Ángel Collado
Journalist
Once the new left-wing coalition government has been formed and its commitments to the pro-independence groups have been revealed, the People’s Party (PP) is reorganizing itself to face a probably long and certainly turbulent stage in the opposition.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo adopts as a basic program the defense of the constitutional framework against frentism and the “wall” against the right announced by Pedro Sánchez at his inauguration as President of the Government.
The PP now needs to get the tone and the teams right to expand its electoral space, at the expense of the PSOE itself and Vox, with its sights set on the next general elections and even before that, on the regional elections scheduled in the Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia plus the European ones on June 9.
The popular ones repeat that they beat Sánchez at the polls, that they are the first party in Spain and with the largest parliamentary group in Congress, that they have an absolute majority in the Senate, that they are hegemonic in autonomous Spain and that they preside over almost a third of regional governments. But they lacked 4 votes in Parliament to make Feijoó head of the Executive.
The analysis of the data and the self-criticism (only internal) made by the PP abound in the conclusion that to return to power it has to achieve the objective of uniting the vote of the entire center-right and attracting the most pragmatic sectors of the electorate, those that oscillate between the PSOE and the PP itself.
Feijoó already incorporated the remaining voters in Ciudadanos – the center-left operation created by Albert Rivera – in the July elections, but the far-right Vox still obtained 12.3 percent of the votes. Since the times of the Transition and the executives of Adolfo Suárez’s UCD, the right, the PP, has only governed stably when it presented itself united and without competition in its political space.
Division of the adversary aside, Sánchez knew how in the elections last July to take advantage of the popular pacts with Vox in the autonomous communities, to stop the announced transfer of some of his voters to the PP.
As the extremes feed off each other, Sumar’s new coalition cabinet of socialists and populists supported by all pro-independence groups favors the most radical reactions to his plans. Abascal desperately seeks his role in the opposition, always beyond Feijóo.
Sánchez once again finds in Vox the argument to become the victim of the fire that he himself causes. The sanchismo ignores the peaceful protests of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards against its amnesty law for the Catalan coup plotters in exchange for their 7 votes and highlights the concentrations in front of the PSOE headquarters in Madrid promoted by those of Abascal and in which violent groups infiltrate.
The PP leadership considers that the party’s style of opposition, relentless in denouncing the pacts with the separatists and in defending the Constitution, but within institutional channels, was enshrined in Feijóo’s speech during the session of investiture of Sánchez. Abascal left the Chamber and preferred to go demonstrate in the street.
The president of the People’s Party now has to elect a parliamentary spokesperson in Congress who will take on the day-to-day task of replicating the Government’s frontist projects and messages in the Chamber without falling into the radicalism and populist exaggeration of Vox.
Feijóo has already relieved Cuca Gamarra of that function so that she can focus on her other position, that of general secretary of the party, her number two for the internal organization. It was a provisional sum of responsibilities that had lasted more than a year waiting for the elections and their results.
Gamarra was the spokesperson inherited from the period of Pablo Casado’s presidency that Feijóo let go, but now she has to reveal what his bet is, among other things to outline her tactics against the radicalized sanchismo and Abascal’s desire for prominence.
