The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, at the rally in the Valencia bullring, this Sunday. MONICA TORRES
“The Bildu thing has been a gift,” a PP candidate who is being examined next Sunday confessed privately in Valencia. The controversy over the lists of the Abertzale coalition, which the popular have stretched throughout the entire first stage of the campaign, has allowed the PP to face the final stretch towards the regional and municipal elections with a growth trend, according to internal party tracking . It is not much, just a few tenths or, at most, one point in some places, transmit management sources, but enough for the overturn “to be touched with the tips of the fingers” in some disputed territories, as Alberto proclaimed. Núñez Feijóo this Sunday before some 10,000 supporters of the PP who filled the bullring in Valencia. What could be won, in any case, has already been won; and also the party has been divided “into two speeches”, they confess in the popular leadership, so we have to turn the page. Feijóo changes pace and directs his strategy last week to a call for a useful vote around the PP focused on wresting voters from Vox.
The leadership of the PP is aware of the noise that the presence of exetarras has ended up causing in the candidacies of the Basque party, with the challenge of Isabel Díaz Ayuso to the position of Feijóo and his defense, against the criteria of the leader, of the illegalization of the nationalist coalition. So Bildu will continue to be present in the speeches of the PP president, but he will no longer be the central axis, as has happened in the last ten days. This Sunday, Feijóo dedicated just “a paragraph” to this topic in Valencia, according to sources around him later highlighted. “If you are outraged by sanchismo and that this sanchismo does not break with Bildu, vote,” proclaimed Feijóo, who later went on to focus his attacks on Sánchez for his “lies” on this and other issues.
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The strategy of the PP leadership now relegates Bildu, although the Madrid president does not let go of the prey. Just 24 hours earlier, Ayuso was in Bilbao giving Feijóo homework and solemnly asking his own party to urge Congress to outlaw the nationalist coalition. “The Basque Country, Spain as a whole and the European Union need their highest powers, the legislature and the judiciary, to rule on this, and perhaps, if we do not do so, we will soon regret it,” Ayuso warned his people, oblivious to the criticism it has received from victims of terrorism, such as Consuelo Ordóñez in EL PAÍS, for “trivializing” the problem. “Ayuso asks that Congress summon the Supreme Court to look at it. Alright, we do, and then what? Because the Supreme Court would say that Bildu cannot be outlawed, so what would we do next?
The leader was proud after having achieved in the Valencian city the display of muscle he was looking for, a plenary session in the bullring in the middle of the electoral campaign. An iconic place for the PP, the Valencian bullring has been the scene of major electoral events for José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy. It is true that all the presidents of the PP have managed to fill it: also the ousted Pablo Casado, at the national convention in October 2021, which did not prevent him from ending his political career four months later. But the parties look for this type of large mobilizations in the campaign to encourage their own and demoralize their rivals, and Feijóo showed his chest in his debut in the Valencia bullring before the “nervousness in La Moncloa”, he said, because the Socialists came out losing in the comparison with their meeting on Saturday, in which they had gathered some 6,000 people, according to the PSOE, in the City of Arts and Sciences.
The PP was also looking for the photo of the bullring as a message to Vox. Because in the final stretch of the campaign, and after the Bildu screen, the popular ones direct their strategy towards the far-right party. Vox is the only possible partner to seize power from the left in many autonomous communities and municipalities, but the PP is interested in an ally who has been distanced a lot at the polls so that it will be more difficult for it to demand that it enter the governments. For this reason, Feijóo will focus his message in the last week on calls to concentrate the vote in the PP as the most effective way to throw “Sanchismo” out of power.
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In Valencia, this Sunday, with the symbolism of the complete bullring, the PP leader expressly cited the ultra party for the first time in a rally. “I know that there are Vox voters who want strong governments that are committed to our country. I have come to ask for an opportunity on behalf of my party to make change possible,” Feijóo urged far-right voters, before also mentioning Ciudadanos and PSOE voters. “If you want change, vote, and if you want change, concentrate the vote on the PP,” the popular leader cried. The most thoughtful and measured appeal, they explain in the PP, was for the voters of Santiago Abascal, whom Feijóo will court in the final stretch to avoid spoiling the party of a possible victory on the night of May 28.
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