The leader of the Popular Party, Pablo Casado, during a speech in the plenary session of Congress on June 30. Emilio Naranjo / EFE
Pablo Casado has completed three years of zigzagging journey this week at the head of the Popular Party. Three years of pendular path - between the hard line and moderation, and back - at the controls of a party that he inherited in a critical situation: on July 21, 2018, when Casado prevailed in the internal congress to Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría , the PP was going through the worst moment since its foundation. The conservatives had just been ousted from power due to corruption in the first vote of no confidence that triumphed in democracy, and they were mired in a serious crisis in which the leadership of the opposition to the PSOE was disputed with Ciudadanos. Vox still did not appear in the CIS barometers, although Santiago Abascal had already jumped into the political arena; but the following year, in the general elections of November 2019, it climbed to 52 seats.
Three years after his arrival to the presidency of the PP, Casado believes that he has overcome the "crossing of the desert", as he himself said last Wednesday. He thinks so because Ciudadanos has been shipwrecked and the PP has regained the leadership of the conservative bloc, although Vox still maintains a considerable force. That strength that the extreme right maintains explains, in the opinion of some of the leaders consulted for this report, the "ups and downs" in the path of the popular leader. Today, the PP is still in the opposition and has returned to the hard line, after the trip to the center that had as a milestone the break with Vox in the motion of censure of October last year.
THE COUNTRY has asked seven representative figures of the PP, leaders or former leaders who embody different sensibilities, to value these three years of Casado's mandate.
Also that they indicate what the strategy should be from now on and the relationship of the PP with Vox.
His reflections show an open discussion about the approach and attitude towards the extreme right.
What balance do you make of these three years?
"Married has become the only alternative", says, bluntly, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid and main rising figure of the PP.
The recognition that the popular leader has managed to consolidate himself as an alternative to Pedro Sánchez in this time is shared in the PP: only he seems in a position to reach La Moncloa if the left loses the Government, according to the polls, with the support of Vox.
There is no one in the opposition who disputes that position.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso: “We have seen the success in having her generation
"The balance is very positive given where we started from," says the mayor of Madrid and spokesman for the national executive, José Luis Martínez-Almeida. "Of the traumatic loss of the Government, of a primary with three very strong candidacies and of a very fragmented center-right space," he enumerates. The PP hit bottom after the end of Mariano Rajoy and in the party they value that Casado took charge of the acronyms at that critical moment and took them out of the hole. “Andalusia was won, municipal power was recovered. The party is cohesive and, according to the polls, except for the CIS of Tezanos, it is the main force ”, he defends.
The analysis is much less enthusiastic in the more moderate sector that Congress lost.
"It is a complex balance, with ups and downs," says José María Lassalle, former Secretary of State with Mariano Rajoy.
"That complexity is very marked by the relationship that has forged with Vox, uncomfortable and tremendously toxic."
For the university professor, Casado "is projecting an ideological bipolarity: on the one hand he defends moderation, but on the other he allows himself to be swept away by the ideological toxicity that Vox represents."
“The defense of moderation is not raising a culture war and making ideological trenches.
They are state pacts, to renew the Judicial Power… “, reason Lasalle.
Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla: “You can only win from the center and moderation
From an opposite point, the PP parliamentary exporter Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo also departs, however, from triumphalism.
“The break with Vox [in the motion] has proven to be strategically unprofitable, but it also has a lot of fiction.
The PP continues to govern with the support of Vox and, according to the polls, we can only govern Spain with that support ”, he emphasizes.
The deputy is also the protagonist in the first person of one of the milestones of Casado's stage and she cannot escape it.
"The most eloquent political decision has been my dismissal and, as you will understand, it costs me a little to praise it," he says.
What strategy should be followed from now on?
In the PP different visions coexist on the line to follow to reach La Moncloa. The so-called hard and soft, although no one recognizes themselves in that duality. "You can only win from the center," says the president of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, one of the main moderate barons, who governs with Cs. In his opinion, the PP has to follow "a strategy of moderation and centrality, which does not mean not being demanding." Travel to the center on the one hand, trench and cultural battle against the left on the other. That is the dilemma in the PP. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, one of the references in the cultural battle, likes the Casado of today. The Madrid president advises him to "maintain the tone that is raising Spain." "Maintain the ideological line that marks distances with the sanchismo proposals, which are old and failed",summarizes.
