I don’t know if Alberto Núñez Feijóo has ever read Milan Kundera, but it is certain that must feel the unbearable lightness of being, at least of the political being, dressed under which he walks troubled. It is probable that when he left the Galician domain, accustomed to the almost absolute power that he enjoyed, he thought that the wake would follow him through the roads of Madrid, and that being a candidate for the presidency would automatically imply leading his vitriolic party. That is to say, that the word of Feijóo would be the word of God, as it was in the noble lands of Pardo Bazán. But the designs of Genoa, and of the many Genoas that inhabit Spain, were inscrutable and Feijóo has ended up feeling the vertigo that Kundera said that you feel when you want to reach the top.
By now you will know two things: that he does not rule in his party, and that he will be nobody if he does not win the presidency. Needless to say, if he wins, everything changes, because power grants stripes and gives reasons, as Mariano Rajoy well knows, whose extremely gray mediocrity did not prevent him from leading his party. But unlike Don Mariano, Feijóo is just a test, landed at the headquarters due to Sanchista precipitation, as remote from the real leadership of his party as his investiture seems remote. This fact, which the connoisseurs of the PP knew perfectly well, has become very evident every time Feijóo has dared to say something out of the script, in a desperate attempt not to seem like a black-legged pepero. On each of these wayward occasions, generally linked to the Catalan question, He has received the beating of the irreducible press, and the immediate amendment of some leader of his party, made with such a lack of discretion that more than amend it would seem that they scold him. How dare he say this?, that he doesn’t know what the matter is? He is a temporary tenant of the large office, the landlord of a house that does not belong to him and from which he will have to flee if he does not win the presidency.
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The latest example has been his statements about the possibility of including Junts in the round of talks for the investiture, some impeccable statements from the perspective of political debate, not in vain to speak does not imply anything other than recognizing the political adversary, beyond the possible or impossible of an agreement. Feijóo was trying to demonstrate, then, that the PP is not abducted, nor neutralized by the poisonous relationship with Vox, and that it has as much room for maneuver as the PSOE. But Junts is anathema in the ranks of the guardians of the Spanish faith and immediately Alejandro Fernández has jumped to the jugular with a “what to talk about with them” that meant two things: one, that Feijóo cannot even decide with whom he negotiates; and two, that any party colleague raises his voice like a mindundi. Ayuso, Moreno and now Fernández for the political band, accompanied by the entire list of great men of national-patriotic journalism who have also raised the cry, faithful to the daily tradition of poke him for a while, lest he forget his interim status.
Something that is a pity because, without knowing if he would have the material of leader that the thing requires or not, It is a fact that Feijóo tries to focus the party on issues where the PP is more radical, and certainly, in the Catalan question, the party goes from being radical to cavernous. It is also clear that he wants to avoid proximity to Vox (which, however, does not bother other leaders of his party), aware of the toxicity generated by Abascal’s party. And it is also possible that Feijóo aspires to have a relevant place on the European right, generally more civilized than the Spanish, and which is currently orphaned by leadership. But, if this were the case, it is also clear that he yearns for these aspirations in sad solitude, because the party is not in the business of changing the narrative or alliances. Madrid is not Galicia and the PP is not Feijóo, and the stronger the evidence, the weaker the character. Certainly Feijóo has just been born as a leader, but if he does not achieve the investiture, he will have been born posthumously.