The challenge of emancipation

In June 2008, Mariano Rajoy had lost his second assault on Moncloa. Critical voices, within the party and in the right-wing press, were loud. Rajoy arrived at the Valencia congress with a team inherited from José María Aznar, who had not digested ending up in opposition after José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s first victory. His decision to opt for a hard-line strategy turned the 2004-2008 legislature into a legislature of tension. The new defeat encouraged internal opposition, with Esperanza Aguirre threatening to dispute the leadership and the former minister Juan Costa considering presenting himself as an alternative. In the end, there was only one candidacy, and Rajoy revalidated the presidency, although he garnered 16% of blank votes, punishment votes. Despite this, Valencia witnessed what Santos Juliá called “the emancipation congress”. Rajoy left Aznar’s tutelage behind, chose a renewed direction that he trusted and, without paying attention to the media that was determined to wipe him off the map, he began his own political project, more flexible and focused. Then would come the overwhelming victory in the local and regional elections in 2011 and the absolute majority in the general elections in November of the same year. The map was dyed blue, and the PP reached the highest level of power in its history.

The recent elections of 23-J leave some echoes of the past, of 2004 and 2008, as far as the PP is concerned. Despite coming first with spectacular growth, 48 seats more than in 2019, the presidency of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which was taken for granted, is the unfeasible alternative. The sum with Vox is insufficient and it seems impossible to find support beyond the UPN deputy and, perhaps, that of the Canary Coalition. At most, 172 seats.

For the PSOE, arithmetic, although devilish, poses a more accessible panorama. If not all 176, the greatest number of yeses than noes seems possible. Although the dance of a seat after the recount of the CERA vote has narrowed the margin, there are negotiation alternatives. The most obvious, seek the yes of Junts, an unpredictable party, but with little interest in an electoral repetition that could cost them more votes. Less named, another option would be the yes of the Canary Coalition, which has already given some favorable signal to talk. Or even an agreement with UPN, perhaps on a broader scale, with a favorable outcome for the PSOE at the national level and for the Navarrese in the Pamplona Mayor’s Office. If none of this came to pass or the Socialists only got a part of the necessary votes, the blockade would be served and the electoral repetition would be the only viable scenario.

But the big question in view of the composition of the new Congress is: why doesn’t the PP achieve the four deputies that it lacks for an absolute majority? That inability is the best definition of the PP problem. How does this happen with a Parliament with parties with close ideological coordinates and with which there have been agreements in the past? Even in the present, because after the municipal elections in May, Andoni Ortuzar was in favor of extending his pact with the Socialists to the Popular Party. Why in the municipal ones and not in the general ones? The answer to this rhetorical question is Vox. The main ally in this world of blocks, the second force on its side of the board, has become a necessary support and, at the same time, a main problem by cutting off any negotiation option with almost all possible third parties. The problem is serious, since it makes a popular government impossible now, but, if nothing changes, the same could happen in an electoral repetition. If PP and Vox do not achieve an absolute majority together, they will continue without possible partners. And an absolute majority in a scenario where the votes move within each bloc, where if a similar party grows, the other falls, and where the electoral law penalizes the loss of votes is too complex a calculation to trust everything to hit the combination perfect.

So how to get out of this trap? Changing the leader does not seem like the solution, despite the chants to Isabel Díaz Ayuso or the winks of some right-wing media, which nostalgically venture better results with her. If the PP’s problem has been the rejection that Vox provokes in the moderate electorate and its ability to mobilize the left, it seems unlikely that a “soft” candidate has subtracted. Wouldn’t someone who talks about agreeing with Vox without complexes, who is closest to his style and assumes part of his postulates, cause more mobilization? Due to her harshness, which makes her divisive, Ayuso does not seem the most suitable to achieve the transversality that is intuited as a way for the PP to get out of the Vox trap.

And it is that the popular urgently need to widen their space to have more alliance options, working on an ideological axis with left/right logic, returning to a more plural conception of the national axis and recovering the most pragmatic perspective of politics, the one that It makes it possible to find points in common with those forces that are more distant in the ideological sphere from the search for solutions to daily problems of general interest.

To ground these principles in concrete actions, the first objective of the PP should be to become a partner of the PNV. In a context with Bildu in an ascending phase and regional elections just around the corner, take advantage of Ortuzar’s offer and try to transfer it to the national level. As a final goal, to unseat the PSOE as a preferred partner. The next constitution of Congress may be a start. In a scenario where the right will hardly have a majority at the Table and with a foreseeable veto of Vox by the left, why not work so that the PNV has a seat, even ceding one to it?

The second objective of the Popular Party should be to help normalize Junts so that it stops being a stigmatized party, dependent on Carles Puigdemont, and returns to political normality. The PSOE negotiation to obtain the investiture of Pedro Sánchez offers an opportunity. If it prospers, the socialists will assume the cost of the first steps of that normalization that interests the popular ones more than anyone else. With it they would recover a natural partner in a policy oriented on a left/right axis.

The last step would be to detach from Vox, focusing the relationship with those of Santiago Abascal without complexes or hesitation; accepting that he may need his support, while he assumes his status as the first force of the block. That implies being the one who sets the pace, recovering the initiative, leaving out all the mantras that deviate from the social consensus of democratic Spain and looking to the center with determination.

Feijóo has the necessary qualities to face this challenge and rearm the PP for the coming years. A legislature in the opposition can be the opportunity to rebuild and lay the foundations for a future where the popular regain prominence and capacity for action. But to do so, as Rajoy did in 2008, he must emancipate himself from the loudest voices in the party, surround himself with a trusted leadership, build a consistent program and not let the front pages of the newspapers decide his moves.

Pilar Mera Costas is a professor in the Department of Social History and Political Thought at UNED.

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