Feijóo's only bullet is still in the chamber

“Feijóo only has one bullet”. Heard on the eve of July 23 from a PP leader of the same age. My interlocutor also applied the story, together with the entire active generation in the years of Aznar and Mariano Rajoy. Without the reconquest of the Moncloa, the turn of succession bets would open with the names of Moreno Bonilla and Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

There we are. If the current leader of the PP is closed the doors of the Government, the change of cycle hovers over the center-right. The bullet is still in the chamber awaiting events. Immediately, the votes of residents abroad, in case they could alter the relationship of forces between the two blocks. In the immediate future, the very remote possibility that the nationalist right (PNV and Junts) would subordinate the identity to the ideological.

Núñez Feijóo can and should keep trying because if he stops pedaling he will fall prematurely. It is logical that the winner of the elections thinks of claiming before the King his preferential right to obtain the parliamentary confidence to become the next president of the Government. It is not who Felipe VI —that is, with all due respect and in light of the provisions of article 99 of the Constitution—, to decide in advance that the numbers do not accompany the cause of the applicant.

Giving up prematurely would agree with those within his own party who believe, even if they do not say so publicly, that Feijóo has just enough charisma and more than three years to try again in four years if, as everything seems to indicate, Pedro Sánchez recomposes the “investment block” on which he planted the pedestal of his power.

It is true that national politics is still exposed to a labyrinth of variables capable of kicking a board as stable or unstable as suits Sánchez's traveling companions: Catalan and Basque independentistas, willing to form a front of common demands of dubious constitutionality.

But, without prejudice to the fact that this seed of uncertainty ends up complicating the life of a future PSOE-Sumar coalition government, in turn exposed to a risk of fragmentation in the government partner (Podemos is already threatening to emancipate), Feijóo's duty is to assume greater levels of leadership. If he fails to capitalize for his party on the relevance of his formidable territorial power, the absolute majority in the Senate and an advantage over his adversary in Congress (137 seats compared to 121), he is not a leader and would be anticipating the conditions for a premature succession battle in the PP.

Although everyone tells the fair as they did in it, the stories present Sánchez as a winner while the formidable leap in the electoral billing of the PP tends to be hidden, making him appear as the great loser of the general elections. But the stage is not closed, although two structural elements impossible to remove play against Feijóo. One is the parliamentary extraction of the figure of the head of government (the votes do not count, but the seats). And another is the best adaptation of the PSOE to the ideological and territorial plurality of Parliament, always at the risk of turning governability into a Trojan horse for the enemies of the system..

Apart from the two mentioned structural elements, there are the occasional ones. In other words, successes and failures during the campaign on both sides of the electoral barricade. A very varied casuistry of unequal treatment in the brain soup of fine analysts, who continue to argue about whether the “anti-Sanchismo” preached by the right was more efficient at the polls than the fear of Vox agitated by the left.