Feijóo merges the Catalan campaign with the European one, concerned about Sánchez’s movement

Catalonia is usually a minefield for Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The leader of the PP collects slips and ups and downs on Catalan politics, like the ones he could not avoid committing as soon as he set foot on Friday in Figueres (Girona). In front of the surreal façade crowned by giant eggs of the Dalí Theatre-Museum, Feijóo got tangled up with the Catalan surnames of his candidate for the European elections, Dolors Montserrat, whom he confirmed that day as the head of the list. “I have the honor of introducing a Catalan to the core, a triple Catalan because she is Dolors Montserrat Montserrat,” said Feijóo, and her Ciudadanos rivals quickly jumped on her to remind her that Catalan surnames are also Martínez or Fernández.

Despite the setback, the leader of the PP managed to focus on launching his candidate for the European elections in the middle of the Catalan campaign, as he will also do next week by presenting the complete list for Brussels in Barcelona. Génova has designed a symbiosis of both campaigns, aware that the PP will not be decisive in Catalonia and that the important game for Feijóo is played in the European elections on June 9, where the head of the conservatives needs to win decisively against Pedro Sánchez. The problem is that the president’s threat to resign has shaken things up. The PP is restless because it has detected in its surveys that the socialist movement, with its five days of reflection, has mobilized progressives. Furthermore, these are gathering around the PSC, which can eat the Comuns and fish from the ERC.

Genoa has been activated to try to short-circuit the impact of Sánchez’s decision, which if in Catalonia is not so worrying for the PP – the party holds up well as leader of the right-wing bloc, and it is very difficult for the PSC to govern due to crossed vetoes in alliances—in European ones it can be very dangerous for their interests. Catalonia, in any case, is always quicksand for the PP.

On Friday afternoon, at a rally in Mataró, Feijóo once again became entangled with languages. The head of the opposition claimed that the PP is a party that supports the country when he said: “If we speak Galician, we speak Catalan, we speak Valencian and we speak Andalusian, if we also consider it a language with its own accent, we speak all the languages ​​of Spain”. Social networks reacted quickly by viralizing the “linguistic novelty” that the PP leader had raised regarding the treatment of Spanish with an Andalusian accent.

But the reference to Andalusian was not accidental. The leader of the PP knows the weight of the immigrants from that community in Catalonia and wanted to wink at them, although he did not end up landing it well. Feijóo, like Sánchez has done, has visited the April Fair that is being held these days in Barcelona, ​​where the PP has recovered its own booth for the first time in the last decade. According to their tracking internally, they could reach up to 14 seats, quadrupling the current three.

The recovery that the PP expects is important, but it still will not help it escape irrelevance in Catalan politics. The popular ones assume that they will not be decisive and believe that in reality Catalonia is doomed to a repeat election. So the European campaign can ride on the Catalan one, where Feijóo does not play as much. The important thing is the one behind.

In Mataró, the leader of the PP worked hard to present a tandem in which he places his hopes for this electoral cycle. “I feel very proud of two Catalans,” he said. The first one he cited—despite the fact that the entire party knows that he wanted to remove him as a candidate, although he resigned to avoid a conflict—was Alejandro Fernández, “the guarantee,” he said, “that we have a commitment to the truth in Catalonia.” In his commitment to the truth, citing Feijóo, the leader of the Catalan PP made public his confrontation with Génova over the management’s contacts with Junts, which Fernández always flatly rejected. That almost cost him his job. In the campaign, the popular candidate resolves it by saying that “the PP is not a sect” and admits plural opinions. Due to these precedents, the national leadership controls its strategy through Dolors Montserrat, in turn the head of the list for the European elections and the second Catalan whom Feijóo cited in Mataró, “a person,” he noted, “who is not has been silent in the European Union and that he has brought there the Catalan accent that he has in any language.”

The popular ones are worried about the effects that Sánchez’s threat to resign may have. According to a senior leader of the party, the socialist leader, with his movement, has “nationalized the Catalan campaign.” Concern extends to the PP beyond Catalonia. “Sánchez has changed the scenario. We cannot give even a millimeter to prevent him from imposing his story,” warns a leading leader of the Madrid PP. “The key for Feijóo is to mobilize our people,” they warn in the PP.

Feijóo has to find a way to mobilize the right to the same extent. And it’s not easy. The last week of the campaign, the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, will disembark in Catalonia for that purpose. Meanwhile, the PP leader’s response is a twist of harshness in his speech. This Saturday, in Badalona, ​​he maintained that, under the Sánchez Government, Spain is a “substitute for democracy” and accused the PSC of being “separatist.” Almost at the same time, the President of the Government shared a meeting with Salvador Illa in Montmeló (Barcelona), charging against the leaders of the PP and Vox.

The axis of the PP’s discourse pivots on anti-sanchism and, strikingly, borders on amnesty for those involved in the processes against which the popular have focused their entire battle in Madrid. As sources from the Catalan PP admit, the amnesty is not the axis of their message because the majority of Catalans prefer to turn the page even with a pardon for the independentists. Feijóo prefers to focus the shot on Sánchez, already looking to the European battle.

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