Cuca Gamarra, the indecipherable link of the last three leaders of the PP

What is known is that, no matter how many things happen on Génova Street, Gamarra always remains. She was fully in tune with Mariano Rajoy, to the point that she was appointed by her party to be vice president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and that the former president himself organically backed her to take over the reins of the formation in La Rioja. But she lost the internal battle against José Ignacio Ceniceros (current president of the PP in the region) despite being the candidate sponsored by the apparatus. She already then showed that she had more support in the offices than in the bases.

In the duel between Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and Pablo Casado, she aligned herself with the first, who lost, but was appointed deputy secretary and parliamentary spokesperson by the second, who won, and to whom she turned her back just when Feijóo landed to end up being promoted to secretary general. The conclusion is that she always jumped ship at the right time: of the last three leaderships of the PP, Cuca Gamarra has been a trusted person in all of them even if they were in conflict with each other.

For that, and despite the friendly and respectful ways that he shows off, it is inevitable, of course, to break some dishes. Like the ones that, according to witnesses, were literally on the verge of breaking that afternoon last February on the seventh floor of Génova 13. It happened when Teodoro García Egea found out that she and the entire parliamentary group had also lowered their thumbs with Married. “They had to stop it”, they graphically describe in the PP about the reaction of the former secretary general to that maneuver. According to these same witnesses, the softest thing that came out of Egea’s mouth was a direct accusation of her parliamentary spokesperson in the form of a repeated cry: “You have killed us!” Gamarra, as always in the recent history of the PP, survived.

García Egea had spent days fueling the resistance strategy of the former leader of the PP based on territorial support that was arriving by the dropper. He made accounts, leader by leader, about those endorsements in the internal organs in case the barons forced a vote. But the collapse of the popular parliamentary group itself under the leadership of Gamarra ended up making the situation unsustainable. “Pablo Casado and García Egea were especially surprised by Cuca’s positioning because both had made a very strong commitment to her as spokesperson,” recalls a person who was present at the key meetings of those days in February when the PP opened in channel.

In the famous steering committee in which a large part of the territorial leaders expressly asked Casado to leave and to convene an extraordinary congress to invest Feijóo, Gamarra has already supported the plans to change course. But it was his message on Twitter the following day that really stung the previous leadership of the PP: “I ratify what I transferred yesterday to the Steering Committee: that an extraordinary congress be held with unity to overcome this situation. Let’s all think about the PP and Spain. They need us and we owe it to them.”

After that tweet, two things happened that many interpret from the PP itself as two direct consequences of such public positioning: practically all deputies withdrew their support for the leadership and Cuca Gamarra was appointed general coordinator by those who had promoted the overthrow of Casado to pilot the match transition. Gamarra had jumped in extremis onto the ship of Feijóo, Moreno Bonilla and Isabel Díaz Ayuso. It was his way of responding to the ‘every man for himself’ that was lived in the PP those days.

These weeks his role in the assassination de Casado, regarding the controversy between the two popular leaderships over the document signed at the time with the Government to renew the General Council of the Judiciary. Feijóo assures that no one from Casado’s team informed him of such a thing, just the opposite of what the previous leadership affirms. Gamarra, present in both directions, limits herself to saying that she did not know anything.

Graduated in Law and a lawyer by profession, she has held positions of public representation in the PP for almost twenty years. She started that trajectory in the city council of her city, of which she was first a flat councilor, then deputy mayor and then mayor by absolute majority as of 2011, becoming the first woman to head the consistory of Logrono. In the following elections she managed to revalidate her position in the minority and she did not repeat as a candidate because Javier Maroto thought of her as the head of the list for La Rioja for the general elections of the Casado candidate.

His jump to the first national political line took place in the summer of 2020. The former leader of the PP yielded to pressure from the barons who had already expressed doubts about the appointment and struck down Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo as parliamentary spokesperson to appoint Gamarra as a substitute , a movement that many interpreted as the search for moderation in an erratic PP due to the fierce electoral competition with the extreme right. Her arrival meant a change of tone but not of substance in the attacks on Sánchez and his parliamentary partners, in which she supported Casado, always pointing to most of his hyperboles.

Now he has a new boss, but Feijóo’s arrival hasn’t altered his rank in Congress either. Gamarra continues to be the parliamentary spokesperson in this new stage in which she also embodies the melee of her party with the Prime Minister since the opposition leader does not have a seat. That role, that of the voice of opposition leader in a foreign body, was staged on the day of the Debate on the State of the Nation. Feijóo occupied the chair that once belonged to Casado, but the reply to the president was given by Gamarra, who was next to him. The spokeswoman focused a large part of her speech on Catalonia and on ETA, recalling the times of her former boss and with a message far removed from any hint of moderation preached by her replacement. In fact, he began his speech by going off the script and asking on his own initiative from the rostrum for a minute of silence in memory of Miguel Ángel Blanco, something that was granted by all the parliamentary groups (also Bildu) despite the surprise and discomfort of the the presidency of the Chamber, whom he had not consulted. The balance of the day was almost unanimous: Sánchez came out of the debate strengthened and the person who had given voice to the opposition was far from shining.

The question being asked within the PP is how to become a trusted person overnight for two teams facing each other and profiles as different as Casado, Feijóo and Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría. “Only the Galicians are trusted by Feijóo. Who is in charge there is Miguel Tellado [Miguel, un fontanero gris que llegó a secretario general en Galicia y se ocupó durante los últimos años del orden interno, los alcaldes y las descalificaciones a la oposición] and the Cuca thing is a workaround”, replies a person who knows first-hand how things work in Genoa. There are those who say that this “fix” has an expiration date and that the candidacy for the regional elections in May in La Rioja would be the ideal opportunity for it.