Feijóo year II. In just fifteen days the first anniversary of the election of Alberto Núñez Feijóo as president of the PP will be fulfilled, and the popular leader has expanded his team with people of his utmost confidence: Borja Sémper, Íñigo de la Serna, Carmen Fúnez, Álvaro Pérez, who complete the group that has already left the congress in Seville, whose pillars were those who accompanied him in his Galician stage at the head of the Xunta, and the politicians with whom he had a special friendship, such as Esteban González Pons and Manuel Cobo .
With that team, the one that came out of the Seville congress, Feijóo has fulfilled his first objective of putting the party in order, pacifying it, after the upheaval it suffered and which led to the replacement of Pablo Casado, and renewing the pending structures. The objective is that the municipal and regional elections, the first at the State level that Feijóo will face since the presidency of the PP, will serve as a boost for the real examination to which he will have to submit, that of the general elections scheduled for December, where the Galician politician gambles on everything or nothing. He can win and be Prime Minister, but if he doesn’t make it to Moncloa there won’t be a second chance because Feijóo has already announced that he won’t run again.
Now, according to PP sources, the party works alone, with the management of the general secretary, Cuca Gamarra, the general coordinator, Elías Bendodo, and the vice-secretary of organization, Miguel Tellado, Feijóo’s faithful squire, first in the Galician PP and now in the national direction, which is in charge of organic work.
With the party pacified, the president of the PP has set himself the challenge of giving an image of moderation and centrism. To this end, it has incorporated Borja Sémper, as spokesperson for the campaign committee and as head of the PP’s culture area, and Íñigo de la Serna, as coordinator of the electoral program for the municipal and regional elections, into the national leadership, the hard core. together with Carmen Fúnez, who also assumes the vice-secretary for social policies and demographic challenge. The Catalan David Parry also joins as secretary of electoral action, of whom Feijóo highlights his knowledge of the Catalan political and social reality, which the PP leader relies on to improve results in the community. In the words of Feijóo, it is “a united, well-oiled team that we have reinforced”.
But the popular president, as he did in Galicia, wants to go beyond his organic team. According to sources around him, his contact with former presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy is common and based on his maxim that whoever does not respect his elders does not respect himself. The same happens with José Manuel Romay Beccaria, his political mentor, from whom he listens to all the advice he has to give.
Already at the Seville congress, he announced the creation of an office of the president, which did not get up and running but has actually worked. They are the experts to whom the president of the PP has turned to make his programmatic proposals, which he has sent to Pedro Sánchez, without much success. They are the ex-ministers or experts who have helped you make your economic plan, based on the reduction of personal income tax to offset the rise in inflation, or the regeneration project.
The new foundation of the PP Reformismo21 is situated in this line, set up to connect with civil society, one more step in its objective of taking the definitive leap that will take it to Moncloa. In the leadership of the PP they see this objective as possible, and Feijóo himself also believes so, although they are prudent, they do not want to sell the bear’s skin before hunting it. The good vibes come from the polls. All, except the CIS, which on Friday again placed the PSOE almost five points above the PP.
Feijóo is no longer aware of the polls. He does not want excessive optimism nor does he want anyone to rest on their laurels. There are nine months left until the general elections and he wants to take advantage of them to prepare a “transversal” program. It is the way to seek votes, on the one hand, from the extreme right that Vox represents, attracting voters of this party who do not quite understand movements such as the presentation of the motion of censure against President Pedro Sánchez, and, on the other, get socialist voters who do not agree with some of Sánchez’s positions, nor with his management of the latest internal crises in the Government with the Podemos ministers. Feijóo wants to put together a transversal project, with a “moderate and focused” party, which also seeks transversality.
