The pre-election waters go down in riots in all the parties. In some more than in others, but on the left and right the movements are encouraged by the imminence of 2023 in which a good part of the municipal, regional and state institutional power will be distributed. Although he leads the polls, Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s PP does not escape this tension either. One of its deputies with the most media coverage, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, points directly against one of the central strategies of the Galician leader: to regain presence in Catalonia with a more moderate discourse. The ex-spokesperson has publicly attacked the plans of her leader and this week she has taken another step and has broken the voting discipline while undisguisedly approaching Vox, which in turn is bogged down with the departure of Macarena Olona that threatens with leading a split from the party.
Álvarez de Toledo’s record is not exactly that of an orthodox deputy who easily assumes internal discipline. Not even when she was Pablo Casado’s right hand in Congress. Her latest rudeness occurred this week, when she distanced herself from the PP and voted in favor of a non-legislative initiative from the extreme right to “apply an educational 155” to Catalonia. That is to say, that the central government assumes there some competences that belong to the autonomous communities, according to the Constitution.
Many months before, the former president of the PP had already had enough of the outbursts and movements of his spokesman, and he replaced her with Cuca Gamarra. He barely lasted a few months in office, which he reached despite the opposition of several barons, including Feijóo himself. Álvarez de Toledo responded to his dismissal by Casado with partial memoirs in which he settled accounts with everyone, in the party and outside of it, which allowed him to win his act of deputy despite having more than poor results in Barcelona.
She assumed her dismissal, between several rudenesses to the leader who appointed her, and did not hide the little enthusiasm that Feijóo deserves, but despite everything she kept her seat in Congress at a rate of 86,000 euros a year thanks to her position as second vice president of a commission.
But the distance with the party has been getting bigger and bigger. Álvarez de Toledo sided with Isabel Díaz Ayuso in her fratricidal war against the Casado leadership that ended up leading to the end of the Madrid-born mandate and the arrival of Feijóo. By then he had already opposed the party’s slogans several times. He distanced himself from the vote of his parliamentary group in the appointment of the magistrates of the Constitutional Court that the PP agreed with the coalition government.
The rudeness earned him a sanction of 500 euros, according to the group’s disciplinary regime. But he didn’t seem to care much. In fact, it was she herself who made public the breach of the party’s directive since the vote for the Constitutional magistrates is secret. If she hadn’t made it public no one could have singled her out.
Feijóo’s arrival at the main floor of the PP’s national headquarters on Calle de Génova in Madrid was a respite for the entire party. Or almost. The most extreme wing of the organization feared that the positions of the PP on identity issues would relax in order to try to recover a more centrist or moderate projection on issues such as the territorial administration of the State or the relationship with the native languages in certain areas of Spain.
Said and done. If Casado was worth adding enough to get to Moncloa with Vox and Ciudadanos, Feijóo has proposed to expand his electoral base to reach a majority that allows him to govern alone and without depending on partners he does not trust, such as could be vox.
From the first moment, already in April, Feijóo proposed as president of the PP a new stage of relations with Catalonia and the rest of the historical communities. Not surprisingly, he has presided over one of them, Galicia, for 13 years with an absolute majority. In Genoa they do the accounts and beyond the result they get in other regions, without the deputies of the Mediterranean arc they know that it will be very difficult to reach Moncloa as he wants.
So the Galician has launched himself to try to get out of the almost marginal position in which the Catalan PP is. Since April he has visited the community a dozen times, has met with social and business organizations, with the different provincial leaderships of the party, has offered conferences and has launched two ideas: “cordial bilingualism” and “constitutional Catalanism”.
And as if that were not enough, it has also been proposed to improve relations with Basque nationalism which, for years, supported the PP for certain fiscal and economic policies. Feijóo has agreed to meet with the president of Euskadi Buru Batzar, Andoni Ortuzar. His idea is that this appointment takes place before the pending meeting with the leader of the opposition: the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal.
Too much for some, not many, within the PP. And the first to express it was Álvarez de Toledo. He first described the idea of ”Catalan constitutionalism” as “Galician”. This same Friday, another person used to saying what he wants, Esperanza Aguirre, showed the leg of discontent in an opinion piece: “If Catalanism is true, it will always be constitutionalist. If it is not, it will be a tool for failed political ideas and projects to succeed.”
The deputy went from words to deeds this week and positioned herself outside her group in all four votes in a non-law proposal “relative to the adoption of measures for the defense of the right to education in Spanish”. Then he said that he could not demonstrate in Barcelona on Sunday against linguistic immersion (an appointment to which Feijóo did not attend) and for Spanish to be the only vehicular language in schools throughout the country, and on Thursday not to vote for favor of it in Congress.
The curious thing is that at the same demonstration was the number two of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, who was also his substitute at the head of the parliamentary group. Feijóo closed the party’s Interparliamentary at the same time. Álvarez de Toledo has justified his unchecking in the “coherence” and knows that those words imply incoherence to his fellow seats.
The still deputy of the PP, who cannot take away the minutes although she can expel her from the group, will be able to expand next Wednesday during her speech at the veteran Club Siglo XXI in Madrid. There she will present neither more nor less than a conference by the spokesperson for Vox and leader of the ultra party, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, who was chosen by her leadership to formalize the final slam on Macarena Olona. Álvarez de Toledo launches these winks after having been very critical of Abascal’s party, which she has called “nationalist” in many interventions.
The bodevil has unleashed the rumours, and at the moment nothing more than the rumours, although it is not at all common for a deputy from one parliamentary group to present another, much less if both figures are so recognizable in the media and when, in addition, one of them has declared in rebellion against its leadership.
What does go beyond a rumor is the difficulty that Álvarez de Toledo repeats in the electoral lists of the PP in this next electoral cycle. In the leadership of the party they do not want to give relevance to the matter and assure that it will be dealt with “internally in the group”. They can do little more than lower his salary by a good handful of euros if he loses the commission vice-presidency in which Casado placed him when he was still in charge in Genoa.
This opens two questions. The first, who will occupy his position at the head of the candidacy for Barcelona. The second, what will she do: go back only to give her opinion from the stands that allow it or try a second political life. Although it seems that there is a lot of time left to reach that crossroads, the political decision will have to be made in the coming months.
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