Feijóo keeps the PP together a year after Casado’s goodbye

Maria Lopez |

Madrid (EFE) leadership with that of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

An unforeseeable outcome when the open war between Casado and Ayuso for the power of the party in Madrid placed the PP on the brink of the precipice.

The wound, sutured, no longer bleeds and almost all have found accommodation in Feijóo’s PP. Except for Casado, who has been silent since the transfer of powers was made official in April, he is far from politics and is making his way in the world of investment funds.

The PP does not have Married in the unit snapshot. The trauma remains in the memory, while the account of what happened has become more compact and unanimous with the passing of the months.

The trigger that ignited a larval clash for months for power in Madrid were the crossed accusations of espionage and corruption between Ayuso and Genoa, but Casado’s goodbye was polyhedral.

Like-minded and detractors agree in pointing out a factor: the way in which Casado imposed his own in the territories through his general secretary, Teodoro García Egea. His leadership also raised doubts, after two electoral defeats, his lack of management experience or the break with Vox, whose voters he aspired to win back.

All this, together with the final straw that the error in the labor reform was, was put into play on the night of February 16, when the first news of espionage against Ayuso broke out and Génova replied by denouncing some health contracts that benefited the president’s brother. from Madrid, an ordeal that generated rejection in the formation.

The anger and doubts fueled for months turned against Casado, who in just seven days lost all his support, those of his Management Committee, his deputies and also those of the barons, united around Feijóo. Press editorials and even a demonstration at the gates of the headquarters called for his departure.

The outcome came at dawn from February 23 to 24. After saying goodbye to Parliament, Casado saw how the barons showed him the exit door. They agreed that he would leave in a congress, as he had been elected. “I may have done wrong, but I have not done anything wrong,” he told his family behind closed doors.

Recently, the general coordinator of the PP, Elías Bendodo, explained Casado’s departure in the following terms: “Everything has its maturation period, everything. When you arrive at a place even though you have all the rights and all the support, but it is not the time to arrive, the system expels you”.

The moment belonged to Feijóo, who caught the train that he had missed in 2018.

One year after the crisis, Casado has confirmed himself as a transitional leadership, as the one in charge of refloating the party in the low hours of the motion of no confidence against Mariano Rajoy, when the hardest line of María Dolores de Cospedal and the technocrat Soraya Saénz de Santa María proved irreconcilable.

In the party there are voices that privately recognize his work. Others highlight his multiple mistakes. In public there are hardly any references.

The PP has made a clean slate. It was evidenced in the pre-campaign postcard that brought together the former presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy in Valencia, a snapshot that has generated euphoria in the PP because it puts an end to years of disagreements that even led Aznar to resign from the Honorary Presidency of the pp.

A year later, the PP sees itself “plugged in”, in the words of Feijóo, to Moncloa, while observing how the government coalition divides before controversial laws, Ciudadanos faces its extinction and Vox has become entangled in a motion of no confidence announced two years ago. months and has not yet registered.

Feijóo leads the polls and aspires to govern alone. She bets on moderation, but she gives space to all profiles. Ayuso chairs, as he wished, the Madrid PP. Both Genoa and Sol, the seat of regional power, avoid the clash. In Andalusia, the other heavyweight in the party, Juanma Moreno, has won the medal of an unprecedented absolute majority.

What happened a year ago seems like a bad dream in the main opposition party. The next litmus test is the polls and Feijóo has already warned his people that if he does not win he does not deserve to preside over the party, a scenario on which nobody wants to speculate in the PP.