European of the week
The challenges of Alberto Nunez Feijoo, new boss of the Spanish right
Audio 03:30
Alberto Nunez Feijoo aims to bring the People's Party (PP) back to power and defeat Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialist Party.
© REUTERS/Miguel Vidal
By: Nicolas Feldmann Follow
4 mins
Alberto Nunez Feijoo was elected on 2nd April as head of the People's Party (PP).
This high-ranking official with a moderate reputation will have to reunite his party and deal with the rise of the far right of Vox, which has become the third political force in Spain.
Advertisement
Summer 2018, the Spanish right is looking for its new boss.
All eyes are on Alberto Nunez Feijoo.
The president of the regional government of Galicia, reputed to be moderate and pragmatic, is seen as the natural successor to Mariano Rajoy to lead the People's Party (PP).
But to everyone's surprise, Alberto Nunez Feijoo gave up to devote himself to his constituents.
“
I cannot let the Galicians down without having kept all my commitments, because that would also be a renunciation for myself
”, he declares moved in front of his supporters gathered in his stronghold of Santiago de Compostela. .
Four years later, the name of Alberto Nunez Feijoo is put forward again to take over a party torn apart by scandals.
On April 2, at the Extraordinary Congress in Seville, Alberto Nunez Feijoo accepts his national destiny and is elected head of the PP with 98.35% of the 2,663 votes cast.
“
We must take Spanish politics out of confrontation (…) from permanent hyperbole
,” he declared in his first speech as party leader.
"
I did not come into politics to do what has already been done,
he continues.
I came here to win and rule!
»
► To read also: Spain: Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, the new face of the People's Party
“He prefers the culture of results to that of excess”
Born in 1961 in Ourense, in northwestern Spain, Alberto Nunez Feijoo rose through the ranks to establish himself as one of the barons of the PP, elected four times in a row by an absolute majority – a rarity in Spain – president of the regional government of Galicia.
At 60, this slender senior official is, according to a poll published at the end of March, the most respected political figure in the country.
"
In Spain, we say that when we meet a Galician on the stairs, we don't know if he is going up or down
", deciphers Benoît Pellistrandi, historian, specialist in contemporary Spain and author of
Fractures de l 'Spain.
From 1808 to the present day
(History Folio, Gallimard)
.
“
Alberto Nunez Feijoo is in this political school of moderation.
He prefers the culture of results to that of excess and rhetoric.
He wants to present himself as a doer.
And that's probably how his voters perceive him because the trust placed in him is ever increasing.
The Autonomous Community of Galicia also presents satisfactory results in terms of management and public policies
”.
On the scale of Spain, the challenge is quite different.
Alberto Nunez Feijoo aims to bring the PP back to power and defeat Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialist Party.
"
He will certainly have to capitalize on the difficulties of the socialists to respond to all the economic problems of Spain which are resurfacing and aggravated by the war in Ukraine
", explains Aurora Minguez, Spanish journalist and former correspondent for RTVE in France and Germany.
“
Inflation is close to 10% and the government seems unable to bring down the prices of fuel, gas, electricity
”.
"Feijoo wants to marginalize the far right of the Vox party"
In his conquest for the Moncloa Palace, official residence of the Prime Minister, Alberto Nunez Feijoo must also deal with the rise of the far right embodied by the Vox Party, which in 2019 became the third political force in Spain behind the socialists and the conservatives. .
“
Most people who voted for Vox are disappointed PP voters
,” Aurora Minguez analyzes.
They found that the PP had become too centrist when they wanted a more right-wing position.
"
For Feijoo, the big problem is going to be getting Vox voters back.
He will have to define a very clear line: what is the PP?
Is it a social liberal party like the CDU in Germany or Les Républicains in France?
Or a party that ranges from the traditional right to the extreme right?
Feijoo will have to make a decision!
".
Especially since, in his party, the question of an alliance with the extreme right is no longer taboo.
On April 11, the regional parliament of Castile and León gave the green light to an unprecedented coalition government between the right of the PP and the extreme right of Vox.
For the occasion, Albert Nunez Feijoo was excused, officially absent for diary reasons, but the specialist Benoît Pellistrandi sees there a political message.
“
Feijoo wants clarification from his party.
He wants the PP to become the majority on the right and to marginalize Vox.
To do this, he will try to “centralize” the PP and make it a party in which both a more radical conservative right and a much more centrist and European right could coexist
”.
A winning strategy?
First life-size test in the legislative elections scheduled for 2023. In the latest opinion polls, the PP is credited with nearly 22% of the vote, behind the Socialists (27%), but trailed by only two points by the extreme right of the Vox party.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Spain