Feijóo crashes in his electorate while Sánchez opens a gap in the PP and obtains an endorsement of stability from the PNV

Scott Carey was, in The Incredible Shrinking Manan ordinary citizen who one day finds himself enveloped in a strange cloud. Soon after, he realizes that his height is progressively decreasing. Little by little, he loses weight and height until he becomes almost invisible. His life becomes a nightmare and a constant struggle for survival in which everything is out of reach or a threat. From his own family to a cat or a spider.

Something like this has happened to Alberto Núñez Feijóo since he landed in Madrid, propelled by an organic operation by the barons to take over the national presidency of the PP. Everything is too much for him after having shed the suit of institutionality to wear that of wrestling. Month after month and, survey after survey, the leader of the opposition is valued lower in the electorate. In other people’s electorates it was taken for granted, but in his own it is beginning to be an outcry. Between October 2023 and September 2024 he has fallen more than 20 points among those who, being PP voters, prefer him as president of the Government (from 69.9% to 49.2%). Almost half of his electoral niche does not want him in La Moncloa. And this, with an amnesty and a much-criticised agreement between PSOE and ERC to give singular financing to Catalonia in between that have made a dent in Sánchez’s government.

These are the CIS data, yes. But the data from private institutes is not better, as we already checked in elDiario.es last June. In fact, in all those published by different media – and not precisely progressive ones – he was the worst valued political leader among his own followers. There is concern in the territories and there is a buzz that runs through the conversations of several of his barons.

The questioning goes beyond the walls of Puerta del Sol, the seat of the presidency of the Community of Madrid, and has a lot to do with the absence of a project as an alternative Government that goes beyond mere confrontation with the Government of Pedro Sánchez, with the absence of leadership and with a string of PP spokespersons in permanent competition for the most coarse or dissonant statement.

The week that ends this Sunday, which began with a new parliamentary defeat for Sánchez after Congress rejected the reform of the housing law that was intended to correct the shortfall in seasonal rentals, is a clear example of the nonsense that the Popular Party is living in, of the difficulty in taking the political initiative three days in a row and of Sánchez having managed to open a fissure between the national leadership of the PP and the regional presidents.

On the one hand, Feijóo accuses the Prime Minister of following in the footsteps of the dictator Franco. On the other, his Foreign Policy chief, Esteban González Pons, accuses him of being involved in a coup d’état in Venezuela. And, in the middle, his Secretary for Regional Policy, Elías Bendodo, accuses him of a “dirty war” and a “general purge” against media and judges who are “inconvenient” to him, as if they were in the “former Soviet Union” and says that “that is fascism.” This last statement came a day after Feijóo was photographed in Rome with the Prime Minister of Italy, Georgia Meloni – leader of a party inherited from a formation with fascist ideology – and praised her immigration policy, which includes deportations to Albania and the prohibition of NGOs from helping immigrants at sea. The image was not to the liking of some PP leaders consulted by this newspaper.

Unaware of the declarative extravagance of their national leadership, the regional presidents of Galicia and Andalusia, Alfonso Rueda and Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, respectively, attended Pedro Sánchez’s meeting at La Moncloa on Friday as part of the round that the president has called with the leaders of all the autonomous regions. It is called institutionality and it is something that, despite their ideological differences, both the Galician and the Andalusian, showed off during their stay at the presidential complex. The expression “my president of the Government” with which Moreno usually refers to Sánchez was the same one that Rueda also used during the press conference after his meeting with the president, which for the ‘Monclovita’ leaders marks the difference between Feijóo and, of course, Madrid’s Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the PP barons willing to put aside their differences to talk about the problems of their respective territories.

The same is expected from the rest of the regional presidents of the PP who will meet with Sánchez in the coming days, ignoring the call to rebellion and the plan that Ayuso proposed to them when the president announced the round of meetings with all the autonomous communities. Both Moreno and Rueda conveyed to Sánchez the needs of their territories in separate documents and asked him to include regional financing on the agenda at the next Conference of Presidents. Neither of them referred to Sánchez as a “fascist” and much less warned that Spain was heading down the path of a dictatorial regime, as is heard daily from the mouths of the popular leadership that lives on Calle Génova. The buzz that runs through the territorial leaders of the PP is that “anxiety” is not taking them “anywhere”, that “the strategy of showing Spaniards every day that Spain is heading towards the abyss” is also not credible and that it is useless to ask for an early election every day when everything indicates that the legislature is going to last.

The week has not turned out as expected for Génova, which had promised itself a happy one after inflicting the second defeat in two weeks on the Government in Congress by rejecting the reform of the housing law. After the euphoria of the vote came the questionable image of Feijóo with Meloni and the resounding disavowal by Edmundo Gónzalez of the Popular Party’s offensive against Spanish diplomacy over the crisis in Venezuela.

And, beyond statements, headlines or votes won, the real translation to Feijóo’s opposition is that the PP blew up with its vote the pact that gave a solution to the problem of immigrant minors in the Canary Islands, with its vote it has prevented the regulation of seasonal rentals and with its vote next week it will say no to 12 billion euros for communities and town councils when it prevents the approval of the stability path and the spending ceiling of the Budgets for 2025, believing that in this way Sánchez will dissolve and call elections.

Nothing could be further from the head of the Prime Minister, who is ready to approve next year’s budget with the 2024 spending ceiling. With Junts’ permission, of course. And this is something that no one can guarantee today, despite the fact that the PSOE’s Secretary of Organisation, Santos Cerdán, travelled to Switzerland on Friday to negotiate with Carles Puigdemont the support of his seven deputies in Congress. A mission that does not seem achievable today, not even after the PNV’s commitment to continue giving stability to Sánchez, which the Lehendakari made public after his meeting with the president in Moncloa.

If the PP saw in the support of the PNV in Congress for its initiative in favour of the recognition of Edmundo González as the legitimate president of Venezuela the beginning of the path to a strategic alliance, it was mistaken. It was temporary and strategic. Nothing more. And the PNV leadership has made this known to the Government actively, passively and in a round-the-clock manner. It is a different matter whether the PNV can on this occasion mediate with Puigdemont’s supporters so that they follow their example in supporting Sánchez.