The PP amends Casado’s legacy and designs a “restart” congress for Feijóo

The PP finalizes the details of the extraordinary congress that will enthrone Alberto Núñez Feijóo as the new president of the party this Saturday in Seville. An appointment in which the future leader of the popular will be supported by his predecessors and in which a special tribute will be paid to José María Aznar on the 32nd anniversary of his arrival at the presidency of the PP with the support then of Manuel Fraga. The conservatives do not want to miss this coincidence, and the former Prime Minister will be in charge of valuing that 1990 conclave in which the Popular Alliance was refounded and where the party began its “journey to the center.” “It is a return to the origins,” they point out from the organizing committee.

These same sources consider that although there will be no refoundation now, there is a “restart” after Pablo Casado’s stage at the head of the PP. “When you go wrong, you have to go back to the beginning – they emphasize – to the principles and values ​​that made us the main force of the center-right in Spain”. They place that mistake between the July 2018 congress and this weekend. A complete amendment to the entirety of the last three and a half years of Casado’s management at the head of the party.

In Feijóo’s entourage they insist that it is necessary to go back on the path traveled and imbue itself with the spirit of 1990 in order to return to being a party “of the center, a staunch defender of freedom, and transversal”, in which no one was left over and in which everyone was welcome. “In the PP we value freedom above anything else and we aspire to be the great center-right party,” defended the president of the organizing committee, Esteban González Pons, on Monday.

Married Farewell

The Galician baron will have his photo with the former presidents and with Casado, who will say goodbye with a speech before handing over the witness and after previously listening to Aznar and Rajoy. It will be on Friday afternoon in a day in which the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, will also take the floor, in addition to all the presidents of the autonomous PP and the chief executives of the communities. In the case of Madrid, only Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the regional president, will speak, and Pío García Escudero, the interim president of the formation, will not do so, a position that she longs for and that has been the origin of the earthquake that has ended with the departure married forced.

Feijóo will also be photographed, already on Saturday, with Manfred Weber, president of the European Popular Group; and Margaritis Schinas, Vice President of the European Commission. Both will intervene before the proclamation of the new leader of the popular ones in a conclave that the president of the European PP, Donald Tusk, will not finally attend, after his criticism of the pact with Vox in Castilla y León, and in which other parties will not be invited either. , except for the directors of Ciudadanos in the Meeting when it is held in Seville.

The secrecy of the future leader about his future team has the party in suspense. It will be in his speech as a candidate when Feijóo, who still has to prepare his succession in the Xunta and in the Galician PP, announces the list of the 35 members that will make up the national executive committee, among whom he must include by statute his general secretary, and the 30 people who will make up the national board of directors. If he decides to then advance his management committee or do it later as Married – he took ten days to make his team known – only he knows. “If he already has the names, they are only in his head,” acknowledge some leaders consulted.