Iturgaiz announces that he leaves the presidency of the Basque PP and makes way for Javier de Andrés

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, left, on a visit to the Basque Country in March 2022 with the president of the Basque PP, Carlos Iturgaiz.Fernando Domingo-Aldama

Carlos Iturgaiz will leave the presidency of the Basque PP this November after three years in office. This opens the race for the election of the new leader of the party in Euskadi and future candidate for lehendakari. "I knew what my goal was and when you achieve your goals, it's time to take over," he said Tuesday in an interview with Onda Vasca. "I knew that the train of the Popular Party of the Basque Country was derailed and that it had to be put on the track," he explained about the moment in which he assumed command in 2020. "And the time has come, the train is on the track and the Basque PP is, at the moment, a strong, united, stable party (...). It's up to others to get in front of the locomotive," he added. It will be a "quiet" succession, according to internal sources. The Alava deputy Javier de Andrés (56 years old) has the support of the leadership to be successor of Iturgaiz and popular candidate for lehendakari, according to sources of the formation. Journalist by profession, he was deputy general of Álava between 2011 and 2015 and delegate of the Government in the Basque Country during the presidency of Mariano Rajoy.

The congress that the Basque PP will hold at the beginning of November (foreseeably on the 4th and 5th of that month) will be that of the farewell of Iturgaiz. The leader assumed the leadership at a very delicate moment, in the midst of an internal crisis after the departure of the then regional president, Alfonso Alonso, due to discrepancies with the political line imposed by Pablo Casado. Iturgaiz, who had already presided over the Basque PP between 1996 and 2004 (he has led the popular Basques under the presidencies of Aznar, Rajoy, Casado and Feijóo), accepted in 2020 the commission of Genoa to put order behind closed doors and return to the party the capacity of influence it had in Basque politics. He will leave the presidency with the objective fulfilled, he said today during his interview in Onda Vasca. The PP lost three seats in the last Basque elections (it has six parliamentarians) three years ago and is the fifth political force in Parliament, but improved its results in the municipal elections last May: "We have increased in number of councilors and junteros and we are the key in Gipuzkoa and in the municipalities of Vitoria and Durango", has celebrated Iturgaiz. The decision to leave was made "a long time ago", as he explained, with the president of the party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, but he was waiting for the general elections and the investiture of Feijóo.

The regional board of directors will agree this Wednesday in Vitoria the date of the congress that will remodel the organic structure of the party in Euskadi. The transfer of power will take place half a year before the regional elections, initially scheduled for July 2024, although they could coincide with the European elections on June 9. To that appointment the popular want to arrive with a political project that allows them to rediscover the space of the center right and establish themselves in the reference of constitutionalism in the Basque Country. The next popular candidate for lehendakari, presumably De Andrés, will try to seduce moderate nationalist voters unhappy with the management of the PNV and the socialist electorate critical of Pedro Sánchez's strategy.

Javier De Andrés, participates during an electoral campaign act of the PP for the 23J, on July 15, 2023, in Vitoria.Iñaki Berasaluce / Europa Press (Europa Press)

De Andrés was elected deputy for Álava in Congress in the last general elections in July, a representation that the PP had not achieved since 2015. It is proof of the electoral pull he has in this province. Going as a headliner, the PP won the provincial elections of 2007 (that year Santiago Abascal was on the list with De Andrés). He was deputy general of Álava between 2011 and 2015, a position he lost after the governance pact signed by the PNV and PSE to lead the Basque councils and town councils where they had a majority. He is the best placed to assume the reins of a formation that intends to recover a prominence in Euskadi that has gone down after the gradual loss of institutional representation.

De Andrés would leave his post in the lower house if he is elected president of the Basque PP, according to the formation. His place would be occupied by Laura Garrido (who will turn 53 in December), who has also figured in the pools to succeed Iturgaiz. The number two of the Basque PP has a long history in the Basque Parliament and is the Basque voice of the party. She had never publicly run to take on that responsibility. The most innovative sector opted for a younger profile, such as that of Mikel Lezama (30 years old), a signing of Borja Sémper who in his debut in politics as a popular candidate in Gipuzkoa managed to triple the results of the party in this province last May.

The Basque PP has decided to wait for the general elections to pass and know the result of the investiture of Núñez Feijóo to convene the regional congress that will elect its new leader. Catalonia, Asturias and La Rioja have yet to hold their conclaves to renew their positions. Iturgaiz hopes that his replacement will be a consensus candidate: "I will always encourage my colleagues to unity, because this has always been my slogan during this time, that of having been able to sew and unite a political party that was lurching in disunity," he said.

In addition to the Basque Country, the Popular Party has yet to hold congresses in other territories, and whose call was suspended by the advance of the general elections to 23-J, according to sources of the direction. "We are working, we are not going to stop", add other sources about the preparation of future congresses in communities such as Asturias or La Rioja. In any case, the leadership has set as priorities those communities with closer regional elections, such as the Basque Country, in the short term, and Catalonia, later, reports Virginia Martínez.

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