Concern in sectors of the PP for the first economic slips of Feijóo

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has decided to focus his strategy of wearing down the Government on the economy, but that implies managing rigorously and with maximum solvency in a complex and constantly evolving field such as the economic situation.

The leader of the PP, who is a lawyer, fills his speeches with data and economic concepts and in recent days has made some mistakes that have generated concern in sectors of his party.

In his first face-to-face with Pedro Sánchez in the Senate, Feijóo confused the number of the risk premium – located at 113 points – saying that it was at 250 points, which prompted the immediate denial of the economic vice president Nadia Calviño.

For some popular leaders, that slip involved "losing a bullet" in a debate they thought they had won against the president.

This Wednesday,

The popular leader questioned whether Brussels was going to authorize the Iberian mechanism that sets a ceiling on the price of gas when the alerts had already arrived a few minutes before – like the one from EL PAÍS – announcing the approval.

In some areas of the PP they attribute these slips to the lack of a cabinet prepared for the economic combat with the Government.

In his first parliamentary duel with the President of the Government, Feijóo made a mistake in the value of the Spanish risk premium, which he cited to warn that Spain was beginning to have a problem with its debt.

“This morning an attempt was made to place 8,000 million euros in the treasury.

We are already paying the risk premium at 250 points, the highest since the summer of 2014 ″, he said on Tuesday in the Senate.

In reality, as Vice President Calviño later corrected him, the Spanish risk premium (the difference between the Spanish bond and the German one, the strongest) was 113. Feijóo confused the risk premium with interest rates, because the debt had placed that morning, with four times more demand than supply -a very positive figure, according to Economy-, it did so at a rate of 2.5%, that is 250 basic points, hence the confusion.

Sources from his direct team and the PP's economic team assure that this figure was not wrongly included in Feijóo's notes, nor in the speech he had written, nor in the materials that were given to the cabinet to prepare the intervention before Sánchez.

These sources attribute the mistake to a “lapse” by Feijóo by “confusing” the 250 interest rate points with the risk premium during a speech that he did not read in that part.

The error did not go unnoticed in areas of the PP, where the leader's cabinet is pointed out as the problem.

“Feijóo asks for a lot of information, but does not confirm the data correctly.

His cabinet is not prepared to discern economic issues.

He has made several errors with the figures and some concepts that have gone unnoticed, ”complains a popular leader.

The popular leader's cabinet is basically made up of his team of trusted advisers from the Xunta de Galicia, all of whom are journalists.

Although other front-line leaders defend that "without having been precise" the confusion about the risk premium "is not outrageous" because "the risk premium is implicit in the interest rate", they also recognize that the misstep caused them to lose a chance against the president.

Only 24 hours later, on Wednesday afternoon, Feijóo gave another economic speech before an audience of businessmen at the Expansión forum, in which he questioned whether the gas cap that was going to be approved this Thursday in Congress had the authorization of the European Commission.

“The Spaniards were also told that Brussels had authorized what they call 'the Iberian island'.

Well, this was two months ago, but for now the Iberian exception is that the electricity continues to rise.

Does the government's proposal have the authorization of Brussels?

Are we going to approve the government's proposal without prior authorization from Brussels?” asked the leader of the PP in a speech that began at 6:42 p.m.

The problem is that five minutes earlier - at exactly 6:37 p.m.

In his team they defend that he did not have time to look at his mobile before going to the stand and that the official confirmation of the news by Sánchez and the Portuguese António Costa did not arrive by two tweets until nine at night.

They also argue that it was not known that the decision was imminent – ​​although the economic press reported that same morning that the Commission had it ready for approval on Wednesday or Thursday – and they underline in any case their “calmness”.

"If what La Moncloa is going to grab to criticize is that he didn't look at the phone five minutes earlier, it's that we're doing well."

But the episodes have caused a buzz in the party, where Feijóo's economic team, led by the Andalusian Treasury Minister, Juan Bravo, and made up above all by regional Treasury advisors, without other prominent figures, was already coldly received.

During Pablo Casado's time at the head of the PP, Feijóo, like other popular barons, questioned the lack of a clear economic reference.

Now the same doubts come back to him like a boomerang.

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