The leader of the Popular Party assumes his role as head of the opposition and strengthens the party before the Galician, Basque and European elections
Alberto Núñez Feijóo is finally going to undertake the changes in the PP to face the new political stage What awaits him in the coming years in the opposition. It was not his idea when he assumed the presidency of the party, in April 2022, after the earthquake due to the clash between Pablo Casado and Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Feijóo arrived with the shield of the four absolute majorities achieved in Galicia and planned to reach Moncloa at the first opportunity, but he did not count on the resistance of Pedro Sánchez.
In the coming days, the head of the popular party is going to communicate some changes that he already publicly said he would make on October 4. Why has it taken so long to execute them? According to what he himself has said, because he wanted to decide and finish them off after knowing the composition of the new Sánchez Government. That parsimony has caused nerves made some party members uneasy about their future, and has distracted almost everyone. “We should be thinking about the amnesty that Sánchez is going to approve and not whether we will continue in our position,” lamented one of the deputy secretaries. on these pages already on October 7.
He will have to demonstrate at the polls that the rejection of the amnesty agreed by the PSOE is as majority as it maintains
“He is worse than Rajoy, that is to say,” says a veteran parliamentarian about Feijóo’s delay in making decisions. “The problem is the unrest that is being generated unnecessarily,” he adds about the weeks that have passed since the leader of the popular party announced the changes (October 4) and their execution. “Taking so long opens wounds between each other,” she laments.
Now Feijóo has to think about a PP to which he will be able to dedicate much more time than he thought. The first objective, according to the thesis that has been imposed internally, is that he must undo tricephaly that he set up to face the municipal, regional and general elections this year: Cuca Gamarra, as general secretary; Elijah Bendodogeneral coordinator, and Miguel Tellado, as deputy secretary of Organization. He must also ratify or replace the position of spokesperson, which is now carried out by the deputy secretary of Culture and Open Society, Borja. Semper. He assumed the role of spokesperson during the electoral campaign, but it is common for the PP to have one permanently.
“Taking so long opens wounds between each other,” says a veteran parliamentarian about Feijóo’s delay in making decisions.
Gamarra, confirmed as number 2
Gamarra will continue General Secretary In this new stage, according to Feijóo himself finally confirmed this Saturday, but will leave the spokesperson in Congress. She “she has been a magnificent part-time general secretary and now she is going to be a excellent General Secretary full time”, stated the leader of the PP this Saturday in Logroño, assuming that he will replace her in the lower house. In the chamber it has a wide and varied bench where to choose: Tellado, Sémper and the also vice-secretaries Carmen Fúnez and Esteban González Pons. All four are currently at the top of the party.
But the changes will also reach the Senatewhere Feijóo provisionally placed as spokesperson in the summer Javier Arenas, who was already general secretary of the party in 1994 and minister and vice president with José María Aznar. Now he will have to name the final one, who will play a key role in this legislature in which the PP has an absolute majority in the upper house. This power gives him the possibility of stopping the parliamentary path of laws (such as the amnesty, for example) and veto the beginning of the processing of the General State Budgets.
Fear for the Galicians
The new team in the party, Congress and Senate that emerges from those decisions that Feijóo is making with the utmost discretion must begin to prepare three decisive challenges in the coming months: the Galician, Basque and European elections.
Especially delicate will be those called in Galicia Alfonso Rueda, Feijóo’s successor in the Xunta. This same week, Tellado, a man most trusted by the PP leader, showed his concern this week in an interview on EsRadio when suggested that Vox should not present itself to the Galician elections so as not to divide the vote on the right and so that the popular party can revalidate the absolute majority for the fifth consecutive time.
The amnesty and the ultras
The electoral threat of the extreme right for the PP has been another of the elements that Feijóo has taken into account when designing his new teams. How to win back the voter Santiago Abascal while the feeling anti-independence reappears due to the amnesty is not an easy task.
The PP will also go out to win the European elections of the month of June to the PSOE after beating him in this year’s general elections, although not with a result sufficient to reach the Moncloa. In the elections to the European Parliament Feijóo will have to demonstrate that he is indeed the “immense majority of Spaniards”As he repeats, they reject Sánchez’s amnesty law. This consultation at the polls could be the most complete test of the grace measure agreed upon by the PSOE with Junts and ERC to close the investiture.
Little presence of MEPs
Feijóo is betting heavily on the European Commission to stop “the attack on the rule of law.” which in his eyes is the amnesty of the ‘procés’, although this week, in the debate that the European People’s Party (EPP) promoted in the Strasbourg ParliamentThere was no great expectation either. The PP parliamentarians are a dozen and almost all of them were there, although they barely had the support of his own fellow soldiers. Not more than fifteen faces of his 165 European family companions were seen. According to some popular Spanish MEPs, the debate was delayed an hour compared to the forecast and that made it difficult for some to attend.