Scott Carey was, in The Incredible Shrinking Mana normal and ordinary citizen who one day finds himself wrapped in a strange cloud. Shortly after, he notices that his size is gradually decreasing. Little by little, he loses weight and size until he becomes almost invisible. His life becomes a nightmare and a constant struggle for survival in which everything is inaccessible or threatens. From your own family to a cat or a spider.
Something similar has happened to Alberto Núñez Feijóo since he landed in Madrid, pushed by an organic operation of the barons to take charge of the national presidency of the PP. Everything is going well for him after getting rid of the costume of institutions to put on that of wrestling. Month after month and, poll after poll, the leader of the opposition is moving downward in the electorate. In others, this was taken for granted, but in our country, it is starting to be a clamor. Between October 2023 and September 2024, he has fallen by more than 20 points among those who, being PP voters, prefer him as president of the government (from 69.9% to 49.2%). Almost half of his electoral niche does not want him in La Moncloa. And this, together with an amnesty and a much-criticised agreement between the PSOE and the ERC to provide single funding to Catalonia, which has made a dent in Sánchez’s government.
These are data from the CEI, yes. But those shown by the surveys of private institutes are no better, as we already verified on elDiario.es last June. In fact, among all those published by different media – and not exactly progressive ones – he was the lowest rated political leader of his own parish. There is concern in the territories and there is a buzz that runs through the conversations of several of their barons.
The questioning goes beyond the walls of the Puerta del Sol, headquarters of the presidency of the Community of Madrid, and has much to do with the absence of an alternative government project that goes beyond the simple confrontation with the government of Pedro Sánchez, with the absence of leadership and with a host of PP spokesmen in permanent competition for the thickest or most dissonant statement.
The week that ends this Sunday, and which began with a new parliamentary defeat for Sánchez after Congress overturned the reform of the housing law that aimed to fill the hole in vacation rentals, is a clear example of the absurdity in which the popular live, the difficulty of carrying out the political initiative three days in a row and that Sánchez has managed to open a crack between the national leadership of the PP and the regional presidents.
On the one hand, Feijóo accuses the government president of following in the footsteps of the dictator Franco. On the other hand, his foreign policy chief, Esteban González Pons, accuses him of being involved in a coup d’état in Venezuela. And, in the middle, his secretary for Autonomous Policy, Elías Bendodo, accuses him of a “dirty war” and a “general purge” against the media and judges that are “uncomfortable” to him, as if they were in “the old Soviet Union.” And he lets slip that “this is fascism.” This last statement came a day after Feijóo was photographed in Rome with the Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni – leader of a party inherited from a formation with fascist ideology – and praised her immigration policy, which includes deportations to Albania and the banning of NGOs. to help migrants on the high seas. The image did not please some PP leaders consulted by this newspaper.
Ignoring the declarative extravagance of their national leaders, the regional presidents of Galicia and Andalusia, Alfonso Rueda and Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla respectively, attended Pedro Sánchez’s meeting in La Moncloa on Friday, as part of the cycle that the president has convened with those responsible for all the autonomies. This is called institutionality and it is something that, even because of the ideological divergence, both the Galician and the Andalusian, have displayed during their stay in the presidential complex. The expression “my president of the government” with which Moreno usually refers to Sánchez was the same that Rueda also used in the press conference after his meeting with the president, which, for the “monclovite” leaders, marks the difference between Feijóo and, of course, the Madrilenian Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the PP barons are willing to put aside their differences to talk about the problems of their respective territories.
The same is expected of the rest of the PP regional presidents who will meet with Sánchez in the coming days, ignoring the call for rebellion and the plan that Ayuso proposed to them when the president announced the series of talks with all the autonomous communities. Moreno and Rueda have told Sánchez about the needs of their territories in separate documents and have asked him to put regional financing on the agenda of the next Conference of Presidents. No one has called Sánchez a “fascist” and even less has warned that Spain is heading down the path of a dictatorial regime, as the popular leaders who live on Génova Street hear every day. The buzz that is running through the territorial leaders of the PP is that “anxiety” is leading them “nowhere”, that “the strategy of transferring the Spaniards that Spain is walking every day towards the abyss” is not credible either and that it is useless to ask for an electoral advance on a daily basis when everything indicates that the legislature will last.
The week did not go as Genova had hoped, who had promised to be happy after inflicting the second defeat in fifteen days on the Government in Congress by canceling the reform of the housing law. After the euphoria of the vote, came the questioned image of Feijóo with the loud disavowal of Meloni and Edmundo Gónzalez of the offensive of the Popular Party against Spanish diplomacy due to the crisis in Venezuela.
And, beyond the statements, the titles or the votes won, the true translation of Feijóo’s opposition is that the PP has broken with its vote the pact that provided a solution to the problem of immigrant minors in the Canary Islands, with its vote it has prevented the regulated seasonal rental and with your vote next week you will say no to 12 billion euros for communities and municipalities when this prevents the approval of the path of stability and the spending ceiling of the budgets for 2025, considering that in this way Sánchez will dissolve and call elections.
Nothing could be further from what the head of government is experiencing, willing to approve next year’s accounts with the spending ceiling for 2024, with the authorization of Junts, of course. And that is something that no one can guarantee today, even though the PSOE’s organizing secretary, Santos Cerdán, went to Switzerland on Friday to negotiate with Carles Puigdemont the support of his seven deputies in Congress. A mission that does not seem feasible today, even after the PNV’s commitment to continue providing stability to Sánchez, which Lehendakari made public after his meeting with the president at Moncloa.
If the PP saw the support of the “jeltzales” in Congress for its initiative in favor of the recognition of Edmundo González as the legitimate president of Venezuela as the beginning of the path towards a strategic alliance, it was wrong. It was circumstantial and strategic. Nothing else. And this is what the leadership of the PNV has made known to the Government through active, passive and periphrastic actions. Another question is whether the “peneuvistas” can on this occasion mediate with those of Puigdemont so that they follow the same example in supporting Sánchez.
