Pedro Sánchez opened this Saturday the pre-campaign for the general elections of November 29 with a message of mobilization to progressive voters and a direct warning to the PP: what he presents as sacrifice, he said, are actually “cuts disguised as sacrifices.”
The President of the Government and Secretary General of the PSOE launched that warning in Fuenlabrada, before 3,000 attendees, just after the Federal Committee ratified the candidacies for Congress and the Senate and proclaimed him a presidential candidate unanimously.
Sánchez asked his supporters to turn the event into the starting point of the campaign. “We have to mobilize, we have to vote, we have to win and we have to govern after November 29,” he affirmed, in a rally designed to reactivate a base that, for now, remains battered by polls that place the PSOE far from the majority.
The socialist leader was accompanied by his wife, Begoña Gómez, who is awaiting trial for alleged corruption crimes, in an image of strong political and emotional charge. Sánchez dedicated words of affection to her that provoked an ovation from the public; afterwards, he even danced on stage, while Minister Óscar Puente and Deputy Secretary General María Jesús Montero appeared very animated, trying to rally the base.
Pensions, housing and clash with Feijóo and Abascal
In his speech, Sánchez set the main points of the discourse that the PSOE wants to take to the campaign: the defense of pensions against the “privatizations” he attributes to Alberto Núñez Feijóo if he reaches La Moncloa and housing as one of the great urgencies of this generation.
He also attacked the “reactionary wave,” while images of US President Donald Trump, Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Argentine President Javier Milei appeared on the screens of the event, which were booed by the audience. Sánchez insisted that “they are the same old cuts,” and added: “If they like chainsaws, to the sawmill, but pensions are not to be touched.”
The socialist leader also issued a warning to Feijóo and the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal: pensions, he maintained, “are not a gift voucher,” but a social conquest, and asked for “respect” for the elderly.
