The president of the Popular Party Alberto Núñez Feijóo, accompanied by the president of the party in Murcia Fernando López Miras (on his left in the image), during a moment of the 18th Congress of the party in the Region of Murcia this Friday at the Víctor Villegas Auditorium. Marcial Guillen (EFE)
The president of the Region of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, has been re-elected this Friday to lead the PP in that autonomous community in a congress to which he arrived as the only candidate and in which he has been supported by the national leadership of his party, which has sought to convey the idea of "unity" as the main value and strength to win the next regional elections, in May 2023, and with the express mandate of achieving it with a sufficient majority to avoid the need for pacts.
It is the idea that the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, who opened the meeting in Murcia, and the national president of the formation, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who closed it, have repeated in their interventions.
Also all the regional positions that have risen to the lectern in the Víctor Villegas auditorium, with capacity for some 1,700 people, during the more than four hours that the event has lasted.
However, critical voices have also been heard from those who threatened, before the convening of the congress, to dispute the leadership of López Miras.
Manuel Durán, who was director general of Emergencies of the autonomous community until 2017 and of Local Administration until 2019, and Patricia Fernández, mayor of Archena, did it.
The first even announced that he would present his candidacy and that he was collecting endorsements, but later he retracted to favor that unit.
The second never confirmed the rumors and this afternoon she has not attended the congress, despite the fact that López Miras has included her in her team as a member of the Executive Committee.
Not so with Duran, who upon arriving at the event lamented to the journalists the poor "integration" in the new popular team.
López Miras responded to these criticisms with a gesture: to vacate one of the vocal offices and several deputy secretaries with the aim of speaking again with all the positions and affiliates to listen to their proposals and integrate those who want to participate in his project.
It will not be his only task for the coming months, since the party's national leadership has given him clear "duties": win the next elections, something that the Murcian has not yet achieved despite leading the region for five years, and do it with a large majority, which allows him to govern alone.
"In Murcia we can only win to continue building our future," he said, and praised former president Ramón Luis Valcárcel, the only one, he assured, who beat himself in "exorbitant absolute majorities."
And he has joked with that "competition" within the party itself: "That the presidents of Murcia, Valencia, Zaragoza, compete in percentages of votes on election night", has encouraged him.
It is not a minor challenge for López Miras, who has never won an election.
He arrived at the Palacio de San Esteban in May 2017, after the resignation of Pedro Antonio Sánchez motivated by the multiple cases of corruption in which he was investigated.
At that time, it was almost taken for granted that that 33-year-old from Lorca, the youngest regional president in Spain, as he himself presumed on numerous occasions, would occupy the position provisionally and would again leave the seat to Sánchez, from who was a close friend, when his judicial situation improved.
However, time passed and López Miras, a Law graduate, consolidated his position: in 2018 he submitted to another PP congress that gave him the regional presidency of the party, and in May 2019, despite having lost the regional elections in votes and seats against the PSOE for the first time in 24 years, he managed to form a government in coalition with Ciudadanos and supported by Vox.
The most critical political moment of the legislature was faced in March 2021, when its Cs partners signed a motion of censure with the PSOE, which did not prosper: four of the six Citizens deputies decided to remain by their side, despite the fact that they had already signed the motion of censure.
The vote of the turncoats, and of three of the four Vox deputies, who had been expelled from the party, today support the Murcian Government.
In fact,
In this congress he has received the vote of 97% of the votes and in his final speech he has promised to fulfill the mandate imposed by Feijóo.
“Polls are useless to me.
I am not satisfied with winning more seats than the left, I am here to win and to govern with stability and without depending on anyone”, he said to applause from the public.