EHe was showered with advance praise before he even announced his candidacy. On Saturday, the conservative Spanish People’s Party (PP) elected Alberto Núñez Feijóo as its new leader. The result shows how great the expectations are that rest on him: 98.3 percent of the delegates at the PP party congress in Seville voted for the Galician regional president. Previously, he had come to 99.6 percent in the vote of party members; there was no opposing candidate for the 60-year-old politician.
Caricaturists like to draw Feijóo in the middle of a huge heap of broken glass. Now he is supposed to make people forget as quickly as possible the past four years of opposition, in which the PP left it to its younger generation to renew the party.
Tired applause for Pablo Casado
Politically hyperactive, former PP leader Pablo Casado gave the impression that the country was on the brink of a new civil war. The party congress said goodbye to the 41-year-old with tired applause. Only a few months ago he saw himself on the way to the top of the government, now he is withdrawing from politics completely.
Now Feijóo takes over. Instead of polarizing, the moderate conservative from the north wants to bring not only the party, but the Spanish right-wing back to government one year and next year. He showed what he is capable of in the Galician regional parliament: he won an absolute majority there four times.
Neither the right-wing liberal Ciudadanos nor the right-wing populist Vox party stood a chance against Feijóo, who had always maintained his independence from the PP leadership in Madrid. He made a name for himself as a pragmatic manager who prefers to exercise restraint, weigh up his options carefully and then know how to use them.
After the vote of no confidence in PP Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy – also from Galicia – in 2018, he did not dare to run for party chairmanship. At the time, he shied away from the political shark tank in Madrid and the uncertain outcome of the internal party elections. Feijóo stayed in Santiago de Compostela, where he has governed since 2009, is in a relationship with a former Zara manager and has a young son. Having previously enlisted the support of all the powerful regional ‘barons’ of the PP, including Casado’s Madrid rival Isabel Díaz Ayuso, he is making the leap to the capital. The lawyer and later civil servant had only managed a health authority and the post office there for a few years.
He leaves Galicia with a heavy heart. At the national level, the new opposition leader, who is not a member of the Madrid parliament, has yet to find his style. He strikes a more conciliatory tone towards the left-wing minority government and promises to stand by their side in the Ukraine crisis. But he also makes it clear that he comes to “win and reign”. However, a right-wing government in Spain is only possible with the right-wing populists from Vox, who are only three percent behind the PP in polls.
In Castile-Léon, after the March election, Feijóo did not prevent the PP regional president from forming the first coalition with Vox, which he initially described as “legitimate”. In Seville, he avoided mentioning Vox but clearly distanced himself from his right-wing opponents. “Let’s finally start working like adults,” he demanded, and “let’s stop being more Spanish than everyone else”.
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