Feijóo's pending agenda in the PP: candidates in Catalonia and the Basque Country, preparing European elections or setting a national congress

Although now the effort is directed towards attempting an investiture, 'Génova' is waiting to see if elections are repeated in Murcia

MADRID, 30 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will have to face an intense party agenda in the coming months, such as the pending regional congresses in Catalonia and the Basque Country that will define the electoral candidates in those autonomies; the preparation of the European elections scheduled for June 2024; or holding an ordinary national congress, the date of which will not be specified until the national stage is cleared.

In the coming months, the leadership of the PP will calmly face these 'duties' in an organic key, aware that the priority at this moment is in the investiture debate, to which Feijóo aspires to appear even though he has not obtained the necessary support to be invested president.

The 'barons' and territorial charges of the PP have closed ranks with Feijóo and no one disputes his leadership. In fact, they consider that, even if the socialist Pedro Sánchez manages to form a government, it will be a "short" legislature in which the party will be able to carry out "hard opposition work" monitoring the Government, both from the Senate with its absolute majority and from its autonomous strongholds, according to sources from the formation assure Europa Press.

Feijóo has close support from the PP to continue as head of the opposition if Sánchez manages to govern, a scenario far from that experienced by Mariano Rajoy in 2008 when, after losing the elections twice against the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, he began to have internal response. Thus, Esperanza Aguirre threatened to challenge him for leadership but was finally re-elected president in the Valencia congress with the support of the Valencian and Andalusian PP, led by Francisco Camps and Javier Arenas at the time.

On July 12, 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Feijóo --who was then president of the Xunta-- and the lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, called elections in Galicia and the Basque Country, two electoral appointments that were won by the PP and the PNV, respectively .

Although after the setback of the PSOE in the regional and municipal elections on May 28, there was speculation that Alfonso Rueda could now summon the Galicians, that progress has now been cooled by Rueda himself, who will aspire to revalidate the absolute majority that harvested Feijóo in 2020.

In the case of the Basque Country, the PP will have to decide if the current president of the Basque PP, Carlos Iturgaiz, is the ideal candidate to face the regional elections. His election at the head of the position - Pablo Casado recovered it after the departure of Alfonso Alonso - took place in October 2020 in a Board of Directors and the celebration of a regional congress of the Basque PP is pending.

In Catalonia, sources from the party leadership suggest that there will be changes in the Catalan PP, which has been chaired by Alejandro Fernández since 2018, whom Feijóo's team tried with the possibility of being a deputy again in Madrid, although he rejected it. He thanked that offer through social networks and added: "But I'm staying in Catalonia."

PP sources consider that this offer was a way out given the intention of Feijóo's team to seek new leadership at the helm of the PPC. Names appear in the pools such as the PP spokeswoman in Brussels, Dolors Montserrat, the mayor of Castelldefells, Manu Reyes, or the former candidate for mayor of Barcelona, ​​Dani Sirera.

The Government of Murcia is also on the air. In recent days, the confrontation between the PP and Vox in the region has been seen again -- those of Santiago Abascal want to be part of the regional Executive, an extreme that the 'popular' Fernando López Miras rejects - something that brings the electoral repetition. In case there is no agreement, the elections could be held at the end of October.

The PP will also have to start preparing for the European Parliament elections in autumn, which are scheduled for June 6-9. In 2019, the then party president, Pablo Casado, opted for Dolors Montserrat as number one and Esteban González Pons (who has been elected national deputy for Valencia) as number two.

They were accompanied by Antonio López-Isturiz, Pilar del Castillo, Javier Zarzalejos, José Manuel García-Margallo, Francisco Millán, Rosa Estarás, Isabel Benjumea, Pablo Arias, Juan Ignacio Zoido and Gabriel Mato. Feijóo will now have in his hand the power to decide who is part of that candidacy.

Although Brussels sees with relief the setback that Vox has suffered in Spain, in the ranks of the European People's Party (EPP) they took it for granted that there would be a Feijóo government after the generals. The results of 23j affect the objectives of the PP to gain weight within the EPP and the distribution of power in Brussels.

Another of the pending issues in the PP is the holding of a national congress of the party that includes the debate of papers, given that there has been no ordinary congress since February 2017, a conclave that re-elected Mariano Rajoy as president and that introduced into the Party Statutes a system of primaries.

The last two PP conclaves have been extraordinary. The one held in July 2018 occurred after the motion of no confidence that evicted Rajoy from Moncloa and then Pablo Casado prevailed over the former Vice President of the Government Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría.

The last conclave took place on April 1 and 2, 2022 in Seville and Feijóo was elected there as the new president, after a deep internal war larvae for months that pitted Casado against the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

One of the issues that the PP will have to face is the relationship with Vox, a debate that has been reopened in the ranks of the PP after the general elections. The 'popular' agree that Abascal's party has been the "best ally" for Pedro Sánchez to have options to continue in La Moncloa.

However, members of the PP consulted by Europe believe that the "mistakes" in the campaign must be analyzed and the strategy defined before Vox because, in their opinion, they did not act in a "coherent" way and the electorate was "confused".