Alejandro Fernández resists Alberto Núñez Feijóo's plans to include him on the 23-J list and will continue to lead the PP in Catalonia

The president of the Catalan PP, Alejandro Fernández, will not be part of the party lists in the general elections on July 23. The regional leader will not leave Parliament and thus resists the strategy of the national leadership, whose plans have included a replacement in the Catalan leadership for some time.

Fernández, who has chaired the regional PP since November 2018, had sounded in recent days as possible number one for the province of Barcelona for 23-J, a position that in the 2019 elections was held by Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, who in this occasion will be presented by Madrid. However, he himself has publicly rejected the party's offer this afternoon.

“At the time, I was very critical of those politicians who, at the first difficulty, went to Madrid and left an enormous feeling of abandonment here.. I will not fall into such a mistake”, he has published through his Twitter account to clarify that he will not follow in the footsteps of the former leaders of Ciudadanos Albert Rivera and Inés Arrimadas, who left the leadership of their party in Catalonia to go to Congress. In the case of Arrimadas, even when she was head of the opposition in Parliament and Cs had been the force with the most votes in the 2017 regional elections. Both are now retired from politics.

Fernández's decision should be interpreted more politically than personally. The return to the Lower House, where he was already a deputy between 2011 and 2015, seemed like a good destination in the transition towards his departure from the presidency of the party, as Alberto Núñez Feijóo claims, but the Catalan leader “has preferred to maintain his commitment politician with the voters and continue defending constitutionalism in Parliament”, they explain from their environment.

In this way, the regional deputy opens “a war with the national leadership, which already gave him up for dead”, and does so brandishing “the legitimacy and moral force of the trench, its fight on the front line against nationalism”, sources point out parliamentarians of the PP.

According to those around him, Fernández is convinced that, with a PP government that emerged from the 23-J elections, “independence will return to the insurrectional path” and he wants to be in Catalonia to “give a constitutional and Europeanist response that neither Vox neither Citizens can offer”.

Precisely yesterday, the leader of the Catalan PP warned of these intentions on the part of Junts per Catalunya at a time when his party is debating whether or not to hinder the access of the post-convergent Xavier Trias to the Barcelona Mayor's Office, an operation in which the four councilors popular could have the key depending on the support that the socialist Jaume Collboni can gather, who also aspires to the command rod after coming in second place in the municipal elections on May 28. “Be very careful with Junts. Today they have warned us again,” Fernández said on Friday following Anna Erra's speech as the new president of Parliament.