Times are important, and arguments, too, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo will give himself time for both. He is in no hurry, say sources close to the PP president. “It has 35 days”, they emphasize, and they will go step by step. Génova is aware that its bet for the investiture is risky, and that a quick round of talks with the various parties in the parliamentary arch, from the PSOE to the last party, with the sole exception of EH Bildu, would prove too much quickly the impossibility of his investiture going ahead, a fact that clashes with Feijóo’s interests.
The president of the PP will try, during this long month that he has until the investiture session, called for the 26th and 27th of September, to create an image of a presidential candidate that collapsed with the reality that the electoral results gave him: his votes were not enough to be president. In fact, the leadership of the PP has little doubt that the investiture will fail. Feijóo seems to be the one with the most hope.
Hopes that are fixed on the PNB and Junts. Both with the Basque nationalists and with those of Carles Puigdemont, the president of the PP will use the same arguments, with the same perspective. PNB and Junts will have to explain to their voters why they reject a PP government in which Vox will no longer have any role, they emphasize, and they prefer one of Sánchez, in which Podemos or the commons will be there.
And it is that Alberto Núñez Feijóo will approach these parties, leaving aside the identity issue and wielding an economic and social discourse that the PP maintains is more similar to what the PNB or Junts defend than what a Sánchez government will propose in what is there to Summarize, which means submitting to the discourses of the common s, represented in the case of Catalonia, they emphasize, by Ada Colau, or by Ione Belarra.
“Beyond ideological and identity differences – they assure the PP – there are other things, especially in the economic field, such as lowering taxes, financing or the consumption basket”, in which the PNB and Junts are more closer to the PP than to Sánchez. According to those of Feijóo, these two parties will have to explain to their voters why they do not give priority to these issues.
Because in “the identity issue”, they assure Génova, the PP “will not give anything”. In this, Feijóo wants to be very clear, “neither amnesty nor a self-determination referendum is on the table”. With this unequivocal position, the PP will also try to appease a sector of the Catalan PP, represented by the president of the party in Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández, upset by the approach to Junts, a fact that he reflected in a tweet. “Movements [and photos] are coming that will destroy the reputation of those who promote them. Because there is nothing more valuable than being consistent with your past, your principles and your opinions.”
This sector of the Catalan PP emphasizes that Sánchez cannot be accused of negotiating with a fugitive from justice and doing the same a few days later. But in the PP they defend this dialogue, because if it is already other parties that close the doors to talk with the PP, it should not be the popular ones who do it.
Feijóo will also invite to the ERC talks, although he knows that he has nothing to do with this party, because not only the identity discourse separates them, but also the economic one, and here are many of the initiatives of the previous legislature , the last one the Housing law. But ERC is the party of the president of the Generalitat, PP sources underline, and Feijóo gives it the institutional respect it deserves, despite the ideological chasm that separates them.
The president of the PP will also try to talk to the PSOE, although it remains to be seen if the contacts are limited to the parliamentary sphere, and then he will call Patxi López, or if Feijóo tries a conversation with Sánchez, which would have little chance of success, augur for the PP.
But that will be next week, when it will be defined what kind of contacts there will be, who will carry them out and on what dates. At the moment, Feijóo is trying to exploit his status as a candidate for the presidency, and he wants to recreate what he has achieved in the year and a half that he has been at the head of the PP. It will be what will stand out this weekend in Soutomaior (Pontevedra), where the PP will return after seven years, once the Provincial Council of Pontevedra has been recovered, since the previous incumbent, Carmela Silva, denied the PP the right to do so in the castle . Quite a symbol to talk about the territorial power achieved.
His investiture has another meaning. In his last face-to-face with Sánchez, in the Senate, Feijóo told the Spanish Prime Minister that the next time they would meet in Congress, it would be at his investiture and with him talking without a time limit. This will happen on September 26 and 27. A little revenge, even if it doesn’t do much good.
