The plan proposed by Iván Espinosa from El Mundo and the important issues that are missing

I have already said on occasion that I have had great esteem for Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, former Vox MP, for years.

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I think he is a brilliant man and, above all, an excellent person. Furthermore, he is a person with whom I agree on his ideological approaches. For this reason, I have read with interest the interview he gave today to the newspaper El Mundo, in which he says some very interesting things.

From what I see in that interview, Iván (forgive me for referring to him by his first name, but it sounds strange to refer to a friend by his last name) avoids criticizing the Popular Party (PP) or Vox, stating that "I am absolutely convinced that what is needed now is precisely to join forces", pointing out the following: "What we have to do is learn to live with people or with institutions or with parties that do not exactly reflect what one thinks, but that are compatible and that have some objectives in common."

Iván adds that the first thing is to "get rid of Pedro Sánchez", but that this "has to immediately reform many of the things that have happened in recent years, it is not just about getting rid of Pedro Sánchez and repealing them, it is about repealing and rebuilding" because if not, "getting rid of Pedro Sánchez to continue with the same policies and the same ideas would be a failure."

The latter is nothing new: it is what Vox has been saying since its appearance in 2014, when Rajoy and the PP were still in power, in a legislature that was an excellent example of wasted time, since its government did not repeal any of the ideological laws established by the socialist government of Zapatero, and the PP, instead of self-criticizing for this, is deepening this drift.

I think that Iván's intention is good, but I do not envy him the challenge of trying to bring the two parties closer together, since Vox is a conservative party and the PP has become a social democratic party, which no longer cares about coexisting with the whole ideological set-up of socialism and no longer even questions a large part of its economic recipes, as we have seen this week with the issue of transport discounts. In fact, the PP has been allied with the socialists in Brussels for years. In this European legislature it had the opportunity to break that alliance and it did not do so. This does not encourage optimism, and even less so its rapprochement with the separatists of Junts and the PNV.

Let's get back to the interview. Fernando Lázaro asks Iván: "Let's imagine that he is back in politics". The interviewee does not wait for a question and says: "I would start preparing a reformist legislative tsunami to present on the first day in Congress similar to the one that Trump has presented." Next, Iván sets out a series of measures with which I agree:

"I would start by reestablishing law and order in very different aspects. Of course, I would immediately regulate the issue of immigration, both for those who intend to enter from today and for those who, being here, are causing some kind of problem. Of course, I would reverse problems that are affecting the housing of Spaniards, such as the issue of squatting. Of course, I would make a profound reform of the public administration to make it more efficient and less aggressive with the administered. I would generate a climate, which can be started to be offered from the opposition, of welcoming foreign and national investors, of encouraging entrepreneurs, of helping or stopping bothering the self-employed, of lowering taxes, of simplifying regulations, of reducing bureaucracy, of betting on certain industries not with public aid, but with facilities and deregulation, with a boost energy to lower the price of electricity and generate enough installed capacity to create an economic and industrial revolution, with an infrastructure plan that starts with a national hydrological plan to rechannel water in places where there is a risk of flooding again and, in addition, to ensure that water reaches all the places where we need it for agriculture, livestock, industry, even for new technology implementations. With a plan to recover the single market, so that an Andalusian producer or company can operate in Catalonia and so that a Canarian teacher can teach in Bilbao. Completely de-ideologize schools and universities, among others."

This is all very well, but the first problem that Iván would encounter is that the PP openly opposes some of these measures (for example, those that may affect the nonsense autonomous regime), did nothing to promote others when it could (immigration, squatting, reform of the public administration, the self-employed, the push for energy, the national hydrological plan) and has done the work for the socialists in imposing their ideological agenda on education, as I already explained here a year ago.

But let us imagine for a moment that the PP suddenly stopped behaving like the PP and accepted all these measures, which I see as highly unlikely. Even so, very important issues are missing, such as the defense of life (at this point I must remember that the PP is already an openly pro-abortion party, no matter how much some leaders try to whitewash this in various ways) and the promotion of birth rates (an issue of strategic importance in a Spain that is experiencing a demographic suicide fueled by the anti-natalist measures promoted by the left, assumed by the PP).

It is also urgent, in the current international situation, to increase defense spending (Spain is far from fulfilling its commitments to NATO, and both the PSOE and the PP are responsible for this). In addition, our citizen security urgently requires the repeal of the Montero law (which served to reduce sentences and even free many rapists and pedophiles). We must not forget the repeal of the trans laws (a threat to the health of children, the safety of women, and a colossal nonsense that the PP has supported in some regions until very recently).

On the other hand, rebuilding our rule of law also requires the repeal of the law on gender violence (which was supported by the PP and which has encouraged false accusations, has left women who truly need protection from abuse unprotected and has broken the equality of men and women before the law), the repeal of the law on historical memory (which only serves to impose the sectarian vision of the left on our past, a vision that omits any mention of the crimes of socialists and communists in the Civil War) and the repeal of the euthanasia law (which only serves to make sick people consider themselves a burden and get them out of the way, avoiding investing in palliative care to give them a dignified life).

Today, the PP is not even considering most of these measures. In some of them, the PP's position would be radically opposed to any change, and in the end we would have a possible centre-right government supporting infamous socialist ideological laws, something that Vox I don't think would support but the PP would, because it is what it already did during the Rajoy government.

If the PP does not even commit to implementing these changes (I'm not just talking about in the first 100 days, but in the four years that this legislature could last), when the socialists return to power they will have a large part of the work done and it will be enough for them to continue with their work of degrading our democracy and our society where they had left off. I hope that Iván takes these issues into account in the work he has set himself, but what I do not expect is that the PP will listen to him if he proposes many of these things. I repeat: the PP is today just another social democratic party and will not make any changes, unless Vox has a resounding force to force it to do so.

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Photo: Vox Congreso.