With the decision to remove Alfonso Alonso from the direction of the Basque PP, Pablo Casado has succeeded in sending several simultaneous messages, both to the regional leaders of the party and to the voters. The first, which will not tolerate the lack of loyalty that reflects attitudes such as Alonso, who refused last Friday to meet with Teodoro García Egea in Madrid after warning on social networks that the coalition agreed in Genoa with Citizens was "unassuming" . The secretary general of the party had to wait until Sunday to discuss with him in person his objections to the agreement, but he refused to give up on the names of the exit positions in the electoral lists of Álava and Vizcaya, the two provinces in the that the PP has more strength. That obsocation made Alonso's continuity as a candidate for lehendakar i unsustainable , since his determination to decide the name of all the candidates meant nothing but a de facto disapproval of the pact that the Madrid management had signed with Arrimadas . Yesterday, how could it be otherwise, Alonso presented his resignation as president of the popular Basques.

Because beyond the personal disagreements that may have influenced the decision - that of Alonso had been a nomination of Sáenz de Santamaría and his commitment to a somewhat credible strong liberalism that approached the PNV had caused a clash with the leadership -, Casado He wanted to make it clear that the fundamental objective of the PP to reconstruct a strong political alternative to sanchismo cannot be other than the reunification of the center-right, which inevitably passes through reaching a formula of national cooperation with Cs. The orange party is practically irrelevant in the Basque Country and has reached an advantageous agreement. But it has also yielded to Feijóo's refusal to form joint lists in the Galician elections . And in Catalonia they were the winners of the 2017 regional ones in which the PP only won four seats, the worst result in its history. The main center-right party has to assume that the current political reality is neither similar to that enjoyed by Aznar or Rajoy , and therefore can not claim, like Alonso, that the agreement with Cs means phagocytizing a party that has proven to represent the centrist aspirations of a part of the electorate that moved away from the P.

The arrival of Carlos Iturgaiz , whose commitment was forged in the lead years and obtained the best result of the Basque PP, will help to close the crisis in the Basque PP and facilitate the success of Casado's global strategy , which goes beyond results of the next three electoral appointments. Iturgaiz must defend with conviction the pact with Cs to regroup constitutionalism and must also try to capture the useful vote of Vox supporters. Fragmentation only benefits Sánchez and his radical partners .

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  • PP
  • Citizens
  • Teodoro García Egea
  • Pablo Casado
  • Basque Country
  • Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría
  • Alava
  • Biscay
  • Vox
  • PNV
  • Carlos Iturgaiz
  • Alfonso Alonso
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EditorialFlexibility in the center right

EditorialIntolerable challenge of Alfonso Alonso

Basque Country and Galicia, two key elections