Feijóo chokes on history

For months, the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has built an essential part of his political discourse on a very specific idea: Pedro Sánchez's changes of opinion. It has been one of the main axes of the opposition since the general elections. The President of the Government, it is true, has publicly acknowledged on several occasions that he modified previous positions on relevant issues, from parliamentary pacts to certain political decisions. This circumstance has served the PP to accuse him of inconsistency and lack of credibility.

However, politics has memory. And when a party makes consistency its main flag, any self-correction acquires a much greater dimension. Precisely that is what has happened to the Popular Party in recent days.

As Hugo Pereira, director of 'El Constitucional.es', well outlines, in just one week, Feijóo's leadership has made two significant turns on issues of great political importance: the so-called Grandchildren's Law and his position regarding the Catalan conflict and Junts. Two changes that contrast with the discourse maintained in recent years and that fuel criticism of an evident double standard.

Grandchildren's Law: from commitment to electoral fraud

The first example features the expansion of access to Spanish nationality for descendants of Spanish exiles during the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship.

The so-called Democratic Memory Law opened a new path for children and grandchildren of those who left Spain for political, ideological, religious or persecution reasons to recover Spanish nationality. This is a measure that especially affects thousands of families residing in Latin America, where a large part of 20th-century Spanish emigration is concentrated.

The striking thing is that this initiative was not alien to the Popular Party. Quite the opposite. In October 2022, during a trip to Buenos Aires, Alberto Núñez Feijóo publicly expressed his party's commitment to promote a nationality law for the grandchildren of Spaniards residing abroad. This was not an isolated or improvised statement. It was a political promise made by the newly elected national president of the PP.

Along the same lines, the popular parliamentary spokesperson, Esther Muñoz, subsequently stated, who described the measure as “just”, defending that the descendants of those Spaniards forced to leave the country could access the nationality that corresponded to them by origin.

The message seemed clear: to recognize a historical right to those who were victims of exile.

However, the discourse has changed radically.

In recent days, leaders of the Popular Party have begun to present that same expansion of rights as an alleged electoral strategy of the Government aimed at altering the census and electorally favoring the PSOE.

The argument holds that the incorporation of new Spaniards residing abroad would respond to an attempt to manipulate future electoral calls.

The contrast is evident.

A measure that just a few years ago was considered fair and necessary is now described as a mechanism of "electoral engineering". The contradiction does not lie solely in modifying the political position, something legitimate in democracy, but in presenting as a threat that very thing that was previously defended.

Turn on Catalonia

The second change is equally significant.

Throughout the legislature, the Popular Party made the Amnesty Law one of the main axes of its opposition to the Government.

It described it as unconstitutional, an intolerable concession to separatism and political corruption. Demonstrations, judicial appeals and an intense political campaign were called against any rapprochement with Junts and Carles Puigdemont.

However, the political scenario has evolved.

The need to expand possible parliamentary support has led the Popular Party to considerably soften its discourse.

During a recent intervention in Catalonia, Alberto Núñez Feijóo stated that it was time to look to the future and leave behind what happened in 2017. The general secretary of the PP, Miguel Tellado, expressed himself in similar terms, pointing out that most Catalans wish to turn the page regarding the so-called “procés”.

The statements represent an evident change regarding the strategy maintained for years.

Although the Popular Party formally continues to reject amnesty, the tone used towards Junts and towards Puigdemont himself is far from that used until just a few months ago.

The political explanation seems simple: any possibility of reaching the government inevitably involves modifying the current parliamentary arithmetic. And for this, it is essential to open avenues of dialogue with independence forces whose collaboration until recently was described as inadmissible.

Changing one's mind or changing strategy?

The underlying question is not whether a party can change its position.

In a democracy, rectifying is part of political action. Circumstances evolve, contexts change, and leaders can adapt their approaches.

The problem arises when consistency becomes the main argument to discredit the adversary while similar rectifications are practiced without acknowledging them as such.

For months, the Popular Party maintained that Pedro Sánchez's changes in criteria evidenced a lack of principles. Now, when political needs advise modifying one's own positions, the discourse is justified as an adaptation to the new context.

The difference is not so much in the change as in the narrative. An opposition with less moral authority

These episodes do not invalidate the criticisms that the PP may make of the Government. The opposition has the obligation to scrutinize the Executive's actions and point out its contradictions when it deems them appropriate.

But they do considerably reduce the moral authority from which these criticisms are made.

Because if Pedro Sánchez has been repeatedly accused of modifying his positions, it is difficult to maintain that the Popular Party acts in a radically different way when in a few days it alters its discourse on issues as relevant as the nationality of the descendants of exile or the relationship with Catalan independentism.

Spanish politics is going through a stage in which red lines seem to shift with extraordinary speed. Impossible pacts end up being possible, unmovable positions cease to be so, and discourses adapt to the parliamentary needs of the moment.

Perhaps that is today one of the main characteristics of contemporary politics. What is more difficult to sustain is that such behavior is censurable when practiced by the adversary, but perfectly justifiable when one is the protagonist.

And that is, precisely, the contradiction that today pursues Alberto Núñez Feijóo: having turned changes of opinion into the main reproach against Pedro Sánchez to end up starring in some of the most significant ones in recent months.