Isabel Díaz Ayuso has finished settling into her independence within the Popular Party. The decision not to attend the bilateral meeting with Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa is a turning point in that it contradicts for the first time the institutional position of his party, but also because it leaves a clear image: Genoa and the rest of the barons follow one path and she follows another.
The popular They have long assumed their role within the formation, some even believe that a certain role play benefits them, but they do not hide that The repeated disavowals of Alberto Núñez Feijóo undermine his leadership “because it serves as ammunition for the Government,” say PP sources.
Since Feijóo blew up the first negotiation to renew the General Council of the Judiciary in October 2022 after pressure from Ayuso, the influence of the hard wing of the party has marked his political leadership. Barely four months had passed since his promotion to the national leadership of the PP, so it can be said that he has been carrying this burden for almost his entire mandate.
In a constant balancing act to close the seams of the party every time Ayuso opens them, her entourage has always denied internal resistance and defended that the personal and political relationship with the president of the Community of Madrid is very good – even better than with other barons. Sol has also always boasted of being in tune with Genoa.
The image that the Feijóo leadership strives to convey is that of absolute unity in its ranks, but this Tuesday Ayuso has raised her voice to assume that this is not the case. “In all these years I have made decisions alone many times and I have found myself in very difficult situations, sometimes against the grain, because I thought it was the best and that is what happens in this case,” he said in an interview at the COPE chain.
The communication team of the president of the Community of Madrid has not clarified to this medium what situations she is referring to. Asked about this, the parliamentary spokesperson of the PP in Congress, Miguel Tellado, has also dodged the issue.
A PP uncomfortable with the situation
The popular They cling to the entrenched clash of accusations between Sánchez and Ayuso to express their “compression” and “support” for the sit-in, but the president of the Community of Madrid goes much further. “I don’t want to be part of that picture of normality. I can’t. I don’t think about myself. I’m not doing what’s good for me, I’m doing what I consider to be convenient and that is not to continue overlooking what’s good.” what is happening in Spain, which is very serious. And it also has nothing to do with something personal, which I have also heard,” he pointed out bluntly in the same interview.
Sources from the PP recognize that this challenges the party as a whole, but they do not want to delve into the matter. “We have to talk about Sánchez’s situation, not about us,” they say. “I understand that when there is no news you have to invent it”Feijóo snapped at journalists as he left an event in Madrid.
A day later and forced by the presence of the media, the president of the PP verbalized his support for Ayuso: “How can I not support her?” A month ago he himself described it as a “mistake” not to attend the meeting with the President of the Government and said he believed that the Madrid president would go to La Moncloa because “she knows very well that her responsibility is to defend the interests of the people of Madrid and practice a policy of State”.
Ayuso has ignored this veiled directive from her national president in the midst of the controversy over her attendance at the meeting and has fulfilled her threat of not meeting Sánchez, also establishing herself as a leader independent of the institutional order of her party. Feijóo has redirected his position so as not to contradict it and amplify the internal noise, the greatest of his fears.
All disavowals to Feijóo
It is the tone of coexistence within the PP, because Ayuso’s disavowals have been constant. His manifest refusal to renew the CGPJ with the PSOE when the PP was about to close the negotiation was the first and most obvious of all, but from then on they continued.
When Feijóo took a stand against the new abortion law (in September 2022) that allows voluntary termination of pregnancy for 16 and 17-year-old women without parental consent, Ayuso came out to say that she was in favor, destroying the PP’s message on an ideologically complicated issue for them; and when Feijóo recently opened up to a four-day work day, although with more hours of work per day, Ayuso spoke out against it.
The president of the Community of Madrid also rowed in the opposite direction to Genoa when she asked to outlaw EH Bildu or when she decorated Javier Mileipresident of Argentina, torpedoing Feijóo’s strategy. She was also the first to raise her voice against including Junts in the round of contacts for the failed investiture of the leader of the PP, who ended up giving in.
She is Sánchez’s great antagonist, the one that eats up the most electoral space for Vox and also the one that wears out the most the perfectly aligned match image that Feijóo strives to project.
#Ayuso #establishes #distinctive #leadership #undermines #Feijóo
