Alberto Núñez Feijóo had no place at the NATO summit, so he has made his own mini-summit, with a tour of three “historic nationalities”: today he will be in the Basque Country, tomorrow he will visit Catalonia and on Saturday he will go to Galicia. The objective of these trips is to expose his economic program and, incidentally, press the state of the PP in the three territories. Above all, in the Basque Country and Catalonia, where Feijóo wants to promote a “revulsive” with “changes” that give more muscle to his formation, which he obtained poor results in the last regional elections, in both cases.
The most relevant change being prepared by the popular leadership in Catalonia is that of the candidate for Mayor of Barcelona. As this newspaper advanced, Josep Bou will not repeat as head of the list, and Feijóo wants to replace him with a high-level candidate, but he has not yet found one. It is a “difficult” job, they recognize in the PP, in which Manuel Reyes, the new provincial president of the popular Barcelonans, will have an important weight. Reyes was mayor of Castelldefels between 2011 and 2015, and was already in the pools of the PP of Catalonia in the times of Pablo Casado. Now, from his new position, he will have a great influence on the election of the candidate from Barcelona, which is still unknown due to the PPC’s lack of muscle.
Feijóo does not want to make changes only in the city of Barcelona, but will seek to strengthen his party in Gerona and Tarragona. For this, he wants to bet on the “cordial regionalism” that he has been raising in the Xunta. Not in vain, in Genoa they believe that the Moreno effect will last until the Catalan municipal elections of 2023 (the regional ones do not play, in principle, until 2025). And they foresee a strong increase in votes compared to the 2021 elections, when Vox surpassed the PP and Ciudadanos with ease.
The PP is looking for a candidate for Barcelona, but can’t find anyone of a high level
On Friday, Feijóo will hold a meeting in Barcelona with the president of the Foment del Treball employers’ association, Josep Sánchez Llibre, to “exchange impressions and proposals” so that Catalonia “reconnects with Spain and becomes the engine of our economy again.” In the afternoon, in Cerdanyola, he will participate in the PPC Summer School together with the president of the formation in Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández. “The president of the PP wants to hear first-hand the situation that each autonomous community is going through,” the PP stressed in the statement calling these events.
Today, the president of the PP will visit the Petronor facilities in Muskiz (Vizcaya) “to learn about the problems of the petrochemical sector at a time when the Spanish are suffering from high fuel costs, which in the last year have risen by 60%” .
He will also hold a lunch at the Circle of Basque Entrepreneurs, in which Feijóo will present his economic plan against inflation. The president of the PP will tell you that the CPI data for June (10.2%) “confirms the failure of the Executive’s economic policies.” Yesterday, at the General Assembly of Family Business Partners, the leader of the main opposition party already warned Sánchez that PSOE and PP are “in time to redirect the situation and go the right way, but it is necessary to act now” to give oxygen to families and companies.
Today in the afternoon, Feijóo will visit the party’s headquarters in Getxo and hold a meeting with members, and then he will chair the Board of Directors of the Basque PP, in Bilbao, “to support the formation led by Carlos Iturgaiz.”
The popular Basques will not repeat a coalition with Cs and will try to make signings
Although he has not yet defined the changes that he will make in the Basque PP, nor the local candidates that he will promote, Feijóo is clear about one thing: in the next regional elections, his party will not run in coalition with Ciudadanos, as in the previous ones. In the first place, because he believes that it has not been a successful path. Secondly, because he already considers the party led by Inés Arrimadas to be almost amortized in the future. The orange cadres will have “open doors” to join the Basque PP lists, or the party, but there will be no coalition.
On Saturday, Feijóo will finish his tour of the “historic communities” in Galicia, where he will participate in the O Pino pilgrimage in La Coruña, together with the provincial president, Diego Calvo, and the president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda. Galicia is an oasis for Núñez Feijóo, unlike Euskadi and Catalonia. There, Feijóo’s main idea is that of the “decentralization” of the party, to recover Catalan and Basque voters with their own discourse, and stop using Catalonia as an alibi to get votes in other territories. Thus, the popular Catalans and Basques could have a different discursive accent from the one centralized by Feijóo from Madrid.
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