“It is not the same that governs the social democracy that the right”. With this phrase, the general secretary of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, has summed up his first intervention in the campaign The Government of the People, which has started in the Sevillian neighborhood of Pino Montano. In addition to listing the social and fiscal measures that he has adopted in recent months to deal with inflation and the effects of the war in Ukraine, he took the opportunity to address the European Commission and Brussels. The President of the Government has asked the European Union to “once and for all make the energy reforms that Spain has been asking for months to defend the working middle class and the productive fabric of our country”, after the decision to Russia to close the gas tap to Europe until further notice. Sánchez has guaranteed that the Iberian mechanism means that Spain is “armored” until at least 2023. He has offered “security, the guarantee that we have armor until spring of the next year”; and he added: “This is very important because it means that we are going to be able to get through the winter, which is the hardest and most difficult time, with full guarantees, armored, we are going to cross that narrow and difficult bridge of autumn and winter with that Iberian mechanism and from spring, we will see”. For the socialist leader “there are many countries now that look with envy at Portugal and Spain because they have achieved an intervention that they did not have in their countries.” right. For this he has resorted to an open and participatory assembly format in which the leader of the Spanish Socialists has answered questions from residents of the Pino Montano neighborhood. They have asked him about maintaining the social shield in the face of the possible economic crisis in the fall or the drought. In his answers, Sánchez has recalled numerous measures that his Executive has adopted in recent times: the reduction of taxes linked to the electricity bill, the increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Salary, the revaluation of pensions, the so-called Iberian exception or the recent announcement of VAT reduction on gas, its commitment to renewable energies. In line with his argument of contrasting the management models between the PSOE and the PP, Sánchez has assured that, in the face of the energy crisis, he “will never apply the cutback policies” that, he has emphasized, the popular adopted when they were in office. power. “In the face of Putin’s blackmail, who has shut down gas, demonstrating that energy is a weapon of war, we are going to defend industry and the productive fabric and the working middle class,” Sánchez pointed out. His policies are, according to the President of the Government, those that help the majority of citizens, “the initials they vote for do not matter”, and are in line with the new slogan of the party for the pre-campaign of the elections. municipal and regional elections of 2023: “People first”. “The function of politics in times of crisis is to be useful, we must make a healthy policy for the country that does not put hot towels on a complex situation, but that does not contribute to the discourse of fear”, insisted the socialist leader, who in turn, he has attacked the immobility of “the political, economic and media right” that only defends “its minority interests.” “We have stood up to large companies to achieve social justice,” said the president in reference to the taxes on electricity and banking. “The PP lowers taxes when it is in opposition, [pero] when he is in government, he cracks down on the middle classes with taxes and then approves shameful tax amnesties for the powerful”, he continued. In that enumeration of differences in management models, he has insisted: “What would have happened to this country if, instead of a socialist government, this pandemic had been governed by the party that launched a labor reform that put on the streets to many workers while we responded with ERTE?”, asked the president, who has stressed that his Executive “has increased workers in Health and Education compared to a Government that made cuts in those areas.” The Secretary General of the PSOE and President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, participates in the first act of the campaign ‘The Government of the People’ together with the Secretary General of the PSOE-A, Juan Espadas, and the Mayor of Seville, Antonio Muñoz, this Saturday in Seville. Alejandro pleads What affects the most is what happens closest. So you don’t miss anything, subscribe. that all the streets are named after professions, with a large young population and an important association movement. It is also one of the traditional pillars of socialism in Seville which, although with a decrease in the percentage of votes, resisted the tsunami of the PP’s absolute majority in the last regional elections, which not only took away the PSOE’s province of Seville, the only impregnable bastion of socialism until last June 19, but instead dyed all the Seville districts blue —where it was also the most voted force— except for Macarena-Norte (where Pino Montano is located) and El Cerro (where the socialists from all over Spain were voted the most in the last municipal elections). In these streets, Sánchez also started the general campaign of 10-N 2019. The PSOE seems to have already recovered from the setback caused by the historic absolute majority achieved by the PP in its traditional barn of votes on 19-J. Sánchez has started in Seville the pre-campaign for next year’s regional and municipal elections and is going all out, as he acknowledged on Thursday in the interview he gave to Cadena SER on the occasion of the start of the political course. Recovering the big cities is essential to shore up the enormous territorial power harvested by the party in 2019 and that involves mobilizing and inspiring the electorate, that 95% of Spaniards that Sánchez assures that they benefit from progressive policies, and that they do not it was possible to stimulate in the last appointment with the ballot boxes in Andalusia.