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The PP has launched the pre-campaign for the regional and municipal elections of May 2023 with one main objective: to win some community over to the PSOE to gain momentum before the general elections scheduled for the end of that same year. And the most feasible socialist president to beat is also clear: Emiliano García Page, in Castilla-La Mancha. For this reason, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has taken the XV Interparliamentary of the PP to Toledo. And, also for this reason, he has given special prominence to his candidate to win the Board, Paco Núñez. A decided bet by Pablo Casado and who opened this Sunday for the closing speech of the now national leader of the party. “Soon you will be president of the Government and I will be president of Castilla-La Mancha,” he said. Two statements that are more related than it might seem at first glance.
The PP’s plan has been drawn up for a long time. They need to obtain a great result in the municipal and regional elections of 2023 to lead the general campaign and for Moncloa to fall almost naturally into their hands, as it fell in 2011 in those of Mariano Rajoy. The calendar is almost nailed to the one of a decade ago, and also then the society suffered an economic crisis. But the political and social reality today is different. The management of the crisis is being opposed to that of 10 years ago and a stumble in May could be lethal for Feijóo’s aspirations.
The regional and municipal elections of 2019 were a fiasco for the PP, which was then incipiently led by Casado. They were not the first force in Madrid, for example, although they recovered the main squares and the PSOE took over a good part of the regions, as well as a good handful of provincial capitals and important cities. The PP thus has within its reach to improve the results of 2019. But that is not enough. “The autonomic ones mark the future”, they recognized this Saturday from the direction of the PP to the journalists. “It is not the same as Sánchez holding out for one of the governments to hand over,” they concluded.
It is not argumentative. It’s reality. “Something must be recovered in the regional and municipal governments,” assured a veteran leader who had responsibilities in Genoa in the past on Saturday. “Those that you already govern do not count”, he pointed out, in clear reference to Madrid (city and community). But not only.
With Andalusia and Castilla y León out of the game, the game for control of Moncloa is played mainly in three communities where the PP has its hopes: the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands and Castilla-La Mancha. Of them, the castellanomanchega seems the most feasible: a simple majority can be enough.
In the PP led by Paco Núñez they receive surveys periodically. In the last one, Emiliano García Page surpasses him by 1.7 points. The current president has secured 15 deputies, and Núñez a minimum of 14, they say. Thus, the entry of Vox, which is taken for granted by the “irradiation” of Madrid in the Corredor del Henares (Guadalajara) and in Toledo, would serve to add. But, in addition, in the PP they believe it is feasible to turn the polls around and win.
In that case, it would be done even without an absolute majority and with a possible government alone. The electoral law guarantees governability and prevents voting against a candidate in the second round. If Paco Núñez wins, only an entente of socialists and Vox would prevent him from presiding. And in that case, they do not believe that they would have problems governing alone since the situation of Vox, they assure in the PP, would not allow them to demand anything.
The state of the extreme right has been another of the most common comments in the weekend huddles at the Hotel Beatriz in the City of Three Cultures, a venue that transports the visitor as soon as they walk through its doors to the 1970s the last century.
“Vox is just noise,” pointed out a senator with three years behind him. “And when there is internal noise, you don’t hear the other noise,” he concluded. The co-government experience in Castilla y León is not going as well for the far-right party as they wanted. Those who share responsibilities with them in the Government of the Board believe that they have a problem of cadres and that they do not have a bench since they are only worth “pure people and faithful to the regime”. For this reason, next year’s municipal elections will focus on large cities, which can also weigh down their regional options.
To all this is added the incipient and unexpected internal conflict. In the PP they compare what happened with Macarena Olona, in declared war with the leadership of Vox, to what happened to Podemos with Íñigo Errejón. The split of Más Madrid, as theorized in Genoa, was the turning point of the electoral setback for Podemos, and now the same thing could happen to those of Santiago Abascal if Olona chooses to champion his own candidacy.
So Paco Núñez has taken his role very seriously. After a long campaign of rapprochement with Feijóo (he was a Casado man and his right-hand man, Teodoro García Egea) that led him to cover half of Spain in pursuit of his boss in the days before his election as president, the leader has reciprocated . Núñez, who tries to appear whenever he can in the acts that Feijóo stars in Madrid, was graced last week with a visit to the Albacete Fair, his city.
It was the prelude to what was experienced this weekend. All the leaders who have taken the stage of the Interparliamentary have praised the candidate to relieve Page at the head of the Board: Dolors Montserrat, Javier Maroto, Cuca Gamarra, Fernando López Miras, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, Juan Manuel Moreno,… All , except Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who went to Toledo to talk about her book and then left without staying for the regional leaders’ meal or the round table she was supposed to moderate.
The Madrid president no longer raises the passions she raised just a few months ago. The entrances and exits of her in the PP events do not generate crowds and there are not so many militants and middle cadres who struggle to become a selfie with the president. Gone are the moments of maximum splendor of him, when he fought with Pablo Casado for moral leadership, and later effective, in the party. As summed up by a PP veteran, the Feijoo effect it is also a certain internal pacification because with the Galician, he says, the party is seen in Moncloa: “They didn’t see Casado, they see him.”
In his speech as the opening act for Feijóo, his debut before the national party, Núñez attacked Emiliano García Page, whom he made an effort to assimilate with Pedro Sánchez. “All the current socialist leaders who are governing are the same, branches of Sánchez. There is not a single socialist who is good,” he said. “All Spaniards and Castilian-Manchegos have a common enemy: the PSOE,” he added. “We are not going to pardon Page and in the next elections he will go to the opposition”, he pointed out, to conclude: “Soon you will be president of the Government and I will be president of Castilla-La Mancha”.
In the last second of his speech, he left a message addressed to those who in the PP itself seek a leading role that is not theirs now: “Each one in his place, each one where he touches us.”
As for Feijóo, little news, if any, in his speech. Hardly an attempt to sneak into the debate on the rent agreement, in which he has little to say. Without anyone to act as his counterpart, he was able to avoid the topics where he has not been able to place his message, when he did not rectify himself in 24 hours. In the Spanish PP, resentment is growing towards the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, whom they accuse of wanting to “look good with everyone”, referring, in fact, to her support for Pedro Sánchez, despite her efforts.
Feijóo elaborated on the open linguistic conflict in Catalonia. And not because he wanted to, but because he had no other choice. Almost at the same time that he spoke, thousands of people demonstrated in Barcelona against the immersion of Catalan in school. At the head of the PP delegation, its general secretary, Cuca Gamarra.
The leader of the PP had a good excuse not to appear in Barcelona: the Interparliamentary was scheduled before. In addition, the hard line against Catalan collides with his “cordial bilingualism” and “constitutional Catalanism” that he defends as a recipe for his party to regain some strength in Catalonia. An attempt that collides with the leader of the PP in the community, Alejandro Fernández, and with the PP deputy for Barcelona, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, for whom all this is “a Galician”.
Toledo’s appointment saved Feijóo from reissuing the foto de columbus that brought so much trouble to Casado. And also to warn his people about not knowing how to manage expectations. “I’m not satisfied with winning when others lose. I’m not satisfied with being treated better because others are treated worse. We can’t settle,” he said. Translated: beware of giving the game for won, that you have to play it.
The PP leader spoke of a “moderate center”, of “transcending ideas” and of “good politics”. A day before, Ayuso criticized the “soft men” and launched an ideological speech in which he even found room to talk about Cuba. Paco Núñez, a day later, resorted to Venezuela.
As much as Feijóo wants, the PP that he pilots is the one that Casado designed. And old tics are hard to change. Another handicap for his long way to the Palacio de la Moncloa.
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