The PP is today a united party after having passed its most serious existential crisis since the process of its refoundation. A year ago Alberto Núñez Feijóo became president and this time has served for the popular to heal their internal wounds and have managed to expand to the right and left.
The party that Feijóo found was open in channel due to the tension and the climate of lack of confidence that had settled in the relationship between Genoa and the territorial organizations. The organic problems have been overcome, the territories feel respected and the regional congresses that the previous team had been putting off, because they were the most critical, have been held with discretion and generating consensus.
The fire in Madrid has also been put out, where Isabel Díaz Ayuso acts as president of the party in a division of roles with Feijóo that will remain smooth until the next general elections. In fact, Ayuso has launched an offensive against Vox ahead of the regional elections in May which, if it goes well, could mean a strong push for Feijóo towards La Moncloa. Its chances in the general elections will depend on how Vox comes out of the Madrid elections and an absolute majority of Ayuso also has a rebound effect on the climate of opinion of the center-right, which adds to the PP strategy of appealing to a majority and to a government alone .
This year the PP has also completed the Ciudadanos absorption operation and has entered the most moderate vote on the left, which is what does the most damage to the PSOE in its electoral interests. The balance they make internally is good: “There is peace, there is optimism and the party has started up again as an electoral machine.” Even former residents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy have once again shared a physical space together, which possibly does not move a vote on the street, but it does have a strong organic impact.
In the party, the “presidential profile” stands out as Feijóo’s main value, or in other words, that under his leadership the PP has once again been seen as a party in a position to win elections and, above all, to reach La Moncloa. But they also believe that this is precisely the main future challenge they face, that of ensuring that Feijóo maintains his presidential profile until the end. “If you make a lot of opposition, a lot of criticism, your presidential profile will decline,” they comment from one of the autonomous governments of the PP. The head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, is going to promote his more institutional profile with the European Presidency and that is where Feijóo will have to compete before the general campaign is officially launched.
In October the Cortes Generales are dissolved, and with the stoppage due to the regional and municipal elections, plus the summer, it can be said that the legislative activity of the Government is practically finished. This takes the political fight to another terrain, in which the PP hopes that Feijóo will be able to find the framework to project himself as the future president of the Government while protecting him in the opposition work from the Party Management Committee.
After Easter, and with the entry into play of Sumar, a new political stage will begin in which the PP will go into a more proactive mode and in which it will have to face Moncloa’s strategy of reducing the campaign to a supposed clash between the Sánchez-Yolanda tandem and that of Feijóo-Abascal. This playing field does not add up in favor of the interests of the PP and its weapons to combat it will be two: remember that the Sánchez-Yolanda couple cannot aspire to anything if they do not have the other travel companions (ERC, Bildu and other minorities parliamentary) and, on the other hand, risk everything to depend as little as possible on Vox in the formation of the new regional governments.
This year Feijóo has laid the foundations to be in a position to aspire to La Moncloa, but the most difficult part of the road still has to be covered. He needs the municipal map to be dyed blue in May and to get one of the great socialist bastions of autonomous power: Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Aragon, Castilla-La Mancha or Extremadura. He needs to dilute the socialist mantra that PP and Vox are the same thing. And he needs, at the same time, that Sumar does not displace Vox from the third position on the general podium.