“I will make the necessary proposals to meet an affiliate, a vote 'throughout Spain.” A single phrase pronounced by Isabel Díaz Ayuso has stressed the entire PP three weeks from the internal congress that must ratify a second mandate of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The conclave was presumed calm, but the Madrid leader has burst the strategy of her boss of ranks and who, like Juan Manuel Moreno, planned to end the current primary system without much noise. Now, they won't have it so simple.
Feijóo convened the National Congress behind his national direction and autonomic barons, he said himself. The publicized discretion of the Galician leader and his team, who presume that they have never leaked an appointment, broke this time because Okdiario anticipated the announcement. Since then, a single line has not been published on the content of the two presentations that will be debated and voted between July 5 and 6.
Resolution proposals will be made public next Wednesday, June 18. It will be then when the new system is known to choose the presidents of the PP theoretically designed by Fernando López Miras, María Guardiola, Gema Equal and Daniel Sirera, although the model will be the one who wants Feijóo.
And which one does the leader want? It is not clear which method will end up collecting the presentation, but both Feijóo and Moreno and other powerful PP profiles have lasted hard against the current double system: pure primary to make a first screen and a second classic second round with compromisearies.
It was the method promoted by Mariano Rajoy and looked like Pablo Casado. Although Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría won the primary by two points, Casado collected more support from the delegates in the congressional phase thanks to the express support of María Dolores de Cospedal and Feijóo himself, who would later be discarded from the power of the party to his own candidate.
That method is no longer worth them. Both Feijóo and Moreno have publicly expressed their rejection of the primaries. Both have opted for a kind of “indirect” primaries that, basically, would be to return to the past and that the presidents of the PP are elected by delegates in a congress. The nuance could consist that each militant who wants to run for compromise should say prior to what candidate for president will support. The problem is knowing what these delegates will do if theirs withdraws, is eliminated or without options.
Political congress vs. Organic Congress
Feijóo's plan has not liked in the PP in Madrid. Ancient leaders of the national party believe that the call of the Congress and the reform of the system (which will only affect the future, never to this congress) aims not only to relaunch the figure of the leader and candidate, but also to reduce the options of Ayuso in a future struggle for a coming succession.
The current system is from 2017, when Cristina Cifuentes was who directed the manager at the head of the regional organization, besieged by corruption. Placed by Mariano Rajoy, Cifuentes used the Madrid delegation to press and introduce an amendment in the presentation that allowed the “pure” primaries, in a single round, in regional or municipal elections and always under request and permission of the National Executive Committee, an organ that brings together the direction and the autonomic barons.
Ayuso's approach goes beyond what Cifuentes claimed by adding the “throughout Spain” coletilla in the interview in which he verbalized in public what he had already expressed in private. The leader of the party in Madrid already encouraged his people to give ideological and organic battles in Congress thanks to what will be one of the most powerful delegations in the conclave.
In the bosom of the PP there are two clearly differentiated currents: who believe that Feijóo must make a rather political congress, focused on the ideological presentation, and those who push an organic congress that involves an internal renewal of faces.
Starting from the basis that no one or almost no one knows what Feijóo wants, the former believe that the PP leader should not make an organic pickle. Some use a sports simile: it is better to change only the coach than to the entire template.
Those who express themselves think that Feijóo could make some changes, such as the General Secretariat of Cuca Gamarra, but not necessarily to place his executing arm, Miguel Tellado, in that position. Not only because two men in the first two positions of the party is something that squeaks in 2025, but because, in addition, someone would have to designate for the position of parliamentary spokesman. The same sources point out that it could be inferred that the two main appointments of Feijóo in their first stage at the head of the PP were a fiasco, and that is why a deep remodeling has to do.
In the parliamentary group, in addition, there are many defenders of the relentless opposition of Tellado, who star in the most aggressive speeches, the most stalerial complaints and the most ostentatious fuss. Its main objective: the president of the lower house, Francina Armengol. As an outstanding member of the PP assures in Congress, “it is an essential figure within this war in which it seems that some live happy.”
