The Catalan PP, now or never with Feijóo

After failing in the last regional elections on 14-F 2021 by repeating as the last force in Catalonia, the Popular Party seems to be starting to raise its head in the region, at least according to the results of the polls.

The latest survey by the Center for Opinion Studies, the Catalan CIS, reveals that the PP would now be the fourth force in Parliament, going from three to between nine and 14 seats.

It would overtake Vox and relegate Ciudadanos, in full free fall.

Taking advantage of the momentum in the polls of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who would now win the general elections according to the July CIS —the Catalan PP is almost in the position of now or never.

Its objective is to face the municipal elections of 2023 as a springboard to get out of the well and regroup the right that opposes independence.

“It is evident that with Feijóo we are positively noticing that the brand is going up”, point out party sources in Catalonia, who add that the internal situation has improved and allows them to launch more effective messages from the Parliament.

The formation, weighed down many times by fights between families, seeks to lay the foundations to turn the page of a

decade coinciding with the explosion of the

which made it residual.

The PP went, in 2011, from agreeing and conditioning budgets with Artur Mas and achieving in 2012 the best results in its history with 19 deputies, to add four seats in 2017 in the elections called by Mariano Rajoy after October 1.

Or three in the 14-F, all for Barcelona with the aggravating circumstance that an independent deputy resigned from the act after creating her own party that was competing with the PP.

In a conference at the summer course of the Catalan PP in Cerdanyola (Barcelona), in July, before the party's cadres, Feijóo exposed the "lessons" of the recent popular victory in Andalusia and stressed: "In politics there are no eternal curses" , he said in reference to the fact that they had run over the most important granary of the PSOE in the last 40 years.

"Useful politics never goes out of style," Feijoo said, urging leaders to broaden the party.

“You have to do it with enthusiasm, humility, work, management and sensitivity”.

The leadership is convinced that Catalonia is no exception and that they can recover a lot of space in the center-right space by rescuing lost votes from Ciudadanos and those who fled to Vox.

Members of the Catalan PP admit that a good part of their electorate abandoned them by ceasing to see them as a useful party that did not serve to contain the rise of independence or to stop the two referendums of 2014 or that of 1-O.

The municipal ones are guessed as the first cotton test for a party that hit rock bottom in 2019: it went from 214 to 67 councilors, almost evaporated from the metropolitan area and in extremis won two councilors in Barcelona.

His loot was pyrrhic: Xavier García Albiol chained his third victory in Badalona —he was dismissed in November by the motion of censure after appearing in the Pandora Papers—.

Now the PP only governs in Pontons (Barcelona, ​​500 inhabitants) and in Gimenells (Lleida, 1000) where the mayor's office takes turns with the PSC.

With the strategy of treading territory, the party, which has delivered 200 new cards to militants, has just renewed its provincial address in Barcelona where Feijóo abhorred the dejudicialization agenda agreed at the dialogue table.

Presided over by the deputy Alejandro Fernández, the PP will prepare to elect its head of list for the Catalan capital in the fall after the resignation of the businessman and mayor Josep Bou upon verifying that he does not now have the support of the party.

But it is not just about the municipalities.

The Catalan PP only has two deputies in Congress —Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo and Llanos de Luna— and contributed a dozen acts when Mariano Rajoy achieved the absolute majority.

The national leadership recalls in its messages that it needs a good result in Catalonia and not give it up for lost.

The party will elect the head of the list in Barcelona in the autumn after the resignation of Josep Bou

However, the forecasts were also good on the dates prior to the elections of 14-F 2021 and then they were not confirmed.

Pablo Casado turned to the Catalan campaign and ended up monopolizing the messages, sometimes contradictory about 1-O, party sources point out that he had bet without the slightest fissure on Casado in the primaries.

It did not help them either that Luis Bárcenas threatened to pull the blanket in the days before the start of the trial of box b.

It had the impact on the campaign of a meteorite.

The party later foundered in the collection of signatures against the pardons for the leaders of the procés.

Even so, just the first poll of the Catalan CIS of 2021, before Feijóo's appointment, already predicted the increase of the PP.

Far from the most belligerent words of Casado, who in December demanded the application of article 155 and the suspension of autonomy in Catalonia, Feijóo has printed moderation in his speeches in Catalonia except on the subject of Catalan when he stated that a “ linguistic apartheid” with Spanish in this community.

All the sovereignist parties and the PSC came out to refute him.

No one from his party did.

The PP has raised the new Catalan law, drawn up to avoid the application of 25% of Spanish, to the Constitutional Court.

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