unsustainable" situation almost three months after the massive entry of migrants from Morocco.
With this reference, Feijóo has sought to position citizen security, migration management, and coexistence among the central issues of the Popular Party's campaign, alongside its economic and housing proposals. The party believes that these debates will have a significant weight in the ballot box on November 29.