Rajoy ignoring corruption to present himself as a moderate

Not even having a protester two metres away and shouting at them “Mariano Rajoy, the PP is the Mafia” is enough to force the conservative leader and his team to face up to the long-running debate in Spanish society surrounding political corruption. On the contrary, for several days now the PP leader has encouraged them to take up the banner of transparency, arguing that “Unfortunately, we have been caught up in some things.”

The acting Spanish prime minister prefers to run again with the 20-D slogan of “The PP or chaos”, intensifying his tone towards his opponents and now taking aim at Pablo Iglesias as the target of his invective. “Radicalism is a reality in Spain”, he warned yesterday, before adding that “the worst thing ” now would be the return of socialist policies, while his party assumes that, at present, the possibility of Podemos forming an alternative government and finishing in second place in the elections is quite real.

Rajoy, then, is focusing the bulk of his messages on railing against “extremists”, while presenting the PP as a “moderate” party and the only one capable of guaranteeing Spain does not fall back into crisis.

As witnessed yesterday, however, citizens reject his constant denials of corruption and continue to criticise the PP “mafia”.