Those who prefer a mild organic congress argue that the PP needs to strengthen their political vis and launch the voter hunt not only for wear of the PSOE, but because they are offered an exciting project. In the PP it has not gone unnoticed that Feijóo has chosen an ideological motto, “values”, for the campaign for Spain that has undertaken despite not having a rival.
But in the PP there are also those who propose that Feijóo will be wrong if the Congress does not take advantage of to give a complete turn to its team, change many faces of the National Executive Committee and, in addition, of the Management Committee, the two main organs in the day to day of the party.
Some leaders consulted by this medium argue that the PP has an important faces problem that prevents Feijóo from moving the management image that insisted on selling from 2022.
However, when the names are analyzed one by one it is not so simple to decide who and who could not continue. Some are fixed, indisputable, the leaders consulted argue. Others have the support (or the rejection) of regional barons, which shields their presence in the committees. And, back to the sports simile, if a team president says goodbye to his coach and half template, perhaps the partners begin to think that the problem is in the box.
Ayuso, in its strategy
The existence of an ideological and organic struggle within the PP is not a secret. In fact, there are multiple examples that witness it.
The last one happened this June, when Ayuso derailed the strategy of his entire party at the presidents conference. The Madrid leader starred in an unpublished and lonely proposed that eclipsed the rest of autonomic barons, coordinated with the National Directorate to demand an immediate call for elections.
Ayuso got up when Lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, spoke in Basque. He was out of the meeting, having coffee, while the 'president' of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, used the Catalan. And he returned while his partner Alfonso Rueda defended the use of co -official languages and, where appropriate, that of the Galician.
Shortly before, Juan Manuel Moreno had faced the cameras an affectionate and prolonged greeting to Illa, host of the meeting, with which he was friendly departing for several minutes.
Be that as it may, the spotlights were taken by Ayuso. The rest of the barons talked about “smoke curtain”, “trap” and “objective” achieved by the government. Everyone avoided responding to their partner, who indirectly accused them of participating in a “farce” and was erected in the only defender of the essences of the (authentic) Spanishity.
But Ayuso not only drags his regional counterparts. With his contempt to co -official languages further away any option of understanding of Feijóo with the only parties that could help him in a hypothetical motion of censure against Sánchez: the PNV and Junts.
The relationship is bad, bad, with the Basques. But it seems irreconucible if meadals see how the Basque is denigrated. With Junts there is much better harmony, since ideologically they are closer, but the independence of Catalan right-wing would have to explain to its bases not only the support of the party that sent national police and civil guards to prevent the vote in 1-O and applied 155, but to the one that has presumed to have the best contacts with the courts that condemned their leaders.
The political storm that raises in recent weeks against the Government has allowed the PP of Feijóo to achieve the low profile that he wanted to give to his conclave. The corruption scandals of the two former secretaries of organization of the PSOE, in addition to the open causes against Pedro Sánchez's family, among others, have grip and against the ropes to the Executive.
But Ayuso's emergence with his interview at ABC last Sunday has been a small and unexpected earthquake. Especially because the Madrid leader showed her intentions the same day that the PP manifested against Sánchez.
Ayuso has managed to advance two alfiles in the game. One, his right hand: Alfonso Serrano. The Secretary General of Madrid is president of the Organizing Committee, a position from which he controls the springs of the preparation of the Congress, although his work concludes just when this start, on July 5.
Serrano starred this week a very hard intervention in the Senate against the co -official languages that ended with the Senators of ERC, PNV and Junts abandoning the hemicycle. Another invaluable 'help' of the PP in Madrid.
The second important piece is Alma Ezcurra, representative of the hard line of the PP that in the European elections of 2024 left two clarifying phrases for the newspaper library.
The first: “The fucking master will not have another one than to claudicate his dogs, which is what they are called, a vice president of the government, there will not be another one to shake their pulse. We tell them to tremble, that the left tremble in this country.” The second: “Fascism that of the independentistas, which we have to see them on Vivitos Street and place.”
Ezcurra is one of the main responsible for the foundation of the PP, reformism 21, and the person in charge of writing the proposal of ideological presentation for Congress. A triumph for Ayuso that, however, is not given to settle. In the next few days you can see to what extent he wants to take a battle now that he could well anticipate what will be given in an undetermined future in which the Feijóo successor will have to be chosen.
