Dolors Monserrat will be the head of the PP list in the European elections

The MEP and spokesperson for the European People’s Party Group, Dolors Montserrat (Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, Barcelona, ​​50 years old), will be the head of the PP list for the next European elections on June 9. The former Minister of Health and Equality between 2016 and 2018 will lead a candidacy in which the PP has incorporated three former leaders of Ciudadanos – including its last leader, Adrián Vázquez – in addition to the philosopher and former leader of UPyD Fernando Savater. The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has opted for continuity, since Montserrat repeats as number one, after having considered an external signing that did not prosper.

Feijóo has taken advantage of a campaign event for the Catalan elections in Figueres (Girona) to announce Montserrat’s candidacy for Europe, which he has presented as “Catalan to the core, triple Catalan, because she is Dolors Montserrat, Montserrat, Montserrat”, he has specified, with which “Catalonia will represent all of Spain in the European Parliament.” “The fact that a Catalan woman heads our list for the European Parliament proves that the PP of Spain as a whole knows very well the priority that Catalonia must have in our convictions,” argued the leader of the PP, who intends to use the announcement of the European candidacy as a boost for these elections.

The election of Montserrat was an open secret in the PP, once her main rival for that position, Esteban González Pons, left the race because Feijóo placed him as campaign director for these elections. González Pons, Institutional Deputy Secretary and Feijóo’s Sherpa for Foreign Policy Affairs, aspires to some position in the community institutions, according to European PP sources, for which he did not need to be at the head of the list. The Valencian deputy is one of the most trusted leaders of the PP leader and it is known in the party that he does not have a good relationship with Montserrat. The leader of the PP opted for the Solomonic solution of keeping Montserrat as number one and giving González Pons the direction of the campaign, although he has lowered him to number four on the list. Another thing is what his cohabitation will be like later, when both are working together in the European People’s Group.

González Pons has been postponed behind three women to compete with the vice president and Minister of Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera, who heads the PSOE’s European list. After Montserrat, the number two on the PP list is the Minister of Agriculture of Andalusia, Carmen Crespo, with whom the PP wants to fight against Vox for the rural vote; and number three is the deputy of the Madrid Assembly Alma Ezcurra, from the hard line of the Madrid PP, promoted to that position after a viral speech on the right against the amnesty law. Also in the first places, as number five, is the economist Fernando Navarrete, chief of staff of the governor of the Bank of Spain, and the last leader of Cs, Adrián Vázquez, who is number ten.

The Catalan leader Dolors Montserrat is one of the rising figures in the PP and was close to being the candidate in the elections in Catalonia. She is now directing the campaign because Feijóo decided at the last moment that he was giving up taking over from the candidate and leader of the PP of Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández. The former president of the Xunta followed the same Solomonic scheme as with the European candidacy, defining a kind of bicephaly so as not to have to choose. Montserrat will be the candidate for Brussels with González Pons as campaign director; while Fernández is the head of the list for the Parliament of Catalonia, but Montserrat directs her campaign.

Some PP sources interpret the omnipresence of the Catalan leader as a sign that the PP leader trusts very few people. His departure to Europe, in principle, takes her out of the race to lead the Catalan PP, the next pending organic screen. Génova does not want Alejandro Fernández to lead the party even though she has kept him as a candidate. The Catalan PP congress is the only one that has not been held since the arrival of Feijóo to the national presidency of the PP two years ago precisely because the Catalan PP is a powder keg.

Montserrat came to the Feijóo leadership from the direction of Pablo Casado, where she already served as spokesperson in the European Parliament. From that position she has been leading the popular strategy to seek the erosion of the Pedro Sánchez Government in the European institutions due to the approval of the amnesty law. The Catalan leader has claimed that role today. “We have sent a strong message in Europe that Spain does not endorse Sánchez’s shame,” she stated from Figueres. “We have denounced the infamous amnesty of Puigdemont and Sánchez,” she defended after thanking Feijóo in Catalan for choosing her to repeat as head of the list.

Montserrat will compete with the current vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, who leads the PSOE candidacy. The election of Ribera by the PSOE strengthened Feijóo’s decision that Montserrat should lead the PP list, since both share government experience and are middle-aged women. But Montserrat’s main challenge, they believe in the PP, is not the PSOE, but Vox. The popular ones aspire to continue supporting the fall of their competitor on the right, but they fear that the ultras will gain air in the European elections due to the effect of the single constituency. A hard line from the PP in the campaign and messages on the field is to be expected, therefore, to close the space for Vox as much as possible.

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