Feijóo's insufficient victory reopens the debate for the leadership of the PP

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has won the general elections, but with a feeling of defeat that not even the eight million votes that the PP signed this Sunday do not wash away. The popular leader was a prisoner of his own expectations. He practically equals the majority of Rajoy in 2016, but his 136 seats are far from the minimum margin with which they had worked throughout the campaign: 150 seats and guaranteed investiture with Vox. But the sum did not arrive. Sánchez will not leave Moncloa if he achieves an abstention from Junts. The other option that Spain is facing is a new blockade. But what became clear on the night of 23-J is that Feijóo has not been able to give the PP the victory it longed for. He showed his weaknesses. Its results reopen cracks that were considered overcome. The leadership debate returns to hover over the Popular Party.

The first step after 23-J will be staging a total closure of ranks with Feijóo, who has already advanced his intention to opt for the investiture and open contacts with all the forces of the parliamentary arc due to the “responsibility” that gives him having been the most voted force on 23-J. The first will be Sanchez. The PSOE candidate contacted his PP counterpart on election night. And this in turn summoned him to maintain contacts “in the coming days” to “avoid the political blockade” in Spain. It is an almost utopian scenario, more so with a grown Sánchez after having turned the polls around and rising two seats compared to 2019. In the weeks that remain until the Cortes are constituted and the first investiture session is held, Feijóo will appeal to the idea that “the most voted list” governs. But your future is uncertain.

Feijóo landed in the PP a little over a year ago as a kind of glue to unite a party badly injured by the war that opened it up.. He himself warned from the beginning that he would play with a single bullet. If he didn't achieve his goal, he said, he would leave.. The popular leader has once again placed the party as the first force after seven years with his head down. It rose 47 seats compared to 2019. He won in 40 of the 52 provinces. And yet, the feeling is fiasco. The sum with Vox – which left 19 seats in these elections – is insufficient and Sánchez has shown a capacity for resistance that surprised not a few at the Genoa headquarters. A triumph at half throttle that uncovers a debate from which the PP will not be able to easily abstract.

The @ppopular has won the general elections.

Thanks to the more than 8 million Spaniards who have given us their support.

I want to form a government and I am going to start a dialogue with the rest of the parties.

I ask for responsibility so that Spain does not suffer blockades. pic.twitter.com/lgWHUHRQdz

– Alberto Núñez Feijóo (@NunezFeijoo) July 23, 2023

The shock of reality in the face of expectations was evident in some of the faces that came out to accompany Feijóo to the balcony of the victories in Genoa. The popular leader expressed his chest about what he had achieved, but portrayed with his words the difficult path that lies ahead. His chances are reduced to Sánchez punting in his attempt to be invested with what is nicknamed the Frankenstein bloc, and the country heads back to an electoral repetition. He will fight for an abstention on the part of the socialists and other forces of the parliamentary arc, but by not adding up with Vox, that offer remains lame.

Feijóo's only option is even more complicated than Sánchez's with Junts: he should bring together Vox (33), PNV (5), Coalición Canaria (1) and UPN (1) in the same investiture agreement. The crossed vetoes would make that sum impossible. And on the same election night, in some sectors of the party the first doubts arose about whether Feijóo would aspire to hold out in opposition in the event of a new Sánchez government, with the thesis that Spain would go to a convulsed and even short legislature.. The option of an electoral repetition is not unreasonable given the result of this 23-J. And, if confirmed, Feijóo would have to decide whether or not to repeat as a candidate. In that case, the pressure of the party would be key.

While making his final plea and appealing to the State pacts, Feijóo was interrupted by a crowd that chanted in unison “Ayuso, Ayuso!”. The president of the Community of Madrid tried to hide a smile. Dressed in red, she was almost the only member of the PP on the balcony who skipped the corporate white that the rest of her party colleagues wore, including the national president. The ghosts of the past returned to hover over the national headquarters of the popular. And the question of whether Ayuso would have been able to get a better result may become the elephant in the room in the coming days.. The Madrid president has neutralized Vox in the Community of Madrid, a region in which, in addition, Sumar has snatched third place from those of Abascal on 23-J.

Despite the threat of internal noise due to the result of 23-J, talking about the battle for the succession are even bigger words. If that extreme were to be reached in the coming months, two natural successors would appear before Feijóo: Isabel Díaz Ayuso, on the one hand, who represents the toughest current of the PP, and Juanma Moreno, on the other, as proxy for the moderate sector, which also includes the Galician president.. In this scenario, the party would return to the reminiscences of the battle between Aznar's PP and Rajoy's. Against the backdrop that, on 23-J, the Andalusian path that helped Moreno to secure an absolute majority has not worked for Feijóo.

campaign errors

In the PP, a period of reflection is now open to analyze the rulings that have led Feijóo to a victory with a taste of defeat on election night. As published by El Confidencial, party officials warned in the final stretch of the campaign of being faced with “the syndrome of ministers”, that is, the risk incurred by those who see themselves caressing the Moncloa with their fingertips. From the beginning, Genoa had a minimum margin of 150 seats. But the first week of the campaign came crashing down. Feijóo himself, in an informal conversation with journalists, raised his chances to even 165 deputies. The party flew too high, and the victory ended up being bitter.

The popular leader had several coups at the beginning of the campaign: the victory in the face-to-face with Sánchez or the interview in El Hormiguero had a positive impact on the party's tracking. But then it lost steam. The second and last week of the campaign, Feijóo starred in several setbacks. First he became entangled with a piece of information about the rise in pensions that led him to confront a TVE journalist, and later, the PSOE returned to agitate the controversial photo of the Galician with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado, while voices from the party warned that Feijóo had lost the initiative and was going “in the wake” of the leftist framework. Genoa will also have to analyze to what extent their multiple pacts with Vox and the fear of their entry into a possible Executive as a spur to Sánchez's resistance have taken their toll..