In the quiet of a monastery, a young Alberto Núñez Feijóo went to find his way, having finished high school. The current PP candidate for the presidency of the Government, 61, felt inclined to study History, but in those days of reflection, together with a colleague, they wanted to make a decision about their university studies. And it was a priest who guided them: philosophy, history, he told them, they are very good, but to have more job opportunities, it is better to study Law.
Feijóo followed the advice and was able to thank the priest, who became dean of the cathedral of Santiago. Perhaps now that the final stretch of the campaign adopts his harsher tone, a Benedictine retreat would do him good. But the PP leader is hard at work in the electoral battle. Let them tell Pedro Sánchez, who he caught off guard in his only debate. The president should not have underestimated him. Feijóo ruled Galicia for thirteen years, his land, his fiefdom, with four absolute majorities and without ever losing an election.
He himself has explained that he wanted to be a judge but his father was unemployed and opted for simpler oppositions and took a position as a lawyer from the Xunta. It was 1985. Felipe González ruled in Spain, whom he had voted for as a university student. “He would do it again, he was an excellent president,” he says. Manuel Fraga seemed very right-wing to him.
Feijóo usually emphasizes his humble and rural origin. He was born in a village in Ourense, and until he was 10 years old, when he went to León to study at a Marist boarding school, he lived with his parents and his sister Micaela at the maternal grandmother’s house, along with other relatives. “I remember when running water was put on at home and you no longer had to go to the wells to look for it, I remember the first washing machine, the television,” he told Bertín Osborne in an interview. “We didn’t have a soccer field, we played on the road and if a car came someone would warn us and we would stop.”
At the age of 29, he accepted his first political position in the Xunta. In 1996, when José María Aznar arrived at Moncloa, he signed him to direct Insalud, the public organization with the largest budget at the time, and four years later, he gave him the Post Office, another state giant.
At the age of 42 and extensive experience as a manager, he returned to Galicia and his true political career began there. He was vice president of Manuel Fraga in the Xunta and in 2009 he was already a candidate and achieved the first of his four victories. Then, his father put his feet on the ground: “He told me ‘the more you go up, the more the fall will hurt you,’ a very optimistic comment… And as he went up, he repeated it to me.”
In 2018, with Rajoy dethroned by a vote of no confidence, some in the PP looked at the Galician baron to take charge of the party. He stayed in the Xunta. But in 2022 he did come to close the crisis that had cost Pablo Casado his leadership. He moved to Madrid, with his partner, Eva Cárdenas, whom he met as an Inditex executive, and his 6-year-old son Alberto.
He has said that if he loses on Sunday he will not appear again. Her polls are favorable to her, but she no longer trusts a Pedro Sánchez who has shown he has seven lives.
