Spain’s Sánchez and Núñez Feijóo clash in fierce pre-election debate

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo clashed in a brutal one-on-one debate on Monday night, shouting over one another and accusing each other of lying, with the challenger emerging a surprise victor.

Tensions ran high throughout the debate, the sole face-off the rivals are set to have before the upcoming July 23 election, with Núñez Feijóo landing several killer blows. Polls project the opposition leader’s center-right Popular Party will score the most votes in the election, but in recent weeks Sánchez’s Socialists have been closing the gap, raising the stakes ahead of the midsummer ballot.

With neither party expected to win enough seats in the Spanish parliament to govern on its own, both leaders spent much of the debate trading barbs about each other’s potential coalition partners. The nasty tenor could have a dampening effect on voter turnout in an election scheduled to take place at the height of the holiday season.

Sánchez attacked Núñez Feijóo for his dealings with the far-right Vox, which wants to roll back gender equality legislation and LGBTQ+ rights across Spain, and with which the Popular Party now governs in over 140 cities and in regions like Valencia, Extremadura and the Balearic Islands.

“You have surrendered to sexism with the shameful governing pacts you’ve signed with Vox,” Sánchez said. “We’re going to win the election because Spain isn’t going to allow you and Vox to put us in a time machine and take us back to who knows where.”

For his part, Núñez Feijóo criticized Sánchez for leading a coalition government with the far-left Podemos since 2019 and relying on parliamentary support from Catalan and Basque separatist parties.

“Can you imagine [French President Emmanuel] Macron governing with a separatist party?” the conservative leader asked.

Using a tactic his party successfully deployed during the May local elections, Núñez Feijóo equated separatist party EH Bildu with ETA — a Basque terrorist group which ceased activities over a decade ago — and said a prime minister with those kind of partners in parliament had “no right to give lessons on governing pacts.”

Núñez Feijóo managed to land some surprising blows during the portion of the debate that focused on the economy.

Spain’s gross domestic product grew 4.2 percent in the first quarter of 2023 and inflation is below the 2 percent target set by the European Central Bank — key facts Sánchez has cited to highlight his efficient handling of the country’s finances.

But Núñez Feijóo threw out a slew of decontextualized and often false figures to challenge the rosy economic picture and managed to put the prime minister on the defensive, deflecting talk about his own plans for the nation’s finances.

The conservative leader also appeared to catch Sánchez off guard by ignoring a question about his far-right allies’ opposition to gender-based violence legislation. Instead, he brought up the left-wing coalition’s controversial consent law, which ended up creating a loophole that slashed jail time for over 1,000 convicted rapists.

“They’re on the street because of you,” Núñez Feijóo said.

An unnerved Sánchez insisted his party had revised the law to amend the error, adding that “mistakes can be corrected, but sexist and homophobic statements can’t.”

Fresh off a charm offensive campaign that led him to appear on Spain’s most popular TV and radio chat shows, Sánchez was expected to perform well in the debate. Ahead of the event, Núñez Feijóo even attempted to lower the stakes by declaring himself less telegenic than the prime minister.

But Sánchez appeared anxious throughout the two-hour duel — a discomfort that was quickly noted by the Spanish media and which contributed to the overall narrative that the prime minister had lost the face-off.

“At no point did Sánchez appear to be the prime minister,” wrote Carlos E. Cué in the center-left Spanish daily El País. “Instead, he looked like an aspirant, desperately trying to get a few talking points out.”

In an editorial, conservative daily El Mundo observed that despite “the apparent advantage of his media experience,” Sánchez had performed in a “nervous and erratic” manner which made him the obvious loser of the debate.

The prime minister’s lackluster performance undermines the Socialist party’s narrative of Sánchez as a comeback kid who is regaining ground after performing disastrously in May’s local elections, which saw the left lose control of almost every major Spanish city.

The general tenor of the debate may also have an impact on voter turnout: Both in the press and on social media, Spaniards appeared exasperated by the 120-minute shouting match.

With the election set to be held at a moment when over a quarter of registered voters are on vacation, many of the Spaniards who tuned in to watch the face-off may end up turned off by the candidates.

Getting them to put their vacations on hold in order to deposit their ballots may have just become all the more difficult.