He knew that the relationship was toxic, but he defended it vigorously in order to seize institutional power in communities and town councils. This was just over a year ago. Afterwards, the autonomous map, yes, was dyed blue as he wanted, but the communion of the PP with Vox in regional and local governments cost him the presidency of the Government. We are talking about Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who, due to the strategic union with the extreme right that he opted for just over a year ago, naturally assumed the most ideological discourse of his partners and some of their cultural wars until he became an emulator of Vox and even participated in its strategy of delegitimizing the institutions of the State.
Today, it can be said that the determined gamble to govern with the ultras has failed, that the coalition governments of five autonomous communities have been blown up and that the divorce unilaterally imposed by Santiago Abascal in all of them, forces the leader of the PP to redefine his project and discourse on his umpteenth trip to the centre. He is already working on it, as could be seen in his appearance on Friday after the abrupt selective cessation of cohabitation decreed the previous night by Abascal.
So when we thought that only Pedro Sánchez was capable of making a virtue out of necessity, Feijóo arrived to turn the challenge into an opportunity and take advantage of the breakup. It is not that the leader of the PP wanted it or promoted it, but it was given to him ready-made. However, he had no qualms about stating: “Nobody is going to impose blackmail on me. They have made the wrong person. I am at the disposal of my country so that the Government changes. In the midst of so much chaos, the Spanish people deserve someone to raise the flag of responsibility and common sense.” All in reference to a partner with whom, 24 hours earlier in Valencia, he had approved a bizarre law of concord that equates the victims from 1931 to the present, including those of ETA terrorism, without condemning Francoism or distinguishing the thousands of people murdered who ended up in mass graves or in unknown whereabouts during the dictatorship, after the Civil War.
Feijóo, who aspires to maintain governability in Castilla y León, Murcia, Aragón, Extremadura and the Valencian Community with the occasional support of the same partners who have broken the coalitions, boasted of “having a word, principles, experience in government and political maturity” in a speech in which at times it seemed that the divorce had been promoted by the PP, and not Vox. So much so that he pointed to his current governing partner in more than 140 town councils as responsible for “the Spain of shocks and spectacles” as if the PP had not participated in some of them.
Feijóo is irritated by Vox’s decision, but it is not convenient for him to completely distance himself from his bloc ally or from the frameworks that give his competitors votes, as is the case of immigration. In fact, since Abascal’s excuse for determining the divorce was the minimum distribution of unaccompanied minors between the Communities, the PP has avoided expressing itself on what its position will be on the reform of the immigration law that will establish a mandatory distribution, and not voluntary as until now.
This will be the first major test that the government will face because Pedro Sánchez’s government plans to take the law to Congress this Monday to be debated in the plenary session of the week of July 22-26. “We need a declaration of migratory emergency, funding for the communities for the minors they host, involvement in direct management by the Government of Spain. We need a migration policy. It is the least that can be asked of a country. This is our position on migration,” Feijóo said in his umpteenth demonstration that one can talk without saying anything.
The Moncloa government has responded that the principles that Feijóo says he has not broken in the face of pressure from Vox must be demonstrated not in words but with actions and votes when the law is submitted to the opinion of the Lower House. “If the PP votes against it, it will be exposed and will also have a problem with its barons in Ceuta, Melilla, the Canary Islands and even Andalusia if there are new arrivals of unaccompanied migrant minors this summer,” say those close to the president.
The socialists are willing to give Feijóo’s people homework after the temporary break with their partners, beyond the fact that they celebrate the departure of Vox from the autonomous governments for a question of democratic hygiene. “There are fewer ultras, less hatred, fewer sexists and fewer nostalgic for the dictatorship,” said the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, to immediately recall that in any case “it is not the PP that is abandoning the extreme right, but the extreme right that is abandoning the PP.” And to demonstrate that the break is total with Abascal, he called on Feijóo to break all his agreements in the town halls, to support the reform of the Immigration Law, to throw out all the ultras who are turning afoul of leaving the autonomous governments and to repeal all “the sexist laws, contrary to the LGTBI collective and that have gone against women or that have whitewashed the dictatorship.”
A selective divorce
Sánchez’s party assumes that the divorce from Vox, despite being selective, also forces them to reset their discourse in relation to the alliance between PP and Vox. And this is admitted by the most optimistic because, then, there are the pessimists, more worried about a sudden decision for Feijóo, yes, but which allows him to “place himself in the political centre, a few weeks after having also agreed on the renewal of the Judiciary” and, in the process, retrace the path taken in the last year to begin to explore alliances, now without Vox as a government partner, with the nationalists of the PNV and Junts. Both agree that Vox is “one more suicide of the parties of the so-called new politics” that began with Ciudadanos, continued with Podemos and continued with Sumar the day it decided to break with Ione Belarra’s party. In this the reading is the same as Feijóo’s, who on Friday said that Abascal’s party “have not measured, they have gone too far and have derailed.”
The real question from now on, however, will be whether this week’s move will allow the PP to regain the traction it has lost over the past year, after having fallen by up to four points in direct voting intention among those who place themselves in the ideological centre. The same goes for Feijóo’s rating among his own and other voters, where he has lost shreds of credibility since he took the reins of the PP two years ago.
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