The president of the community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, together with the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, in the act of being sworn in as president at the Puerta del Sol headquarters in Madrid.
ANDREA COMASAndrea Comas
Pablo Casado announced the party's convention that begins tomorrow almost 9 months ago, on February 16.
It did so at the same time that it communicated a change of venue - which has not yet taken place - to divert attention from the scandals that still haunt the party and face the electoral crash in Catalonia - three seats, eighth political force in Parliament -.
The objective is to gain focus and set the agenda, but the conflict over the leadership of the party in Madrid has overshadowed the opening party for the moment.
This internal tension has caused exactly what Genoa wanted to avoid, at least for a week: invoking the PP for something other than its alternative government.
This is the photo of the match before what they present as their "coming-out."
Brainstorming, international guests and pumpkins.
To reinforce the image of Casado as presidential, the popular invited "international references." The PP failed to get the two main European conservative figures to attend, Angela Merkel and Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission and member of the European PP, and other intellectuals such as Steven Pinker also gave it pumpkins. The Chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurz, and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted of corruption last March, will attend.
The PP claims to have held fifty seminars with 500 collaborators in the last six months to prepare the conclave from which it intends to extract an embryo from its next electoral program.
The convention is itinerant from Monday to Friday through the communities where they govern and concludes with a great act of show of force next Sunday in the bullring of Valencia.
The PP wants to bring 8,000 supporters to evoke the good times, such as when José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy filled the square.
During the seven days of events, there will be almost a hundred speakers at the round tables.
“There are going to be many voices.
With so many guests, someone will say something that may generate an issue ... But over the weekend we will bring together ideas, "says a leader of the nucleus.
The Ayuso factor.
After the months invested in preparing the convention, the open war between Genoa and Isabel Díaz Ayuso for control of the PP in Madrid will mark the appointment. The relationship between Casado and the Madrid president is very touched. Party sources point out that it even "rotates." According to these sources, both have seen each other in private after the conflict broke out, they have criticized each other and have not reached an agreement. The convention will be held with that melon open, although party leaders asked to sign peace before.
Ayuso will be the only regional president who is not present in her community — on those days she travels to the United States — when the convention arrives in Madrid. Yes, he will participate on Saturday, along with the rest of the barons. And it will not go unnoticed. "The militants are always more radical than the voters," warns a veteran former leader. "So in that forum a speech like hers has a better chance of success for stage purposes," he adds. Ayuso will monopolize the spotlight, and everyone will be attentive to any message that could be interpreted as a reproach.
"It is a losing battle for Genoa," says a former regional leader.
“Now the focus of the convention is that.
It is not understood what they have done and, even less, that it was the president himself who opened that melon.
That is going to wear him down and in a vital territory, which he has to take great care of, because in Catalonia we are dead and to get to La Moncloa you need Madrid, Andalusia and the Valencian Community ”, he adds.
Most of the regional presidents, leaders and former leaders consulted by EL PAÍS do not understand that Genoa is extending the idea, after Ayuso expressed his desire to preside over the Madrid PP, that he had other plans for the leadership of the party.
Especially when it is very difficult for them to be fulfilled.
"The militancy", insist several leaders, "is with her."
The strategy against Vox.
Married reaches the halfway point of the legislature with Vox resisting in the polls. In Genoa a figure is marked in red: 1.5 million votes, which are those that they believe they could attract from Vox. Hence the winks, balances when you are not swinging, towards the extreme right. “I don't think Casado is going to do pirouettes with anti-immigration messages like Vox. People vote for the original, not the copy ”, analyzes a regional president, who advocates“ ignoring them and making a call to the voters: if you want to evict Sánchez, we need your support ”.
