Pablo Casado fell as leader of the conservatives in just seven days, but the PP is now undertaking a reconstruction task that will not be so fast. The first stone of the road is laid this Tuesday, at the meeting of the National Board of Directors, which has to approve the call for the extraordinary congress at the beginning of April, where, if nothing goes wrong, Alberto Núñez Feijóo will be elected as the new leader with the task to refloat the ship. A fear runs through the PP: that the crisis that the party is going through as a result of the overthrow of Casado changes from circumstantial to structural, with the risk that the flight to Vox is consolidated. For this reason, the territorial power has conspired so that the Galician president takes the reins as soon as possible. Nobody believes that Feijóo can have strong rivals in the conclave, but a unanimous clamor is sought to extinguish any attempt at internal division. The main barons will ask at the meeting that the party unite around the Galician president and focus on looking forward.
The political message that the PP wants to convey at the meeting of the National Board of Directors is clear: all behind Feijóo. The Galician baron has not yet announced his intention to run for the presidency of the PP, and he will not do so this Tuesday, but the entire party takes it for granted. Feijóo, an orderly and Cartesian politician, waits to make the announcement with the utmost respect for deadlines and procedures. He will do so from Wednesday, when the period in which candidacies for the congress on April 2 and 3, which will finally be held in Seville, officially opens. The interventions of the territorial leaders also seek to encourage the Galician to take the decisive step that he did not take in 2018, when in reality his landing in national politics was much simpler. Now Feijóo will arrive in Madrid to assume the reins of a wounded party that overthrew its leader in just one week and is fighting with the extreme right to preserve the hegemony of the conservative space. But he has no choice. “The PP needs Alberto and Alberto is going to rise to the occasion,” Andalusian President Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla emphasized on Monday, reminding the Galician of his historical responsibility to save the PP from a serious risk of cataclysm.
The barons will request a single list, according to the sources consulted by EL PAÍS, to curb any internal noise, in case someone harbors the temptation to entangle internally. The PP drags a fracture that will take time to mend, because Casado and García Egea had undertaken a profound renovation of the organizational structures by placing their pawns throughout the territory. The question that many are asking is how all that army that García Egea painstakingly dedicated himself to gathering will be relocated in case they ever faced a coup d’état. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the internal revolt that Casado and García Egea feared so much ended up happening, perhaps caused by their own movements.
The new stage already starts with tensions between the Casadistas and the team that organizes the next steps of the match. The speeches at this Tuesday’s meeting will all be behind closed doors due to discrepancies between Casado’s team and the one organizing the congress. Casado wanted his speech to be broadcast openly for the media and for the rest of the meeting to take place behind closed doors, but that intention has aroused misgivings in the other party, who has told him that either everyone was speaking openly or everyone closed, according to sources familiar with those conversations. The crash delayed the sending of the press announcement until eleven at night. The agreed solution appears in the document: all speeches will be behind closed doors.
The voices in favor of a unit list after Feijóo are practically unanimous. The Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, and that of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, advocated this Monday for a single-list congress, a request that was also joined by the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida. The alderman, a pro-casadista who owes his political career to Casado, soon distanced himself from the previous leadership, resigning as spokesman for the executive before the internal rebellion was consummated. “Unity is embodied by Feijóo,” Almeida stressed on Monday, turning the page.
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The 17 territorial leaders conspired last Wednesday to show Casado the exit door and join forces around the Galician baron, and that unanimous agreement of the factual power of the party prevents Feijóo from having a weighty alternative. But in the last hours the barons have called up their own and have asked that no one distance themselves from the vote of the extraordinary congress that the Board has to approve today, although it is assumed that it will be overcome. Two thirds of the more than 400 leaders that make up the body, made up of the executive committee, deputies, senators, regional, provincial and island presidents, and the presidents and spokespersons of the legislative assemblies of the communities, among others, are needed.
The risk of rivals appearing against Feijóo seems low because the last faithful to Casado have also distanced themselves from the possibility of launching a list against him. The deputy secretary of Communication, Pablo Montesinos, plans to leave politics when the congress elects Feijóo, according to sources close to him. Antonio González Terol, deputy secretary of Territorial Policy, has supported the Galician in a message on his social networks. And the deputy secretary of Organization and president of the PP of Navarra, Ana Beltrán, confirms to EL PAÍS that she joins the majority option. “Feijóo is a benchmark, and if he shows up, I will give him my support,” she stresses.
From the group of last affines to Casado there is only one exception to the closing of ranks around Feijóo: Teodoro García Egea. The former secretary general is silent and is the only one who has not yet supported the Galician baron as leader of the new stage. The presentation of a candidacy for congress is very simple, because it requires gathering only 100 endorsements, and the possibility that García Egea moved an alternative list circulated in the first days of the crisis, raising suspicions among the baronies. But most now rule out that the former number two launches into that adventure, since he has lost the bulk of his support. “I think there is more gossip than reality. It is as if a neighborhood team were to present themselves against Paris Saint Germain. Teodoro is not stupid enough to understand that Feijóo has no alternative”, says a territorial leader who was very close to García Egea until just a week ago.
The PP opens this Tuesday a new stage of transition until the landing of Feijóo, which will be piloted by Cuca Gamarra as general coordinator and by Esteban González Pons as president of the Organizing Committee of the Congress. This Tuesday the members of this last body, made up of a member designated by each territory, will be announced.
The meeting of the National Board of Directors will also serve to listen to Casado for the first time after being overthrown as president of the conservatives. The still leader of the PP – he is until the next congress – will speak in front of his internal enemy, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who also plans to intervene before the Board. That duel will be full of tension, after the damage that their brutal internal war has caused for both of them. Ayuso now faces an investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office into her brother’s contracts, while Casado has seen his expectation of becoming President of the Government vanish. Despite this, the two leaders and former friends who opened the channel to the PP will have to see each other face to face.
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