Four absolute majorities to his credit, proven management experience and a moderate profile: Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, president of the regional government of Galicia since 2009, was elected on Saturday April 2 as head of the Popular Party (PP, right), with the heavy task of curbing the rise of the Spanish far right and bringing together the different sensitivities of the right before the legislative elections scheduled for 2023, in the hope of wresting power from the socialist Pedro Sanchez.
“I am not coming to insult the president of the government. I come for you, with you, to beat it, insisted Mr. Feijoo, during his first speech as president of the PP, while the tension and the invectives poison the parliamentary debate. We must take Spanish politics out of confrontation and permanent hyperbole (…). Let’s close the sterile debates and face the real problems. »
The only candidate for the presidency of the PP, Mr. Feijoo, a 60-year-old senior civil servant, was acclaimed by his peers, with 98.35% of the votes, during the national congress which was held on 1is and April 2 in Seville. He must now “reset” the PP, in the words of MEP Esteban Gonzalez Pons, responsible for organizing the congress. To start again on new bases, in short, after the controversial stage of his predecessor, Pablo Casado.
Keep the far right at bay
After the fall of the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy in 2018, Mr. Casado, now 41, renewed the leadership of the PP. Then he had continued to modulate his speech according to opinion polls, more attentive to the debates launched by the far-right party Vox than to maintaining a coherent line within the great party of the Spanish right. His line of action against the left-wing government – blocking the renewal of the Chamber of Judiciary for three years, criticism of the policy pursued by Mr. Sanchez before the European Parliament – has not only aggravated the disaffection of Spaniards for politics, but also weakened his party.
The latest opinion polls bear witness to this: the PP is credited with about 22% of voting intentions, in the event of an election, barely two points ahead of Vox (against 27% for the Socialists). Disavowed by his people following an open confrontation in February with the popular president of the Madrid region, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, a free spirit with populist overtones, Mr. Casado was finally pushed out.
“We must recover our principles and our values as a great reformist and Europeanist centre-right party. However, our problem is not unique to Spain. Across Europe, centre-right parties are facing the rise of populist and illiberal parties,” asserts a PP leader, close to Mr. Feijoo, who acknowledges, on condition of anonymity, that the party has “entangled in the semantic field of Vox, while we must have our own ideological framework and avoid playing in the one that the extreme right wants to impose on us”.
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