The strategy with Vox is the main point of friction between the barons (with the exception of Ayuso) and Casado. The regional leaders, with a more moderate profile, reconciled with their leader after months of tension when Casado broke with Vox in the motion of censure against Pedro Sánchez - "We have come this far," he told Santiago Abascal - but since then, the ups and downs have returned. The European PP recently abstained in the vote in Brussels to include gender violence in the list of crimes at the community level, key for a future European directive that unifies criteria and unites efforts against the murders of women. Vox voted against it because it considers, as it does in Spain, that it violates the presumption of innocence. In Madrid, Ayuso has also taken up Vox's demand to modify gender and LGTBI laws.Autonomous presidents and leaders of the PP consulted insist that Casado must address a larger majority and not be obsessed with recovering those who now vote for Abascal's party. "You cannot make the same speech in Madrid as in Galicia, Andalusia or Extremadura," warns a former leader. “The PP has to bring together diverse identities, address a broad majority, go for Cs voters, even those of the more moderate PSOE. If you go only to those of Vox… well, those already have Vox ”, he adds.“The PP has to bring together diverse identities, address a broad majority, go for Cs voters, even those of the more moderate PSOE. If you go only to those of Vox… well, those already have Vox ”, he adds.“The PP has to bring together diverse identities, address a broad majority, go for Cs voters, even those of the more moderate PSOE. If you go only to those of Vox… well, those already have Vox ”, he adds.
Looking at Vox continuously in the rear-view mirror, add the consulted sources, ends up affecting the strategy.
“They can shoot at everything, but we are a government party, which has managed and has to treat matters more seriously.
Especially Married.
The president cannot get into all the puddles ”, adds a leader separated by direction.
Several regional presidents consulted by EL PAÍS agree that opposing the Government with Afghanistan or vaccines, for example, "was a mistake."
The convention should serve for Casado to define his course and the PP's strategy on his way to La Moncloa.
“The question is where Casado is going to go.
If he will make a move towards moderation and the center or will he try to catch the whole right with Vox ”, points out a deputy.
Casado's leadership.
Casado arrives at the convention in better condition than at the beginning of the year, propelled by Ayuso's victory in Madrid to a demographic honeymoon - except for the CIS - but his leadership remains subject to tension. “It is more established. When things are going well for you, you feel more confident and calm. I see it better. This is a release to really focus on what's important. I used to shoot at everything ”, analyzes a regional president. This week, Casado put aside the permanent confrontation with the Government and gave his support for the action in the catastrophe of La Palma. Although at the same time it maintains the pulse with the blockade of the renewal of the CGPJ.
The PP wants to project Casado as the next president, something that some regional leaders do not see him achieving yet.
“The convention seeks to keep it in mind that there is an alternative.
The elector does not yet visualize that Pablo can be president of the Government, ”says a baron.
The conflict with Ayuso is the main challenge to Casado's leadership at the moment, and the leaders consulted believe that it weakens him.
Nobody doubts in the PP that Casado will be the candidate in 2023, but the question is what will happen next, if he does not arrive at La Moncloa.
No changes to the team.
Unlike Pedro Sánchez, who at the beginning of the summer carried out an extensive reshuffle of the government, Casado has kept his team intact since the dismissal, last year, of Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo as parliamentary spokesperson.
"The question is what wants to be Casado: president of the PP, or president of Spain?", Asks a deputy.
“In two years he has had a team to control the game.
Now, if you want to govern Spain, you need a team to govern ”, he adds.
Except for surprises, management sources rule out the announcement of any organizational change at the convention.
The PP seeks an "ideological expansion" to attract voters.
The convention will visualize an "ideological expansion to the left and right" of the PP, says the party. Married often says that his intention is to attract conservatives, Christian Democrats and liberals, but also "critical social democrats." Although the signings for the appointment do not show that alleged ideological expansion, at least to the left. The incorporations are the parliamentary exporter of Ciudadanos, Juan Carlos Girauta, who was part of the right wing of Cs, the former PP politician and founder of Vox Alejo Vidal-Quadras and the former secretary general of CC OO José María Fidalgo. The latter started a conservative drift a long time ago and tends to hang down in the social gatherings of right-wing media with harsh disqualifications towards Pedro Sánchez.
The PP intends to make a flag in the convention of some issues that have traditionally been uncomfortable for the right, such as the environment and feminism, to make the party's discourse more "attractive," they explain in the address.
That is, there will be an attempt to modernize to attract youth and centrists.
“We are going to emphasize the fight against the stale denial of climate change.
We will talk about globalization, digitization… it does not seem that we are bull, field and sheep ”, exemplifies a leader.
One of the discussion tables at the convention will speak of “liberal feminism”, a term that Ciudadanos first defended.
It remains to be seen how the PP addresses the moral issues that differentiate it from the party of Inés Arrimadas, such as euthanasia and abortion, and how it deals with the strengths of Vox, such as immigration or historical memory.
