Alberto Núñez Feijóo thinks he’s halfway there. The aim is to secure the vote that the PP received on 28-M, to take advantage of the wave of those who play the winning horse, according to the polls, and to win seats in the provinces that elect three or four deputies.
There are more than 18 seats that, depending on which side they fall on, can give a PSOE-PP tie or get a three to one. The PP aspires to wrest the second seat from the PSOE in these provinces: Álaba, Albacete, Burgos, Cáceres, León, Lleida, Lugo, Ourense, La Rioja, Salamanca. He has visited many of these provinces in the pre-campaign weeks, others or will visit them in the coming days.
That is why it was no coincidence that it started yesterday in Ourense, which distributes four deputies, the same ones who are elected in Zamora, where it will be on Saturday, and today it goes to Badajoz, where five are played, and on Tuesday in Ciudad Real, which five more have been appointed.
To get the third seat where four are distributed, he has to prevent Vox from taking away votes that he shares with the conservative bloc and that, with arguments such as the agenda against climate change or hunting, he can win followers, although this does not mean that they translate into seats for Abascal.
They are, above all, the two Castiles, Galicia, where the rural world is governed by different criteria to the big cities. Feijóo, as former president of the Xunta, knows them very well. He must keep adding seats. He needs them, because the goal – already taken for granted, at least the polls say he will win – is to be able to win with a large majority that will allow him to tell Vox that he will form a government alone.
It is a risky bet, because the people of Abascal may feel hurt, not to mention humiliated, and the post-electoral understanding may be difficult. Feijóo can do little to want to separate from Abascal now, when he has reached agreements in municipalities and autonomous communities where they govern together.
Despite the fact that this has been able to mobilize the left, the PP assures that it has not taken away their votes, that after 28-M there was a wave in their favor, which then resulted in a small decline, from which it has recovered. But it is the theory, we will have to wait for the practice.
The PP sets the bar at 150 seats, which some polls already give them, although Feijóo acknowledged in an interview that with 160 “we can start talking”. It is, according to Feijóo’s strategy, to have more seats than the entire left, in other words, that in order to govern Vox’s abstention is useful, it does not need a yes vote, as in the Balearic Islands or as try Murcia and Aragon.
With this strategy, the PP leader opened the campaign in Os Peares, his hometown, before putting up posters in Castelldefels. In front of the house where he was born, of his grandmother’s shop and in front of his mother, Sira, and sister, Micaela, together with his partner, Eva Cárdenas, who took a more discreet place, he made a statement of intentions: “I come to pledge my word that I will not deceive anyone”, and he promised, “wherever I am”, “to be with my feet on the ground” and to defend the principles he learned in his people: “The effort, humility, modesty, which will be my beacons of political action” with a single objective: “to improve my country”.
