00:00Let's bring in Mano Rodriguez, a Spanish political advisor and CEO of Samara Sevica, a digital platform which aims to
00:07make politics accessible and understandable for everyone.
00:11Thank you so much for joining us. Just how much of a gamble is Sanchez taking here? He's taking gambles
00:17like this in the past.
00:20Thank you for having me. The odds are not well for Pedro Sanchez and the Socialist Party, but they wasn't
00:26also in 2023.
00:29But well, Pedro Sanchez has a very strong leadership in terms of, he seems to be a writer of a
00:37political thriller.
00:39He likes this kind of twist and even if the odds are not good for him, he tried to use
00:46this new opportunity window in order to speak in the campaign on housing and poverty and social injustice.
00:57Instead of C-U-T-A, instead of immigration, of insecurity, that there are political frames healthier or more comfortable
01:08for the far right.
01:10So Sanchez is setting this up as a fight against the far right.
01:14Is that the predominant issue or is it going to be more about the cost of living and rising rents
01:21for voters?
01:25That was the narrative for years ago in 2023.
01:29He made it in order to gather all the progressive votes around his candidacy and also the far left coalition,
01:42Sumar, that they have a government coalition since then.
01:45And now I think the problem is not to stop the far right, but it's to create, to produce new
01:56legislation, new policies around housing, more employment and more progressive agenda.
02:05Yeah, because of course his minority coalition, their bills were voted down last week and even members of his own
02:14coalition actually voted against that bill.
02:17So he clearly wants to get more support to push things through.
02:21Does he at least have the support of the protesters?
02:25No, actually, the protesters are protesting not all, not only against the right and the far right, but also against
02:34this progressive government that they had eight years in office in order to create new housing policies.
02:43It's true that they really made it a few years ago to pass a housing law, but the evictions such
02:52as Marie Carmen Abascal's eviction has kept going.
02:55So this is why the protesters have stopped being patient and they started occupying all the public space in cities
03:07as Madrid, Sevilla, Málaga,
03:09in order to tell the government that they will not accept anything that stops the eviction and allow the detenants
03:20in order to have new rights.
03:22Thank you so much for speaking to us.
03:23Mano Rodriguez is a Spanish political advisor.
