The head of the list of the PSE-EE to the Congress for Biscay, Patxi López, has reiterated that the socialists are "going to stop the right" with "the strength of the people" who "do not resign themselves" to having "their rights taken away" and that they will "ensure that they do not govern and that Feijóo ends up going home because he is incapable of beating us".
López spoke this Sunday at an election rally held in Portugalete (Biscay), his hometown, alongside the PSE-EE general secretary, Eneko Andueza, and the mayor of the jarrillera town, María José Blanco.
The socialist leader recalled that we have barely three days of the election campaign and "we are just getting started, but we have already seen that the right has gotten very, but very nervous, because it sees, as we all see, what the reaction of the people on the street is like". As he said, the right "is seeing how the progressives are already mobilizing and we are no longer thinking about staying home on election Sunday".
Along these lines, he highlighted the civic response "in the streets, in demonstrations defending public services and in a general strike" and denounced that "with those nerves, if before the right insulted us, now they insult us more, and if before they told us lies, now they lie more".
He added that "if before they used everything absolutely everything to attack the socialists, now they have brought out all the heavy artillery to attack us, but it does not matter because we already know what they are", stressing that "between insult and insult and between lie and lie from time to time they slip out some little thing of what they intend to do".
In this context, López affirmed that "every time Feijóo opens his mouth, someone in this country receives bad news", recalling when the Popular Party leader said that "there is a lot of absenteeism from work and that perhaps this business of sick leave should not be given by the doctor, but by the insurance mutuals", and he pointed out that "we already know that some insurance mutuals are making a killing on the basis of the business they do with the PP governments".
Likewise, he warned that "they are not going to raise wages" if the PP comes to Government and cautioned that the Popular Party aims to "replace a public pension system that works perfectly with a private one and, then, whoever can and has money can buy and finance a private pension plan, and the one who cannot will see their pensions cut".
It has also censored the PP proposal to eliminate the Ministry of Equality because "this whole equality thing is very far from them" and its intention to "load up the Ministry of Housing" by considering that "what do they want a ministry for that regulates speculation in housing or builds public housing, if for them housing is exclusively a business".
It has stressed that "all this is the PP, but it’s that the PP comes hand in hand with Vox and that is even worse, because their chainsaw has even more power and we are seeing it where they govern, with the return of censorship to culture and the denial of sexist violence, the climate emergency, and the need in this country to have a memory law".
López has stated that he doesn’t believe Feijóo when he says that the PP is going to "moderate the people from Vox and their pretensions" and he has asked "how are they going to moderate them if they are asking for the vote for Vox in Guipúzcoa". In his view, Spain has "the worst right wing in all of Europe" because "any European conservative party stands for election in any country to stop the far right", while the PP "not only lays out the red carpet for them and takes them into government, but they are already asking for the vote directly for Vox".
The PSE-EE candidate has pointed out that he would like to know "what the Basque PP thinks about this, that its leaders are asking directly for the vote for Vox". He has reiterated that the socialists are going to "stop the right and ensure that they don't govern and that Feijóo ends up going home because he is incapable of beating us" and he has emphasized that "the more socialist votes there are, the more PP leaders are going to go home and we are going to do it with the power of the people" who "won't resign themselves to anyone coming here to trample on our rights and snatch away our freedom".
As he has emphasized, "the power of the people is going to fill the ballot boxes with clenched fists and roses to continue moving forward for four more years, raising wages, pensions, scholarships, and aid for people who need politics and the Partido Socialista to have a dignified life", making it clear that the socialists don't want "rollback, neither from the right nor from the far right" and that "we don't want these reactionaries to govern us".
Defend Euskadi
At the same time, the Secretary General of the PSE-EE, Eneko Andueza, has defended that "defending Euskadi is not only defending a flag; it is defending the people, the rights of its workers, providing security for pensioners after a whole life of work, protecting whoever needs it most, tearing down inequality when a woman is being paid less than a man simply because she is a woman, giving the opportunity to those who come to this land to seek a job and a better future, and putting all the necessary policies at the service of young people so that they can develop their life project in Euskadi".
Therefore, he warned that "those who think that defending a country is only defending a flag are not thinking about defending the social majority; they are only thinking about defending themselves". He has argued that "the most effective way to defend the interests of Basque people is to concentrate the vote in the PSE-EE" and he addressed "the people who are thinking of voting for those left-wing parties that are presenting themselves in Euskadi and that have an impossible task of winning a seat" to warn them that "it is time to concentrate the vote on those who will indeed manage to win seats".
He emphasized that "this is not the moment to let the opportunity pass to deliver a blow on the table and say to the right and the far right 'they will not pass'", insisting that "the only way for them not to pass is for all those votes to come together and for us to support the Socialist Party". According to Andueza, the Basque Country "has to respond" and "the vote in Euskadi will be a vote of resistance and hope, but for it to truly be effective it has to really add up".
In this sense, he has again called to "seize this opportunity to concentrate the vote and be truly effective, also for those who are thinking of staying at home" and he stated that "we are going to tell the right, to the right and the far right, no, that in Euskadi there is a social majority that is for progress, for freedoms". He warned that on November 29 "we are at stake for the future of Euskadi" and that "you cannot play around with the vote" because "there is an extreme right and an extreme right that come with the chainsaw to put an end to all our rights".
Andueza has demanded support for the PSOE from those who do not want the right wing but instead want "more rights" and from those who do not want to "run any risk" and want their vote to "serve so that Pedro Sánchez is president for another four years". He has summarized that "there are only two options: either the right wing or rights, either Feijóo and Abascal or Pedro Sánchez, either the PP and Vox or the Partido Socialista".
Lastly, the mayor of Portugalete, Mari José Blanco, has emphasized that "against those who want to divide, we want to unite. Against those who want to cut rights, we want to expand them and against those who intend for us to take steps back, socialists are going to continue defending progress, social justice and equal opportunities". "That is our commitment, that is how we understand politics," he concluded.