All PP moves lead to Vox. The rise of the ultras worries at different levels of the party and conditions the entire strategy of the popular party, as seen this weekend in Seville, where Alberto Núñez Feijóo closed, together with Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, the 17th congress of the Andalusian PP. In his closing speech of the conclave, the PP leader insisted on the message of a useful vote in the face of the rise of the ultras. Feijóo urged right-wing voters to stop caroming and vote for the PP if they want the PP to govern. Because the “findings”, he said, referring to the vote for Vox, do not guarantee that the right will conquer La Moncloa. While Feijóo dedicates his speeches to stopping Vox, in parallel the PP negotiates with the ultras to maintain power in the Valencian Community. The talks are preparing for a decisive week in which it will be tested how far the far right will go towards a PP that intends to prevent new transfers from being taken from it.
The paradox is difficult for the PP: on the one hand, it is forced to cut out Santiago Abascal’s party, which continues to grow and reaps heavy losses in the polls (15.6% of the votes, according to the latest barometer of 40dB for EL PAÍS). And, on the other hand, he will have to court Vox in Valencia to invest in something new president after the resignation of Carlos Mazón. Balance is complicated. This Sunday, in Seville, in the internal conclave that kicked off the electoral race in at least three PP communities, Feijóo gave his speech on Vox. He did so, obviously, without mentioning the party and avoiding the direct attacks he launched a few weeks ago, so as not to irritate the people of Abascal, on whom he depends to maintain power in the Valencian Community. Genoa will try, at the same time, to stop its flight towards the far right by resuming the tough discussion on immigration. This Monday the entire management will travel to Melilla to hold the committee meeting in the autonomous city, after which Feijóo will appear with the president of the autonomous city of Melilla, Juan José Imbroda.
Feijóo invited the Seville party to take action before the electoral cycle that opens in several popular autonomies and stressed to right-wing voters that they will most likely concentrate their vote on the PP. The first to go to the polls is Extremadura, with elections on 21 December. Then Castilla y León does it, on March 15; and finally Andalusia, in June. “You don’t have to cast a vote for victory, you don’t have to cast a vote for defeat; every vote and every seat are decisive. In conclusion, there is no need to trust. We seek the trust of those who have the best project and we have it”, underlined the PP leader in front of hundreds of Andalusian PP delegates. “And no caroms,” he observed. “There is only one way for the PP to govern and the way to govern the PP is to vote for the PP,” he stressed. “There’s nothing else.”
Referring to the useless “carambola”, he tried to mobilize for the resource of the useful vote so that the right could concentrate its support on the PP ballots. Feijóo continued to send messages to the conservative electorate that he will turn to Vox, and said he understands “that the unrest is growing and that people need an outlet”, in a veiled reference to the vote for Abascal, but insisted on asking voters to understand that “a five-minute outlet is useless” and, on the other hand, “it helps them (the left) to stay in the same place”. “The greatest relief is to win and govern,” he underlined.
In Seville, concern about Vox’s rise crept into conversations in the corridors of the Andalusian congress. Also the consequences of Carlos Mazón’s resignation and the new agreement that the PP will have to sign with those of Abascal to invest in a replacement. This week the talks enter the decisive phase, because November 19th is the deadline for registering the name of the candidate for investiture, who everything indicates will be the general secretary of the Valencian PP, Juanfran Pérez Llorca. The PP is optimistic about the chances of an agreement, according to several sources consulted. “Everything will be fine,” Feijóo laconically told the Andalusian congress when asked about the negotiations with Vox in Valencia.
The most popular interpret Vox’s latest move in that negotiation as a good sign. On Friday, after the first contact, Abascal’s party invited the PP to now define its candidate president negotiate with him the policies he will undertake in the new investiture if he wants his support. “The fact that we put their name on the table seems like they want to invest it, because otherwise they would have started by proposing unsustainable conditions for the PP,” analyzes a Valencian PP leader aware of the strategy. “Pérez Llorca is an unknown, it’s not as if we wanted to put the mayor of Valencia, María José Catalá, at the head of the Generalitat. So it’s not a bad situation that Vox turns Pérez Llorca into president. On the contrary, if they forced elections, they would risk being blamed if the left regained the Generalitat.”
The PP believes that an agreement with Vox is possible in Valencia, but in Genoa and the Baronies there are fears to what extent the far right will be able to force concessions. The intention of the popular party is to maintain, in general, the same agreement that Mazón had already signed last May to approve his latest budget with the far right. Then, Mazón had to read an institutional statement in which he rejected the European green pact and committed to no longer welcoming migrant minors into the Valencian Community. In an interview this Sunday with The avant-gardethe leader of Vox demands a commitment from the new candidate on these two issues, but at the same time warns that “Vox intends to overtake the PP and the PSOE” at the polls. This implies that in principle it will be tough, because its strategy does not foresee becoming a crutch for the popular ones.
Some sources in the popular leadership believe that the agreement should be able to focus on the reconstruction of Valencia after the Dana catastrophe and not on ideological issues. Above all, the PP leadership tries to make it clear that it is its party that “leads the way”, and not the other way around, with Vox in the lead, even if for the moment it is Abascal’s party that sets the pace of the negotiations.
The week that begins will be decisive in verifying whether the Valencian agreement is possible and whether Vox puts conditions on the table that are inaccessible for the popular ones. The context of the pact will continue to be that of a frenetic right-wing battle for the ultra boom.
