The PP prepares a national campaign against Sánchez in the municipal elections

The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, accompanied by the former presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, at the closing of the Intermunicipal in Valencia. Mònica Torres

The PP wants the municipal elections on May 28 to become a plebiscite on Pedro Sánchez.

Genoa knows that the PSOE has good candidates in the Town Halls and believes that it benefits them that the conversation during the campaign is focused on issues of a national nature, instead of on issues attached to the territory, where the competition is waged more between the heads of list.

The leadership of the PP is already preparing a campaign in which it will urge its candidates in the municipalities to

its message, according to sources in the leadership.

The popular ones will make especially of the problems of the law of the

an axis of attrition against the Socialists in the May elections, in which they aspire to double the ten provincial capitals in their power, with the city of Valencia as the main course.

The PP believes that, although the Government reforms the law of the

this month, the problems derived from its application, with the sentence reductions for some sexual aggressors, will continue to have a tail until May.

Whether or not it is so, the popular ones intend to use this hot potato for the Executive to wear down the PSOE in the municipal campaign, which Genoa designs as a national campaign.

The leadership of the PP, in any case, wants to also leave room for the territories and for this reason Alberto Núñez Feijóo will not have his own electoral caravan, unlike what Pablo Casado did, but he will go alone where they call him.

The popular leader's team foresees an intense presence of the head of the opposition to help their candidates.

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Feijóo, to his candidates for the municipal elections: “If I can't win, I don't deserve to be president of the party.

So help a little."

In Genoa, they see it as problematic that the municipal and regional elections are held half a year before the general ones in December.

The problem for them is that the PSOE, they recognize in the PP, is going to hold up well in May because it has good candidates, so it may not be so easy to argue on the night of May 28 that there is a change of cycle in Spain that is going to fly them to La Moncloa.

The popular maintain, in any case, that they will be the first force in votes.

Another thing is to govern.

The PP aspires to do so in some twenty provincial capitals (it now has a dozen), including the mayor's office of Valencia (in the hands of Compromís), where its internal polls show that its candidate, María José Catalá, could govern with Vox .

The PP also counts on keeping the mayoralty of Madrid and those of other large cities such as Zaragoza or Alicante, and aspires to recover Murcia.

But he acknowledges many difficulties in gaining control of other of the most populous municipalities in the hands of the left, such as Seville or Valladolid.

The other problem of the municipal ones for the PP is that it will force it to face the crossroads of the pacts with Vox.

Feijóo would like to avoid them so that they do not weigh down his campaign for the generals, but in the party they take it for granted that the sum of PP and Vox will be replicated everywhere and it will not be easy to avoid those agreements.

This Sunday, in Valencia, at the closing of the PP intermunicipal forum, Feijóo urged his candidates to achieve "resounding, incontestable majorities" at the polls, to free them from the headache of the ultras.

But several of his candidates privately acknowledge that, if there is no other choice, they will govern with the extreme right.

Even if he decided to stop him, which he hasn't done either, Feijóo would find it very difficult for the party to assume the guideline of not governing with Vox at the cost of losing territorial power.

The PP leaves the intermunicipal forum of Valencia mobilized for the campaign.

The image of the two former presidents, José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, covering Feijóo in the conclave has served as a shot of internal motivation, they maintain in the leader's team.

Aznar and Rajoy sealed their reconciliation in Valencia with a dinner on Saturday with Feijóo and the rest of the barons, in which sources present assure that Aznar was affectionate with Rajoy and was available to Feijóo's management.

"We are here for whatever you need," Aznar said, according to these sources.

"And if you don't ask us for anything, nothing happens."

On Sunday, the leader of the PP euphorically closed the forum in a rally before 4,000 supporters in the City of Arts and Sciences.

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