During a television interview, the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, has shown his anger with the right-wing opposition after one of its top leaders reiterated that his administration treated the opposition “just like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.”
“Here we have heard things that disqualify themselves. Very serious things have been said here about the fact that I want to change the regime, that I want to change the parliamentary monarchy for a Republic, that Nicaragua is little less than Spain. These are things of extraordinary gravity”, lamented Sánchez in an interview with the Spanish TV network La Sexta.
During this week, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz-Ayuso, used the serious sociopolitical crisis that Nicaragua has been going through since 2018 to criticize the Sánchez government, accusing it of wanting to treat the opposition “as in Nicaragua.”
Related news: Right-wing leader from Madrid compares Spain with Nicaragua
“We see the purpose that this president (Sánchez) has to erode all the institutions, to have an iron control of justice (…) The president has thrown himself to the left of the left (…) That totalitarian tint has been seen in many countries , starting with Nicaragua”, expressed last Monday the also leader of the right-wing Popular Party (PP).
For the secretary general of the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE, social democracy), the intention of the opposition to compare Spain with Nicaragua is to undermine the democratic coexistence that the Iberian country has lived since 1978 and polarize public opinion.
“It makes me deeply sad that there are no Popular Party leaders who say ‘you can’t go through here.’ You can’t insult, you can’t disqualify, you can’t delegitimize a government. I believe that Spanish politics has to be well above this type of debate, claiming its usefulness in a moment as complex as the one we are experiencing”, deplored the Social Democratic leader.
For President Sánchez, the fact that the right-wing leader Ayuso compares her government with the Ortega regime is due to struggles within the political opposition, who seek to emulate the abrupt ways of Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro to obtain electoral gains.
“I think all this has a lot to do with a drive that exists in the far right, which is what imports strategies that clearly come from Trumpism in the US or from Bolsonaro in Brazil,” concluded the leader of the PSOE.
