“I am not asking for an absolute majority in Euskadi and Catalonia, but I am asking that we not set an electoral ceiling.” It is the slogan that the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, launched to his candidates in the Basque and Catalan regional elections. The first to face the polls will be the leader of the Basque party, Javier de Andrés, who starts from a situation so low that he only has room to rise. This is what they demand of him in Genoa: to be able to sell an improvement to try to escape the current irrelevance.
The electoral evolution of the PP in Euskadi hit the bottom in 2020. In coalition with Ciudadanos, both parties achieved five deputies with just 6.75% of the votes with a list headed by Carlos Iturgaiz, whom Pablo Casado placed at the head of the party after purge Alfonso Alonso, who had supported Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría in the Mariano Rajoy succession congress.
Iturgaiz achieved the worst historical result for the PP. But four years earlier, in 2016, Alonso could not celebrate much either: he won nine seats with 12.2% of the vote. In 2012 there were 10 deputies, and in 2009, 13.
That legislature almost three decades ago was the last in which the PP had something to say in Basque regional politics. The PNV won by a landslide at the polls, but the absence of the 'abertzale' left in those elections by judicial decision led to a hitherto unprecedented alternative majority. PSE and PP added their votes, and Patxi López was elected Lehendakari by the Basque Parliament. There were even times, at the beginning of the century, when the PP obtained more deputies than the PSE.
Two key communities
At the municipal level the PP also had an important presence. For example, the current national spokesperson, Borja Sémper, became deputy mayor in Donostia with the socialist Odón Elorza as mayor. Or Javier de Andrés himself was Deputy General of Álava.
Those times have passed, and in the PP they long to recover a certain relevance that allows them, if not to govern, then at least to be relevant. It happened at the municipal level after the 2023 municipal elections, when your vote prevented EH Bildu from winning the Mayor's Office of Vitoria or the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.
In the PP they know that one of the electoral holes that prevented Feijóo from being elected President of the Government after winning the elections in July of last year is in his poor results in Euskadi and Catalonia. Not in vain, the leader of the PP has been trying since 2022 to recover the presence that the party lost in both regions, its dialogue with the economic and social establishments and its ability to influence public life, beyond being able to govern or not. The PP has never governed Spain without having good results in both territories and Feijóo knew that he would not be an exception.
He wasn't wrong. That is why the head of the opposition maintains his commitment to approaching the centers of power of both communities. And the first thing he did when he arrived was to change the leader of the Basque PP, Carlos Iturgaiz, for someone with a more moderate profile and who faced management tasks in the past. De Andrés was, in addition to general deputy, Government delegate with Rajoy in the Moncloa. In Euskadi he achieved it. In Catalonia, no.
The PP is thus content with recovering some voice in the Basque Country. “We are going to fight to be decisive in Euskadi,” said Feijóo at the beginning of January, when he outlined the main lines of his opposition objectives for 2024. The leader of the PP ordered his people to retain the absolute majority in Galicia, an objective achieved last February; to improve in Euskadi and to win the European Championships.
But Pere Aragonès' decision to bring forward the Catalan elections and call them for next May 12 has hidden the Basque campaign, which reaches its halfway point this weekend. “It takes away our focus,” they lamented in the leadership of the regional PP after the announcement by the president of the Generalitat.
The consequence is that the Basque campaign will be more autonomous than ever. And Feijóo's presence in it, very minor. The leader of the PP will only hold five electoral events, a far cry from the parallel caravan that he organized in February to support Alfonso Rueda for his first absolute majority. One was the opening one, a week ago now. Two more this weekend. And two more before closing, next Thursday and Friday.
The PP's message is focused on fishing among those dissatisfied with the management of the PNV and PSE coalition government. Opinion polls indicate that, far from the national issue that is of so much interest outside the Basque Country, Basque citizens want solutions to the problems of Public Health (Osakidetza) or housing. In this fishing ground of discontent, EH Bildu has managed to grow until it is within reach of winning its first regional elections.
Taking into account that the PP is going to improve the results, on Sunday the 21st they will know in Genoa if the strategy proposed by Feijóo works. A bad result in the Basque Country, which would be followed by a foreseeable lower result in Catalonia, would be a drag on the European campaign in June, where the opposition leader wants to demonstrate that the fiasco of his investiture was nothing more than a stumble in his race towards Moncloa.
