Kick forward until the second half of the year.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo is in no hurry to decide what political project he is going to present in Catalonia, despite the fact that his national speech pivots on the rejection of the PSOE proposal for the Catalan problem, the amnesty law.
The leader of the PP has chosen to delay the only autonomous congress that he has pending, the Catalan one, until after the European elections next June, as confirmed by sources from his direct team.
The national leadership of the party wants to decide first "the what, and then the who" - that is, first the strategy and then the leadership of the party in Catalonia - and for that it intends to use the European elections as the "super survey" that will help it to make the strategic decision in a key territory, where almost five and a half million citizens vote.
Feijóo has stumbled over the strategy in Catalonia since he became president of the PP, a little over a year and a half ago, with a succession of ups and downs and rectifications on issues of Catalan politics.
Furthermore, the leader of the PP needs to take flight in that community to overcome the meager three seats that the party won in the last Catalan elections of 2021, taking into account that some sectors of the leadership believe that they can be held again in the fall. of this year.
But Feijóo has not yet made any move, while contacts with Junts, the proposal to dissolve political parties - which has now been put in a drawer - and Operation Catalonia entangle his political position in the only territory in which it has not yet been cleared. the party congress.
The last straw in the shoe for the PP project in Catalonia is the alleged use of public resources by the Government of Mariano Rajoy for the dirty war against the Catalan independence movement, the so-called Operation Catalonia, of which new journalistic revelations have appeared.
Feijóo's leadership has chosen to disdain this information, arguing that it is a ploy by Pedro Sánchez's Government to divert attention from the amnesty, but this is not a unanimous decision in the PP either.
Executive sources believe that the silence on this case should be broken and distanced from it.
“We already said about the smokescreen about the
Gürtel
and Kitchen case,” these sources complain.
The leader of the Catalan PP, Alejandro Fernández, in the plenary session of the Parliament on December 13, 2023.DAVID ZORRAKINO - EUROPA PRESS (DAVID ZORRAKINO - EUROPA PRESS)
The current leader of the Catalan PP, Alejandro Fernández, is the only party leader who has publicly distanced himself from Operation Catalonia.
The Parliament deputy has also challenged the official line of the PP due to the contacts with Junts for the investiture of the popular leader, which he opposed.
It was as a result of that clash that the national leadership considered removing him from office, for which it was considering holding the congress before the end of last year.
But in the end the leadership has had to accept that it is not easy to win an internal conclave from Fernández, because he has maintained an ideologically coherent discourse that has support among the bases.
He doesn't have bad poll numbers either.
The latest Catalan CEO survey, from last November, foresees a rise for the PP until reaching a range of between 12 and 17 deputies (while predicting a victory for the PSC with between
39 and 45 seats).
“Alejandro has played his cards well,” summarizes a leading leader of the Catalan PP, who considers that it is most likely that the Parliament deputy will continue at the head of the party because “there is no one to replace him.”
The former deputy secretary of Organization and current spokesperson for the PP in Congress, Miguel Tellado, conveyed to Fernández privately that the management preferred to go to a scenario of détente.
The internal congress, therefore, will be held in the second half of the year, although Génova does not take Fernández for granted and assures that first it is necessary to define what and then who, because depending on the political space that is sought to represent a profile will fit more than another.
The leadership is considering whether it should focus on contesting the electorate for Ciudadanos, which won six seats in the last Catalan elections, or whether it should seek the part of the former Convergència (today transformed into Junts, with 32 deputies), or that of Vox, which has 12. The leadership will analyze the result of the Catalan matches in the European Championships to decide.
The Catalan PP also has internal debate on strategy.
Some sectors are committed to defending a “Catalanist” PP and others to seek “the Ciudadanos space before going to waste, which is summarized in defending the rights and freedoms of all Catalans,” sources from both point out.
But the key, some of the main Catalan leaders agree, is that Genoa allows the party in Catalonia to pilot its own project and renounces its guardianship, because that has always been frowned upon in Catalonia.
For now, Feijóo chooses to buy time.
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