The strange journey of P. Casado

The popular leader, Pablo Casado, during a government control session.Emilio Naranjo / EFE

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  Married Patriotism;

  by X. Vidal-Folch

Pablo Casado has made a political course perhaps not unthinkable, but it is strange. At the beginning, he stood up to Vox in the motion of censure presented by Santiago Abascal; And at the end it is not easy to distinguish his speech from Vox, which asks him for a motion of censure en bloc. That Casado of the vibrant allegation of the center-right against Abascal, threading persuasively moderate arguments, ends the course, ten months later, more and more centrifuged. Of course, with the polls, it will be difficult for Casado to think that he is making any mistake: many polling houses place the PP as the first force, with an absolute majority of the feasible right. Even the CIS admits the trend. He asks for elections, like someone asking for coffee to rain in the field.

Casado's demographic success owes much to a linear phenomenon: the collapse of Ciudadanos, literally in a spin, releases three million votes whose inertia leads to the PP. The party will win most of that package and the remnants in the less populated provinces. However, anxiety seems a bad ally. It makes little sense to try to accelerate this process, it being obvious that this process is not going to accelerate, not while the Government has a stable majority and needs time to make its agenda profitable. You cannot spend three years asking for elections without weakening. It is misunderstood, in fact, the signing of Fran Hervías to act from the corridors under suspicion of Genoa with the task of persevering in the demolition operation of his old party. The latest success is to make Citizens lose the City Council of Granada ... to hand it over to the PSOE.Remarkable. Hervías may experience insurmountable pleasure, a dopamine kick, at the collapse of Ciudadanos, but leadership doesn't need primal instincts. It begins to create problems in Andalusia, which is not Murcia.

Casado's evolution throughout this course that is coming to an end, with that trip to the center turned in the opposite direction, seems to obey a strictly opportunistic logic once the Citizens space is available. In addition to stopping Vox, to limit his space, Casado probably believes that he will also mark the PP of Madrid, read Ayuso, blessed by Aznar as a great white hope: "the most relevant political figure in Spain." In Madrid there is undoubtedly a sociological Aznarism, but, from the Galicia of Feijóo to the Andalusia of Juanma Moreno, there is another PP. Casado, however, seems to assume that the PP of Madrid is the PP of Spain within Spain ... That Casado in October was warmly praised by the leader of the European popular group,Manfred Weber ("Spain needs a center leader without alliances with radical forces that only seek division"), and had the support of the business community, with Garamendi and Bonet praising moderation. Today Casado is facing businessmen and increasingly away from the center. In the polls, yes, good.