Above ideology, personal relationships are the ones that most condition the life of a party. The human factor —likes and phobias, vanity, insecurities— is behind most of the political episodes and images that remain in the memory —Adolfo Suárez lighting Felipe González’s cigarette; José María Aznar putting his feet up on the table with Bush; Mariano Rajoy taking refuge in a restaurant while the motion of censure against him was being debated…—and it is decisive in the current internal war in the PP. This is the tangle of friendships and ruptures that explain the popular earthquake.
Sáenz de Santamaría and Cospedal: why Casado won
Apparently, Casado was elected in 2018 leader of the PP by primaries. But members of his team admit that his victory is the result of another complicated relationship in the party: that of the Vice President of the Government, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, and the Secretary General, Dolores de Cospedal. They started, due to their public and internal relevance, as the favorites to succeed Mariano Rajoy, but they annulled each other. This was detected by a popular leader who opted from the beginning for the then deputy secretary of communication: if one of them fell in the first round of the process, their votes would be transferred to Casado in the second and final round to prevent the eternal rival from prevailing. The forecast was fulfilled: Cospedal was eliminated and mobilized all of her support, including several former ministers, against Sáenz de Santamaría, that is, in favor of Casado. Before, when he still had options to win, the former general secretary of the PP had attacked him because of her proximity to Aznar. The former president was not even invited to that congress because of his “disdain” for the party, according to the organizing committee.
Aznar and Rajoy: dedazo, divorce and burial of ‘marianismo’
Aznar’s heir, for whom he had worked between 2009 and 2011, won Rajoy’s heiress in the primaries. In his first speech as president of the PP, Casado assured that he would not ask anyone who they had voted for and that he would make an integrating team, but little by little, after feeling displaced or disconnected from the project, the sorayistas They were abandoning the ship. This management of personal relations with the losing side altered the configuration of the party: former ministers and former secretaries of state left.
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Aznar, who regretted having chosen Rajoy very shortly after naming him successor and resigned from the honorary presidency of the PP -“We need new leadership”, he even said in a shared act- and Esperanza Aguirre, who wrote an entire book, I don’t shut up, to denounce Rajoy’s supposed ideological lukewarmness, turned to Casado, who promised a return to “the true PP” and inaugurated the so-called right “without complexes.” Aznar said then: “He is a leader like a castle”. And then Aguirre said: “It makes me very excited. That he has won is providential for Spain”. But that relationship also cooled. “Many people”, declared the former president in the Castilla y León campaign, “cling to false populism because they do not have a strong referent to trust”. For her part, the former Madrid president confessed this week that she is “thinking” if Casado should resign.
García Egea, a squire surrounded by enemies
Part of the PP demands the head of Teodoro García Egea, number two of Married. A veteran leader clarifies that “it is not the first time” and that the sacrifice for managing the crisis with Isabel Díaz Ayuso is not being demanded now, but for an “accumulation” of grievances. “The changes imposed in the territories have left many dead bodies and when things do not go well for you, old enemies appear,” he adds. Garcia Egea’s future will be the first test of Casado’s real power in the party. He appointed him general secretary because he bet on him when no one did and because in the primaries he dedicated himself to looking for votes by calling compromisario to compromisario. The human factor is also key here, his personal relationship. Casado has let him do and above all undo in the PP and every time a conflict has arisen between García Egea and any other person or territorial organization, he has always defended his faithful squire.
Their personal relationship has prevented them from approaching the problem with coldness, distance and intelligence. They cannot coexist.”
Casado’s kryptonite. Two personal bets: Ayuso and Álvarez de Toledo
The two people who have most weakened Casado’s leadership are his personal bets. In July 2019, he appointed Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo spokesperson in Congress against the criteria of leaders and heavyweights of the party who remembered his slam of the door against Mariano Rajoy in 2015 – “I do not find arguments to defend the Government”, he said – and that they warned her that she would be “a spokesperson for herself.” In January 2019, when she named her friend Isabel Díaz Ayuso, whom she had known since she was 20, a candidate for the Madrid elections with hardly any management experience, there was also within the PP who raised their hands to their heads . For months, Casado dedicated himself to defending them before his family and before public opinion, trying to qualify statements and extinguish controversies. Until in August 2020 she broke the rope with Álvarez de Toledo, who, after being removed as spokesperson, has written a literary revenge and now calls for Casado’s resignation. And this week the bridges with Ayuso also burst, whom the PP leader quoted in the same sentence in which she spoke of “influence peddling.”
“The personal,” says a former leader of the PP, “is decisive in this war.” “The two speak, for example, of ‘disappointment’ with the other. This relationship has prevented addressing the problem with coldness, distance and intelligence. That is why it has exploded in this way. It is a power struggle, as there are many in games, but with all that personal component it gets complicated. They have reached a point of confrontation where they cannot coexist. One can prevail over the other or, as happened with Santamaría and Cospedal, they cancel each other out and a third party appears”, he adds, alluding to Alberto Núñez Feijóo. “This time he has been less Galician than others in his statements.”
Genoa and the barons. “How are we going to oppose this mess?”
The party has not divided into two camps, but into three: those who are pro-Casado, those who are pro-Ayuso, and those who are, says one leader, “angry at both” for having allowed the war to break out. “It is a crisis, above all, of credibility. What opposition are we going to make with this mess? How are we going to tell people that we are an alternative government capable of solving their problems if we don’t even know how to solve our own? We have to solve this as it is and now, ”he adds.
In that “whatever”, there is no internal unanimity either. Casado’s relationship with the more moderate territorial barons has not been comfortable. In Castilla y León, Díaz Ayuso’s participation in the campaign still stings due to his winks at Vox, which he rose like wildfire. Genoa already knew then about her brother’s controversial earnings, but she sent her to rallies. During the state of alarm, the difficult relationship between the barons and the Madrid president, who criticized the restrictions imposed by her PP colleagues, had become evident. That, and the misgivings aroused by his chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, brought them closer to Casado. This is how a former minister summed it up in May of last year: “The PP regional presidents have never had a very close relationship with Casado because they have a more moderate profile, but now they will support him because they see more risk in the ayusismo that in the marriedism and because the only way to stop the Ayuso formula finally being chosen is not to weaken the leader with criticism”. But Ayuso’s electoral victory was overwhelming, his popularity soared and in this context it was no longer so easy for regional leaders to distance themselves. Some have added problems, such as the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, with elections in sight and a not very encouraging precedent: the elections in Castilla y León were brought forward to sweep and have only served to change Ciudadanos for Santiago Abascal’s party , another ex.
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