Concern of the PP barons who go to the polls in the face of the growth of Vox

The same Sunday evening, as the vote count in Extremadura drew to a close and Maria Guardiola had consolidated his victory, in Genoa the message was sent: “We are already preparing the next elections. In Aragon it will happen again. The greatest triumph they leave … The Extremadura elections for the PP are the total collapse of the PSOE. But the challenge that awaits them now is to tackle the political phenomenon that Vox has become. The party of Santiago Abascal gave a surprise this December 21. No survey had predicted that it could reach 17% of the votes in this autonomous community. The PP of Extremadura has never valued it and has not considered exceeding 9 seats either. In the end, they got 12. This undetectable growth and the feeling that Vox has not reached its ceiling has put the rest of the autonomy on guard, especially those facing their appointment at the polls next year.

Extremadura has demonstrated that the People’s Party’s goal of reaching an absolute majority or, at least, staying within the limits, will become very complicated. What is most worrying in some autonomous communities consulted by ABC is the difficulty of calibrating how far this increase can go. Some leaders are focusing on cases like Badajoz, a city in which Vox has overtaken the PSOE as the second force. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to go down,” admit some officials present at the meeting. National Board of Directors yesterday in Genoa.

The other element of tension is how this will affect the negotiation between Guardiola and Vox to return her to the presidency. Everyone is aware that in this territory a personal factor, almost an animosity, operates between the two. And that, some barons admit, can complicate everything a lot.

After Christmas, Jorge AzconPresident of Aragon, will enter the electoral campaign. A month later, Castilla y León will do it. And already in June, as expected, it will be Andalusia’s turn. There are three territories in which Vox is stronger than in Extremadura and the regional presidents assume that they will have to reorient part of the political strategy. They are not the only ones. Within the PP there is a general feeling that “It’s time to face Vox” as a political actor that they will not be able to get rid of. On the contrary: it consolidates itself as a necessary partner, although still far from the PP.

This change in discourse, more realistic, was precisely embodied by Alberto Núñez Feijóo when he evaluated in the first person the growth of Abascal’s party, celebrating that it did not occur “at the expense of the PP”. Even though Vox managed to attract former popular voters, that didn’t stop Guardiola from increasing his support by four percentage points. In other words, the message of tranquility that they send to Genoa is that the current political situation, with Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa, allows the two right-wing parties to grow in parallel. Extremadura is an example as clear as it is unexpected: the sum of the two now amounts to 60% of the votes.

Even if in these elections they found a way to coexist in the electoral space, the alarms went off in the autonomies. Those who will be examined in the coming months are even more eager to make the correct diagnosis. HASragón and castile and león They know that they will not have an absolute majority. The case of Azcón is similar to that of Extremadura, notably because of the PSOE candidate, former minister Pilar Alegría. The debacle is ignored, as is the power of Vox. Alfonso Fernández MañuecoFor his part, he has also maintained a sustained confrontation with his former government partner, who aspires to a significant increase in this autonomy.

The only president who has the possibility of reissuing the absolute – or, at least, of remaining very close to it – is Juanma Moreno. With Guardiola’s percentage of votes – more than 43% – the Andalusian baron achieved this, thanks precisely to the remains left by the different provinces. But the Vox drums never stop beating and could even snatch this legacy from the Andalusian president. The other difficulty facing the PP barons is that Vox is not concerned by their regional candidacies. It is Abascal who acts as a candidate in practice, even if his regional poster is completely unknown. The popular also assume, with a certain bitterness, that the chapters of internal divisions and other controversies like that of their youth organization do not cause victims. “It gives the impression that it’s fashionable, that it’s a trendand that this cannot be stopped,” agree the leaders consulted.

Feijóo asks Abascal “not to choose the wrong opponent”

Yesterday, the PP brilliantly displayed its victory in Extremadura. Feijóo was waiting for Guardiola in the main hall of the headquarters on rue Génova, filled to the brim with leaders. The applause began when the president of the Junta de Extremadura walked through the door. We celebrated a clear victory in this autonomous community, but we also saw the need to stage it. To mark territory. Send a message about the results. The PP did not expect such strong growth from Vox and Feijóo therefore made his position clear: “Vox has improved its results, but not to the detriment of the PP. The PSOE succeeded in growing Vox, just like the PP.

What I ask is that Vox understands that his opponent is not the PP and that he never makes mistakes again. The PP leader insisted in his message to Santiago Abascal: “Vox must understand that the majority has said that it aspires to change, that the adversary is a government that has degraded politics and transformed lies into its system.” Anticipating a difficult negotiation that Genoa knows will take place, Feijóo also wanted to underline “the undisputed victory of his party”, with more than 43% of the votes and gathering for the first time more than the entire left in this community – he takes more than 17 points from the PSOE and 11 seats – with an obvious warning to Vox: “The elections have been clarified and there is no room for interpretations capricious.”

It was a way of saying what Jorge Azcón, president of Aragon, had already suggested at the entrance to the PP meeting: “Vox has grown a lot but remains a minority party”.