Is Ayuso the best antidote against the left?

A past bull, we are all bullfighters. Catalan has a coarser way of saying the same thing: once you've seen his ass, you know if he's male or female. Serves the idea for the days after the elections. There is no individual in the political and media universe who does not already have a theory to explain from start to finish what happened last Sunday. And yet, given that the error was huge in the guessing exercise, it would be possible that it was also huge in the interpretation of what happened.. Only that the hypotheses about what happened, unlike the surveys that had to pass the test of cotton from the ballot boxes, will not be able to be validated in any way. So we can all say what we want without reality being able to deny us. At least not all at once..

The insufficient results of the PP, as was foreseeable, have focused on the suitability of Alberto Núñez Feijóo as a candidate for the future. Beyond the analysis of his campaign, judged as bad by the results, what is being promoted now is a debate on his continuity as a future candidate and leader of the PP if Pedro Sánchez manages to be invested.

When doubts are raised and certain questions are encouraged, normally the person who asks them already has a prepared answer.. And that is where Ayusismo appears, warming up in the band with its fans and prescribers shouting from the stands that the time has come to leave. The loser goes home, the winner goes to the field. It is a debate more normal than breathing. One only has to look back and recover the ordeal to which Mariano Rajoy was submitted within the ranks of his own party until the third time, after the economic disaster of the shoe industry, he managed to reach the presidency of the Government.

It may be that in reality the reflection that suits the PP should not be, at least not impulsively, about people, but about what project it wants to offer the Spanish in the long term. And make that project more credible than it has turned out to be in the present without trusting everything to the mistakes of the rival, in this case, the sanchismo.

But the truth is that the discussion is there and will go further. Does Feijóo work for us? The enthusiastic prescribers of Ayusismo understand that their way of doing politics and explaining it is the best antidote against the left. But they start from two issues that are considered true, but that do not have to be: the Spanish would buy their product with the same enthusiasm as the people of Madrid and Vox would be almost expelled from the board.

About the first, the doubts are more than reasonable. It remains to be seen whether Ayusismo can be exported outside of Madrid. The president generates enthusiasm, but also great animosity. In addition, recent history tells us that when the right —beyond and even independently of its candidates— opts for energetically divisive politics through its areas of influence and prescription —Jose María Aznar in 1993, Mariano Rajoy in 2008 and Alberto Núñez Feijóo in 2023 (“Repeal Sanchismo”)—, it is not enough for him to win or to govern, things that are actually the same.

It can be argued against this that neither Spain nor today's politics are those of the past. That extreme polarization has changed the rules. And that today there is no better shot of energy to reinforce the options of the political family that you represent than populism.. There, it is true, Ayuso plays with an advantage over Feijóo. And this is where the theory comes into play that with Ayuso as a candidate, Vox would by force be reduced to marginality, because its voters would agree to be represented in the majority by her..

But this can also be questioned. Vox, whether for practical reasons —better for the right to govern alone— or for moral reasons, generates many antibodies. And that is why there are those who insist on seeing them as an anomaly that can be swallowed up as soon as the conventional right succeeds with the strategy. not even remotely.

That is a look as willful as naive. Furthermore, none of the issues that mobilize and explain the rise of the ultra-right across the continent are going to vanish by magic.. Neither in Spain. Vox will have exams and revalidations, it will do better or worse, it will have to overcome internal crises when it has to undertake leadership renewal and it will suffer, like all parties, when in an election its competitors succeed with the strategy and yours is wrong.

Those of Abascal have gone from 15.08% of the vote to 12.04%, a bad result, with 600,000 fewer votes. But it never occurs to anyone to think, for example, that ERC is going to stop being an important party in Catalan politics, and it has left 400,000 votes in that community alone.

Who sings the future obsequies of Vox clinging to the idea that his death is inevitable as soon as the PP proposes it, tilting with his candidates towards the most populist way of doing things, confuses wishes with realities.

The PP errs by allowing the conversation about its initials to be hijacked so soon by a hypothetical questioning of its current leadership and its substitution by Ayusismo. It is convenient for the right to digest the results and understand that the board is what it is. And that on that board, what it is up to them is to make credible a project of the modern, liberal and Europeanist right. And what happens to the right of the right, leave it to the extreme right.