The result of 23-J highlights the dysfunctions in the dome of the PP of Feijóo

It happened on the evening of Sunday 23-J, at the headquarters of the PP in Madrid, and some party cadres consider it much more than an anecdote. The right and almost left hand of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, his executor in the shadows, before in Galicia and now at the national level, the Deputy Secretary of Organization, the Galician Miguel Tellado, scrutinized surveys that were already advancing the public and private media. Meanwhile, in another area, in another office, the general coordinator of the party, the Andalusian Elías Bendodo, analyzed other polls, his own data, entrusted to his people, to his experts. "And Tellado had not smelled them," highlight relevant sources of the PP. It has not been the only dysfunction between two of the heads of the Feijóo team in this campaign. There have been quite a few more. Unknown. Bendodo has pulled again for these elections, as a provider of external consulting, his advisor in several campaigns for Juan Manuel Moreno in Andalusia: Aleix Sanmartín. And Tellado, has rummaged among those who helped Feijóo in several electoral processes in Galicia. Among the staff of Genoa 13, the headquarters, Bendodo and Tellado have struggled to monopolize the best collaborators, often hiding it. Neither of them wanted to respond directly to the queries of this newspaper. Sources of the company of Aleix Sanmartín specify that the PP of Feijóo and Bendodo, with which they have had various collaborations in the past, invited them to participate in this campaign, and even made a presentation, but that they declined the offer for various reasons and ended up collaborating with the PSOE.

The political and electoral Russian roulette in which Feijóo has embarked since he landed in Madrid, just a year and a half ago, forced in part by barons and Pablo Casado's mismanagement of the case of Isabel Díaz Ayuso's brother, has not left him time to stop and think or design a team according to his new responsibilities. He has pulled the known, especially the staff that has accompanied him and wrapped him in his electoral successes in Galicia for almost a decade. At the party congress that elevated him as the new leader in Seville, he could not form a new team.

PP leaders from various sectors understand that now that time has come. And they are betting that Feijóo is already beginning to plan with whom and how he wants to undertake this new stage, more than likely as leader of the opposition for possibly the next four years.

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Reactions, pacts and results of 23J, live

The first debate to be resolved has to do with the indispensable figure of a new number two and secretary general to complement him, a position for which very few see the continuity of Cuca Gamarra possible. "We need a number two of truth, who carries with firmness and determination the autonomic issues, with authority, someone who defines and coordinates well the relations between the central apparatus of the party and the growing power now won in the elections of May 28 in other institutions, autonomous and local, "says an important baron of the PP.

A leader of the popular parliamentary group in Congress defends Gamarra: "She has done what she could and in the only autonomy in which she could change and propose a candidate who did not come from the previous stage. In La Rioja, the PP won with an absolute majority."

Another PP leader with experience in the party apparatus reports: "Our problem is of origin, there is no secretary general in the sense of someone who makes decisions in the absence of the leader, among other reasons, because he and his team do not want people to overshadow him." And they remember that, during his 10 years as president of the Xunta, Feijóo was also the one who appeared weekly after his Government Councils, although he had some time spokesman. Tellado then wielded in Galicia as an incontestable thesis that the deputy secretaries of the party did not have to appear publicly, and, in fact, the eternal Galician vice president and now president, Alfonso Rueda, suffered for decades that problem of ignorance. Now Tellado is deputy secretary and does appear.

Secretary-general

In that critical environment of the PP it is remembered as a failure that now it is evident that in the Congress of the PP of Seville that enthroned Feijóo did not want to nominate for secretary general its anticipated candidate, Esteban González Pons, because it was returning to the past and reopened too many wounds. Now that issue is on the table, but with the aggravating factor that no good solutions are found. If, discarded the veteran González Pons, he raises to that privileged position a younger person, between 30 and 40 years old, with good connections with the new regional power, as several party officials maintain, he would be demoting his main collaborators: Gamarra (number two), Bendodo (number three) and Tellado (number four).

The enigma has been reopened these days, waiting for Feijóo to rest, recover from the state of personal shock in which several leaders have observed him after the unexpected electoral setback of 23-J, reflect and value the messages of all kinds – and even contradictory – that are coming to him about where to continue; especially in his relationship with Vox. The solution will not be adopted until a future congress of the party, which is about to convene, but that some leaders argue that it would be necessary to anticipate as soon as the investiture of Pedro Sánchez is deciphered and it is verified if he can govern and how.

The Barons and Vox

The fixation on the national and territorial dome of the PP has been more located these days, after the setback of 23-J, on what to do with Vox than on Pedro Sánchez and the repeal of sanchismo. Language is also another. Alberto Núñez Feijóo wrote a letter to the socialist president on Sunday to ask for a meeting, with an almost institutional tone, in which to address this week the political unblocking of the country and the rotating presidency of the European Union. He did not speak anything, yes, of the slowdown in the negotiations to move forward the Government of several autonomies, Murcia and Aragon, above all, in which the negotiations between the PP and Vox seem to be stalled. That is the problem that worries several territorial barons of the PP, who attribute part of the blockade to the bad relations between the national leaderships of both parties. The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, has spent several days pointing to the attacks he believes he receives from Feijóo and his environment and on Sunday he questioned in this sense the turn of strategy towards the center and ignoring Vox that the president of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno, demanded in an interview in El Mundo. In a second letter made public on Sunday afternoon, Sánchez summoned Feijóo to meet only after the constitution of the Cortes, starting on August 17.

Given the situation, some regional candidates of the PP, such as the Aragonese Jorge Azcón or the Murcian Fernando López Miras, have chosen to disappear a few days and take a vacation, postpone even negotiations with Vox in their territories, and wait for the panorama to clarify before resuming contacts with the ultra formation. In the case of Murcia, the talks seem totally stuck and aimed at an electoral repetition, although leaders who know the process do not rule out a last-minute agreement either. In Aragon, Azcón had until this se, ama almost closed negotiations with the PAR and Teruel Existe, but tensions between the national domes of the PP and Vox have again left that scenario in suspense and relegate his theoretical investiture to the end of August.

PP sources relate these stops with the attacks that are coming to the ultra formation from the Feijóo team, and, in the absence of clear and defined instructions from the national leadership regarding how to act with Vox, they have chosen to take distance. Some of these barons have preferred to make a parenthesis, with the environment of Feijóo and with Vox, before complicating their future more.

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