The playoff of Álvarez Cascos by Feijóo unleashes a clash in the PP

Alberto Núñez-Feijoo and Francisco Álvarez Cascos, at a PP act in 2009. JL Pino (EFE)

In 2011, Francisco Álvarez Cascos, Vice President of the Government with José María Aznar and former Secretary General of the PP (1989-1999), left the party after 34 years of militancy when Mariano Rajoy denied him the candidacy for the presidency of Asturias.

He said that he was leaving “out of dignity” and at a press conference in which he even quoted

—”One is brave when, knowing that the battle is lost, one tries despite everything”—, he dropped that he was going to set up his own political project.

He did it.

FAC (acronyms matching theirs) hit the ball and Cascos took over the presidency of the Principality, although it did not last long.

Six months later, he called early elections, unable to reach agreements.

The left was recomposed and snatched the regional government.

One of the strong men of the Asturian PP, Gabino de Lorenzo, mayor of Oviedo for 21 years, assured then that he had pretended to be a popular candidate with "a blowout" and that he was a "specialist in breaking up parties."

The one he formed, now called the Asturias Forum, ended up expelling him in 2020 and taking him to court – a trial for misappropriation is pending, by passing high personal expenses to the party,

revealed by this diary.

For all this, militant veterans, leaders and former leaders of the Asturian PP consulted by EL PAÍS admit that they do not believe the recent movements in Genoa "to rehabilitate a person who has done a lot of damage to the party and who is absolutely discredited."

In the Asturian PP, the words of Miguel Tellado, deputy secretary of organization and Alberto Núñez Feijóo's confidant, and those of Pedro Rollán, deputy secretary of regional and local politics, were especially chosen when explaining a recent meal between Cascos and the secretary general of the popular in Asturias, Álvaro Queipo, revealed by

"All those meetings and gatherings that aim to unite the vote around the PP, are welcome," declared Rollán.

In Genoa they remember Feijóo's "good relationship" with Cascos since he supported him, when he was Minister of Public Works, to the post office presidency (2000-2003).

“It is a lifelong friendship, but Cascos”, warns a leader of the national PP, “he is a person of conflict, not a unifier”.

"And he has always gotten away by a hair's breadth," he adds, referring to his involvement in corruption cases.

The founder of Foro Asturias, who has not responded to this newspaper, recalled in a recent interview on Radio Intereconomía his "admiration" for Feijóo.

“We understand those relationships of loyalty with old friends,” says a veteran Asturian leader who has held different positions in the party for more than 30 years, “but Cascos has the resume he has.

He may be an excellent friend, but politically he is a disaster.

Political decisions cannot be made out of friendship.

Those forms are the ones that made the previous team fall ”, he warns.

The leaders of the Asturian PP consulted by this newspaper recall that the rapidity of the fall of Casado and his general secretary, Teodoro García Egea, of which six months have just passed, was not due to the conflict with Isabel Díaz Ayuso, but to the wounds opened by his method of imposing like-minded people in the territories without respecting the autonomous and provincial structures.

Feijóo, affirms a leader of the national PP, knows it.

“That is why from the beginning he has said that he makes the national lists, but that in the rest the territories rule, that they will also be ultimately responsible for the results.”

For all this, the conflict in the Asturian "powder keg", the sources consulted admit, exceeds the regional scope and supposes an examination for the new popular leader, the test of to what extent he is willing to break with the methods of the previous leadership.

"You have to be very careful with all this," warns a national leader.

"The management does not want Teresa Mallada [current president of the popular Asturians], but they do not have an alternative candidate either."

At the turn of summer, the party's regional congresses will be held in Asturias, Cantabria and La Rioja.

The most complex is the Asturian —“the president and the regional secretary do not speak to each other,” they say in Madrid—, followed by the Rioja, where the general secretary and former mayor of Logroño, Cuca Gamarra, will have to mediate.

“To think that it can help us is nonsense.

It is not knowing Cascos and not knowing Asturias”

The leadership of the Asturian PP recently held a meeting to start outlining the program for the regional and municipal elections in May next year.

"We have talked about it among ourselves and we are very surprised by these movements by Genoa because they imply not knowing Cascos and not knowing Asturias," affirms a veteran popular leader.

“Every time we have gone in coalition with them it has gone worse than if we went alone.

Cascos hit the ball like Jesús Gil's game did at the time, and he has been very lucky in court, but getting him back in any way, thinking that he can help us, is nonsense.

In addition to the Casco thing, trying to put candidates from Madrid is always a mistake, ”he adds.

José Suárez Arias-Cachero, spokesman for the Executive Committee of Foro Asturias, says: “We don't understand what Feijóo gains by being held hostage by the judicial agenda of Cascos.

That way of re-fishing him, in addition to telling us what the real commitment of the PP against corruption is, is going to make any kind of post-election agreement between the Popular Party and Foro Asturias very difficult.

Our party is clear that Feijóo is the alternative that Spain needs, just as it is clear that the PP of Asturias, as it is today, is not an alternative in the Principality and even less so when it takes on a defendant like Cascos.

The rehabilitation of the former general secretary by the party, which rules out, in any case, that he return to the front line, contradicts the speech of rupture with the old PP, the one that chained corruption scandals, in the same way as Feijóo's latest statements —for example, saying that the energy saving decree is “an act of authoritarianism”— contradicts his first intervention as leader of the Popular Party, when he promised a new style of opposition, seeking State agreements and said: “I come to win the President of the Government, not to insult him.

We have to remove Spanish politics from confrontation and permanent hyperbole”.

“It is very difficult to coordinate the message with Ayuso”

The leaders consulted by EL PAÍS share that the replacement, together with the absolute majority obtained in Andalusia, a territory governed for almost 40 years by the socialists, has restored self-esteem to the PP, which celebrates the

in the polls —they have surpassed the PSOE in voting intention.

But, at the same time, they admit that the new leader has been carried away on more than one occasion by the tone and story of the Madrid president.

“She goes free.

It is very difficult to coordinate the message with Ayuso, but Feijóo is not afraid of him.

It is true that we have hardened the discourse and that we must be careful with that, because it is just what the Government intends: to provoke us to say that Feijóo is the same as Casado.

We must find a balance between the firm opposition and the useful opposition, seeking agreements”.

Feijóo has more internal support than Casado, but has inherited some of his problems.

The contradictions in which the popular leaders have fallen these days to explain the reasons for not renewing the General Council of the Judiciary and renege on the agreement signed by the previous leadership, revealed by this newspaper, have incited the old team, after a long silence , to criticize the new popular leadership, which they accuse of lying, for example, by denying knowledge of the pact published by EL PAÍS.

The polls smile at Feijóo and the party believes that it has more chances of returning to La Moncloa with him, but six months after Casado's abrupt departure the first internal problems arise, the first doubts, and there is more than a year left for the elections general;

in politics, an eternity.

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