José Luis Martínez-Almeida: “They have to see us as a serious and state party
His counterpart in Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, concedes to Casado that "he has laid out the path and is taking firm steps."
While the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and member of the leadership José Manuel García-Margallo asks him to move forward: “A party that intends to govern cannot limit itself to pointing out the errors of the Government.
You have to fix a set of solutions.
The fall convention is going in the right direction. "
Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo: "We must abandon the ups and downs of these three years"
In the autonomic presidencies of the PP it is heard in private that Casado must reinforce his team, which is seen as a "fledgling", and end a certain "lack of definition" of his project.
In this sense, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo claims to “abandon the ups and downs” and “save the alternative”.
The deputy proposes to say "no to the confrontation with the one who today is your only partner to come to power [Vox]."
In that sense, he criticizes that the PP abstained on Friday in the vote that declared Santiago Abascal persona
non grata
in Ceuta
.
The views differ on this point.
"Married must be able to make his own bet that moves him away from the shadow of FAES and the most radical and conservative sectors that continue to think that the best way to end Vox is to incorporate him into the party," Lassalle opposes.
What to do with the extreme right?
It is the key question.
The PP has not resolved the relationship with Vox.
The thesis in the direction of Casado is to try to achieve "a majority as wide as possible" and leave the question of alliances open.
"I am not ashamed of the investiture pact that I have with Vox," says the mayor of Madrid, Martínez-Almeida.
"The debate on what to agree to or what not to agree to, let it be after the elections."
Isabel Díaz Ayuso also governs with the external support of Vox.
"We are different parties and the PP must maintain its own personality, its ideas and its proposals," he says.
“If at some point we coincide, welcome is the opportunity;
when we disagree, each party, to its own ”.
José María Lassalle: “The relationship between the PP and Vox is uncomfortable and toxic
Except for Fernández Mañueco (Castilla y León) and Alberto Núñez Feijóo (Galicia), the rest of the territorial barons depend on Vox. The Andalusian Moreno Bonilla, who also has his support, raises a relationship "of respect." "At the same time, not be distracted by Vox," he says. "Not even looking at it in the rearview mirror."
Despite the nuances, no one within the PP defends that it is not agreed in any case with the extreme right.
Those who bet on the line of the traditional French or German right are out.
José María Lassalle was discharged in 2018 and defends an "absolute break" with Vox.
“The CDU is asked what relationship to have with Alternative for Germany and the answer is none.
Neither Government, nor agree, nor consent that the CDU governs with its votes.
This is the main problem that weighs on the execution of the PP these three years, "he concludes.
José Manuel García-Margallo: “The PP has to define a project that is recognizable
The threat of repealing social laws from La Moncloa
Pablo Casado's victory in the PP congress in 2018 was then read as a turn to the right of the main conservative party, due to the triumph of a candidate that represented a commitment to the return to the ideological essences of the right after the more focused approach. technocrat of the Government of Mariano Rajoy. During the internal campaign, Casado proposed measures such as returning to the abortion law of 1985 (decriminalized supposedly) and calling a specific convention on principles and values to ideologically rearm the party. In these three years it has not emphasized abortion again, although it has launched the ideological convention, which will be held next October. As leader of the opposition, Casado has indicated his intention to repeal the social laws approved by the left in the Pedro Sánchez government.
The PP candidate has promised that, if he reaches La Moncloa in the next elections, a possibility that most of the polls of private institutes now point to - and discards the CIS -, he will repeal the Historical Memory Law, that of euthanasia and education or
Celaá law
. "We will make a palliative law against euthanasia, a concord law against the doctrine of Historical Memory and a maternity law, which is already being implemented not only in the Community of Madrid, but also in Galicia, with aid who decides to be a mother ”, announced Casado in an interview in
La Razón
. The PP has already appealed to the Constitutional Court the euthanasia law and the educational reform, as has Vox.
The popular ones also oppose the repeal of their labor reform that the Sánchez Government intends to carry out and raise the need to approve a pandemic law and to reform the method of election of the General Council of the Judicial Power so that the judges choose to the vocals. Casado has also announced that if he reaches La Moncloa he will prohibit pardons for crimes against the Constitution and will create the criminal types of illegal referendum and improper rebellion "without the need for violence." It will also reinforce the crime of disobedience to Constitutional resolutions.
The last president of the PP Government, Mariano Rajoy, left without repealing, although he had also announced it, laws of the left such as abortion, homosexual marriage and historical memory. Neither did the method of election of the members of the Judiciary change.