Alberto Núñez Feijóo is in the habit of accompanying his speeches with a photograph, as a cover. It is an image that sets the tone of what he wants to convey. For example, at the Madrid stop of his campaign to be president of the PP, the bunch of pages that he had prepared was headed by a snapshot of Ayuso and Almeida as “electoral tandem.” Because what Feijóo wanted to recover was that team spirit, broken by the internal war between Pablo Casado and the Madrid president.
In fact, at the PP congress in Madrid, the photo was already that of Feijóo together with the baroness, proof by itself of the closure of the crisis. Other days the cover image is himself promising his position, or already working in his new parliamentary office, to give two recent examples. It is always about condensing, in a single glance, what he wants to convey in his speech. The old cliché that the impact of an image is greater than that of a thousand words serves him almost as a mnemonic rule so as not to divert the dialectical shot.
That is why the new president of the PP has chosen an iconic photo for his address this Tuesday in the Senate, that of the La Moncloa Pacts, in October 1977. In it appear Felipe González, Adolfo Suárez, Manuel Fraga, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo , Enrique Tierno Galván, Santiago Carrillo, Miquel Roca, José María Triginer, Joan Raventós and Juan de Ajuriaguerra. They had just sealed, together with the leaders of other parties, an agreement to promote the Transition and to allow a consensual exit from the crisis caused by the inflationary spiral caused by the price of oil.
On the cover of the document “notes for the president”, and under the photo, the first question that Feijóo will ask Sánchez in the Senate control session is written: “Does the President of the Government consider that his Executive is up to of the needs of Spanish families? The rest of the pages, attached with a clip, break down the strategy of the leader of the main opposition party to try to bring the confrontation to his field, that of economic management, with special emphasis on the inflationary spiral that Spain is experiencing. A scourge that, of course, is not as worrying as that of 1977, but that has set off all the alarms.
Then the IPC reached 26.3% and now it has climbed to 8.7%. The situation is very different, but the objective pursued by Feijóo is similar: a transversal economic agreement and beyond the acronym. “In this context, that image sums up the philosophy of the new stage that we would like to open in politics. A stage of educated discrepancy, of seeking consensus in a country that needs a political class that inspires it, that stops being a ballast “, Explain sources from Genoa consulted by the symbolism of the chosen image. “The Moncloa Pacts brought together people of different natures and conditions, but they knew how to overcome those differences in search of useful agreements for the general interest,” they add.
In 1977, the commitment linked unions, employers and the Bank of Spain. “It was the great test of political consensus,” wrote Javier Redondo in this newspaper. The economic vice president, Enrique Fuentes Quintana, insisted that the decisions be endorsed and negotiated by all the parties to give them legitimacy and, above all, continuity. The Moncloa Pacts were not, therefore, only a series of measures to combat the recession; included a project to reform the labor market, Social Security or Health. “In addition to their symbolic effects, the Moncloa Pacts laid the foundations for a modern social state,” Redondo summed up.
That is what Feijóo wants to stage now: “A high-level policy for troubled times. There was then, I wish there was from now on,” they settle in their environment.
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