Casado sacrifices Álvarez de Toledo and changes his opposition strategy: the managers return

The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, rectified this Monday, a year later, one of his most controversial decisions and internally contested since he assumed the presidency of the party: the election of Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo as spokesperson in Congress. The leader of the PP summoned her in the morning to communicate his dismissal after multiple statements against the party's argument, the last in an interview in EL PAÍS last Sunday, the straw that filled Casado's patience. The spokeswoman said goodbye with attacks on the leadership of the PP. She will be replaced by Cuca Gamarra, former mayor of Logroño, with a moderate profile. Aware of the crisis caused by the coronavirus, Casado intends to turn his opposition strategy around to focus on the economy and for that he has dispensed with the most ideological profiles to give priority to managers.

The barons of the PP celebrate the new changes because they already tried to prevent, a few years ago, the appointment of Álvarez de Toledo. If she did it once, nothing prevented her from doing it again, they warned Casado remembering her slamming the door on Rajoy in 2015. But neither that, nor the fact that Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo had confessed to having voted for another party, Ciudadanos,. This Monday, the patron of the José María Aznar Foundation, FAES, said goodbye with harsh attacks on Casado after being dismissed. History was repeating itself five years later.

"In these four years of absolute majority, democracy has not been regenerated, nor has it been defended." "I could not go on the lists because I cannot find enough arguments," Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo wrote in October 2015 to explain why he was leaving Mariano Rajoy's PP. “Casado informed me of my dismissal this morning. Its causes seem unfortunate to me and I do not share them. I think they hurt the party. We undervalue critical thinking. Disagreement is not synonymous with disloyalty, "he declared this Monday, after being dismissed by Rajoy's successor.

The statements of support for the dismissed spokesperson are counted on the fingers of one hand in the PP. “Cayetana has been the best spokesperson for the group that our principles and values ​​have had in Congress. I am deeply saddened that it has ceased to be such ”, declared the former Madrid president Esperanza Aguirre. Meanwhile, in the leadership of the PP, the reproaches of the former spokesperson to explain her departure were very badly placed: "It has been very inelegant," several managers agreed.

Cayetana has been the best spokesperson for the group that our principles and values ​​have had in Congress. I am deeply saddened that it has ceased to be.

The appointment of Álvarez de Toledo had been a show of force by Casado after the regional elections, in which he regained oxygen after the electoral crash of his first generals: from 137 to 66 seats. The popular ones reluctantly welcomed whoever had left slamming the door on Rajoy and was now going to be a spokesperson for one party after having confessed to having voted for another. In the following months, the leader of the PP had to defend him many times from internal criticism and reproaches. Until this Monday morning, when he finally called Álvarez de Toledo to communicate his dismissal. In the conversation, which lasted two hours, Casado used as one of the arguments for his dismissal the interview published last Sunday in EL PAÍS, which he considered an “attack on his authority,” according to Álvarez de Toledo. In that interview, the still spokeswoman declared that a party should not be "a military structure" and that she did not like "conchabeo or machination." Contradicting all the arguments of the party, as he has been doing since his appointment, he criticized the decision of King Juan Carlos to leave Spain and opted for a "government of moral concentration" in Spain, at the opposite end of the PP's political agenda.

The barons warned from the beginning that Álvarez de Toledo was going "on his own" and was listing the party to the right. She herself referred to that eternal reproach in a press conference called in front of the Congress of Deputies to send messages to her former party colleagues and to "Mr. Casado", whom she previously always referred to as "my president."

He criticized the already exporting voice that its main detractors, those considered "moderate", govern in their Autonomous Communities thanks to the support of Vox; she expressly addressed the general secretary of the PP, Teodoro García Egea, with whom the tension had multiplied in recent months - "No spokesperson has had less autonomy than me" - and criticized the man who returned her to politics, suggesting that he had been carried away by the dominant discourse of the hard PP and the soft PP. "Casado believes that my conception of freedom is incompatible with his authority."

Álvarez de Toledo also pointed out that the negotiation with the PSOE to renew the General Council of the Judiciary had had a lot to do with his dismissal.

In recent months, it had lost prominence after repeatedly bursting the PP's strategy, such as when it diverted the focus from Interior Minister Fernando Grande Marlaska due to the dismissal of Colonel Pérez de los Cobos, calling Pablo Iglesias the son of a terrorist. Casado dispensed with the congressional spokesperson in the commission for reconstruction after the coronavirus held in the lower house.

The new management team of the PP, which will be ratified on Thursday, includes, in addition to Cuca Gamarra, other moderate profiles such as Ana Pastor or José Luis Martínez Almeida, reinforced after the management of the coronavirus.

Casado thanked Álvarez de Toledo for his work yesterday and encouraged her to continue being part of the "project." He assured that he has not yet made a decision about his future in the PP.