Mariano Rajoy on the balcony of Genoa after learning of his defeat in the 2008 general elections.
Pablo Casado still cannot understand what has happened to him.
He is convinced that he has done nothing wrong.
He cannot understand that between the complainant of a case of alleged corruption —he— and the accused —Isabel Díaz Ayuso— the entire party, and especially the most prominent barons, have chosen to dismiss him before asking her for explanations and responsibilities .
In the environment of the president of the party, increasingly smaller, they are disconcerted to see that the scandal of possible influence peddling of the president's brother —despite the fact that yesterday the Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation— has been totally in the background compared to to the enormous pressure for the leader to resign.
The never seen, a defeat by KO of the complainant against the accused.
Casado was convinced that he could win the final battle against what was his friend, a political invention of his —no one was betting on her in 2019—.
He had heard all the barons speak ill of her, especially during the pandemic.
Outside of Madrid, Ayuso had no organic support.
And Casado believed he had the nuclear weapon to destroy it: the opaque contract for which his brother pocketed, according to the information handled by the PP leadership, 286,000 euros for bringing masks from China.
PSOE federal committee of 2016 that ended with the resignation of Pedro Sánchez.
BORJA PUIG DE LA BELLACASA - BPB
But what Casado did not know how to calculate is his enormous internal weakness, forged during three years of poor results that ended with the fiasco in Castilla y León, where he did not even remotely achieve the desired objective of dealing a definitive blow to the PSOE and stopping the Vox.
The leader of the PP and the president of Madrid took the situation to a final fight in which only one could remain.
Married always thought that the party would bet with him, given the suspicions that she provoked internally and that on top of her he had the scandal of the bills on her side.
But what the PP leader failed to see is that the barons quickly concluded that he, from his weakness as a leader without internal or street support, could not win that battle.
A difficult decision had to be made.
And they chose to kick Casado out rather than support a war against Ayuso of very uncertain success, given her enormous social support and indisputable power as president of the most powerful institution in the hands of the PP.
One leader sums it up in a very pragmatic way: "You had to choose, and it is much easier to remove an opposition leader without power than a president of the Community of Madrid who has just swept the elections."
The barons therefore chose to leave the scandal in the background, although several leaders point out that the matter will still have a long way to go and it is possible that Ayuso's life will be very complicated in the future.
But now there was another priority, which was to save the PP from a war that Casado could not win.
Some veterans remember that Mariano Rajoy experienced similar situations with Esperanza Aguirre, but opted for very different solutions.
Rajoy, radically opposed to the then president of Madrid, also had dossiers, especially from Ignacio González, his
right hand man
.
In the president's environment there were some leaders who encouraged him to give the definitive battle against Aguirre, set up a manager for her in the PP in Madrid, and force her downfall as president.
And Rajoy always repeated the same thing to them: “And how is that done?”.
The then leader of the PP, who had more force than Casado now, insisted that Aguirre could entrench himself in Madrid and it was very difficult to convince all the PP deputies to dismiss her and appoint another.
Casado's suicide plan, which has ended up sinking him, necessarily implied an end with Ayuso out of power.
But the problem was still the same as Rajoy had: it is almost impossible to do that, and even more so with the popular support of the Madrid president.
Rajoy chose to wait and endure more than Aguirre, who resigned long before he fell, and also waited for Ignacio González, whom he vetoed as a candidate in 2015.
Of course, while he turned a blind eye to the corruption complaints that were already reaching him.
Some veterans in the PP also remember another moment in which the leader experienced enormous media harassment and also among a part of the militancy: the one against Rajoy in 2008, when he lost his second elections.
Then the president saw how several conservative media asked for his head, like that of Casado now, and there was also a demonstration at the door of the headquarters on Génova street.
But Rajoy quickly called the barons and saw that he had his support against Aguirre and the media that were promoting his fall, especially the Andalusian Javier Arenas and the Valencian Francisco Camps.
Without barons, Casado has taken days to be completely alone and unable to resist.
Another great Spanish political drama with which Casado's situation is compared is the fall of Sánchez in 2016, when he was dismissed after a coup by the barons and a good part of the closest environment of the then general secretary of the PSOE.
Sánchez, however, managed to return and arrived at La Moncloa with a spirit that he describes in
Manual de Resistencia
, his political biography.
The leader of the PSOE did not have the barons, allies against him, but he did have something even more powerful: militancy.
Casado, who came to power without being the most voted for by the bases - he took advantage of the division between Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and Dolores de Cospedal - was convinced weeks ago that if Ayuso, whom he saw as his true internal rival, proposed arm wrestling, he could easily win among the militancy in a congress.
But his management of the crisis, and his progressive weakness, in addition to a disastrous internal management of his secretary general, who fought with almost everyone, has kept him away from militancy.
Without barons or bases, Casado could not hold out for long since the most relevant leaders, especially Alberto Núñez Feijóo, let go of his hand.
At the moment, Ayuso and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, his
right hand
, are victorious in the internal fight against Casado and García Egea.
But in the new PP that will emerge from now on, Ayuso will not take the lead.
It will be Feijóo and the moderate barons who will take power.
For now, they have decided to put aside the case of Ayuso's brother to focus on the priority, which was to kick Casado out.
But some leaders believe that the
Ayuso case
still has some way to go, and they are convinced that it will weaken it much more than it seems now.
The new PP seems to go through the moderate sector of the party, the one that lost the 2018 congress. Everything is about to be rewritten.
But whatever happens, it will be too late for Casado.
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