When Alberto Núñez Feijóo arrived at the office of the national president of the Popular Party, on the seventh floor of Genoa, a folder was waiting for him with all the regional congresses that the previous heads, Pablo Casado and Teodoro García Egea, had left for the end of the process internal territorial renovation. It was a kind of welcome poisoned ‘gift’, a dozen time bombs that, if not treated with the utmost care, could literally explode in his hands and open a hole in the newly released PP. Marked in red, the regional congresses of Madrid, Extremadura, Cantabria, Asturias, the Basque Country, Catalonia… Each one of them a powder keg with a high risk of blowing up.
First of all, be very calm, they said to themselves in the new PP, in no hurry to face the internal exams.
Feijóo wanted to be in the news for his economic proposals, his tax cuts and his hand outstretched to the Government on State affairs, and not for organic party issues, which had bled this political organization in the previous months, during Casado’s presidency. The objective was to remove the focus from Genoa and put it on its political alternative, to talk about the PP for what it offers citizens, and not for its fights or its internal life.
But there was an exception: Madrid. In the national executive committee on April 11, nine days after being elected national leader, Feijóo gave the green light to convene the regional congress, to elect Isabel Díaz Ayuso president. It was one of his first decisions, to close as soon as possible the open wound in the game, which was about to be fatal. After a year of internal tensions, the congress, convened in an extraordinary way and therefore without an ideological presentation, will be inaugurated next Friday and the following day Ayuso will be proclaimed regional president, supported by the entire leadership of the PP, to exhibit the unity built after the internal explosion in February. That Saturday, Feijóo will fly to Galicia to participate in the regional congress of the PP, convened that same weekend to elect his successor, Alfonso Rueda, new president of the Xunta. The conclaves overlap for a single day, enough for Ayuso and Feijóo to share the limelight in a weekend that will mark a turning point in this stage of the PP.
In a week Feijóo will thus close the Madrid issue, which had kept the party self-absorbed for the last year. But beyond this Community the problems for the previous management multiplied. Some regional leaders such as José Antonio Monago in Extremadura, María José Sáenz de Buruaga in Cantabria, Alejandro Fernández in Catalonia, Teresa Mallada in Asturias or Juan José Imbroda in Melilla saw their positions hanging by a thread. Some of them, like Monago, already knew that Casado and Egea didn’t count on him. Others intuited it from what reached their ears from third parties, although in Madrid his defenestration was ‘vox populi’.
But now, overnight, a new opportunity has arisen for the evicted in the PP. Nothing is taken for granted and everything, in a way, returns to square one. Those who considered themselves fallen have an opportunity to rise from their announced ashes. At the moment, Feijóo commissioned more than a month ago the general coordinator, Elías Bendodo, and the deputy secretary of Organization, Miguel Tellado, a report on the pending congresses to celebrate them as soon as possible and start preparing the municipal and regional elections of May 2023 The objective would be to have them resolved before August, with consensus candidates, without impositions from Genoa. “That way of acting was left behind, now the national leadership wants to listen to everyone and not impose anything, and if a consensus is not reached, it prefers that there be continuity,” comment popular sources.
In Extremadura, Monago was ‘resurrected’ in the Feijóo PP and entered Genoa directly as president of the Rights and Guarantees Committee. Before the regional congress, the mayor of Plasencia, Fernando Pizarro, already showed his willingness to stand for the primaries, although the Genoa de Casado preferred the councilor of Cáceres María Guardiola. Now, the stage is open and without a favorite candidate.
In Cantabria, the previous PP did not want the current president, María José Sáenz de Buruaga, to continue. The relationship more than broken was destroyed. But Buruaga is another ‘hopeless’ who, given the visible absence of alternatives, once again has an opportunity to continue in the position. In Asturias, many popular in Madrid considered Teresa Mallada finished, who did have a relative margin of confidence in Genoa. The visit of the secretary general, Cuca Gamarra, to her land last Thursday was seen as a possible accolade.
In the Basque Country, the PP was broken and sunk after the departure of Alfonso Alonso, facing the party’s national leadership. Casado opted for the old guard and had Carlos Iturgaiz, appointed to a Regional Board of Directors. The arrival of Feijóo gave rise to the possibility of a return of Alonso, who would dispute the presidency with Iturgaiz, but the former minister denied that this was his intention. In any case, internal tensions continue to exist in a party that is falling in a key community for the PP.
In Navarra, the current president of the PP, Ana Beltrán, had decided to leave that position, but at this time she leaves the question open before the new situation of the party. From Navarra, the popular ask Feijóo to clarify the model he wants, the relationship with UPN, the permanence of Navarra Suma and if there is interest in approaching the platform created by Sergio Sayas and Carlos García Adanero after being expelled from Javier Esparza’s party . The political scene of the center-right in Navarra is one of the most complicated right now, just one year before the elections, with four formations and a nascent platform in the same space.
In Catalonia, the disaster of the regional elections in February last year marked Alejandro Fernández with a cross on the agenda of the previous general secretary, who had lost confidence in the president of the Catalan PP. Fernández, however, had the support of Casado. The reality is that the party in Catalonia is in decline and without signs of recovery. The only consolation in Genoa right now is that there is no urgent need for regional elections.
Another region with pending renewal is La Rioja. Until three months ago, the favorite candidate was Cuca Gamarra, former mayor of Logroño. But her situation has turned around after being appointed general secretary of the PP. The current regional president, José Ignacio Ceniceros, who won Gamarra in the primaries in 2017, has already announced that he will not continue and has defended a unity list.
The previous leadership of the PP had prepared the relief in Ceuta and Melilla, with Juan Bravo and the deputy and soldier Fernando Gutiérrez Díaz de Otazu as candidates. But again, everything is up in the air. Only in Murcia, with Fernando López Miras as baron, the congress is faced with total calm.
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