The PP will reveal its candidate in Barcelona next week and leaves ‘open doors’ for Ciudadanos and Vox

More than six months have passed Josep Bou was ruled out repeating as PP leaders in Barcelona, ​​but Alberto Núñez Feijóo the task of finding a powerful replacement capable of blowing oxygen to training in a territory where he has been wandering in the desert for years. The delays of the national leadership, which has already closed all its candidates at the regional level and most of the important squares at the municipal level, have aroused great perplexity in sectors of the Catalan popular. But the PP will put an end to the mystery next week when he is expected to announce his permanent commitment to Barcelona.

Genoa has colored the election of its candidate in Barcelona with enormous secrecy the doubts that have raised the research and the difficult lace of the bobbins that Feijóo wants to execute, both at the provincial and regional levels. The May 28 municipal elections are considered crucial for the PP, which seeks to consolidate its recovery in Catalonia, with the maxim that without a good result in this region, Feijóo will not be able to reach Moncloa. In the first instance, Genoa undertook to promote the MEP Sorrows Montserrat as a candidate, but, at least to date, the former health minister has shown some resistance to switching her seat in Europe for one in municipal politics.

The reluctance of Catalan politics forced Genoa to do so open your hand to more candidates. One of the names that sounds louder at the moment is that of Daniel Sirera, to the point that already quite a few voices in the party indicate him as Núñez Feijóo’s favorite for Barcelona. The leader assumed the reins of the PP of Catalonia between 2007 and 2008, after the resignation of Josep Piqué, and came to occupy a seat in Parliament until 2010. He currently works as Carlos Mazón’s chief of staffthe PP candidate for the Generalitat of the Valencian Community.

Authorized party sources point out that Feijóo is leaning towards to drive “a person from the house” against representatives of civil society or leaders of other political formations, such as Ciudadanos, who could run as independent candidates. Both options, however, have been explored by the popular leader. Between favorites of Genoa, the former president of the Catalan Civil Society Fernando Sanchez Costa. In the circle of the former regional deputy, they confirm “informal” contacts with several members of the PP, but deny that he had a formal hearing with Feijóo to evaluate this option.

The popular ones have spelled out a fourth name: that of Lorraine Roldan, current PP spokesman in Parliament and former leader of Ciudadanos. At the end of 2020, the former candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat for the orange formation left her party to join the project she leads Alexander Fernandez, the main supporter of the leader apply to Barcelona.

The PP will not give up his initials

The doubts of the Genoan leadership were not limited only to the candidate, but to the candidate himself formula with which the party will be presented in the municipal elections of Barcelona and which could be repeated in the regional ones. In an interview for The worldFeijóo has opened the door to the possibility of going into coalition “with other brands”, with the aim of rebuilding “a constitutionalist space” in Catalonia against a PSC which they place in the nationalist framework. “The first to raise it are my colleagues in Catalonia, but they know what I think,” he sent.

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The possibility of giving up the initials of the PP in favor of building that space is a scenario completely excluded by various sources of the Catalan PP, where they point out that the party will keep “open doors” to anyone who wants to subscribe to your list, comes from Vox, Cs, Valents or civil society, “but we will not dilute the PP in any kind of coalition or invention that will make the brand disappear (…) We are the reference of the centre-right in Catalonia, and we will not give up that role”, they reiterate.

The determination of the PP and of the initial refusal of the rest of the centre-right forces to be diluted in other candidacies as an independent it will predictably lead to a strong fragmentation of this political space, to the point that, according to some popular voices, “there is a risk” that none of the four forces will overcome the 5% barrier necessary to obtain representation in Barcelona. The sources consulted suggest that the constitutionalist vote in Barcelona is located between 15% and 20%which could be diminished by the sentiment of a “useful vote” towards the PSC and by the entry into the electoral race in Barcelona of Xavier Triasperceived as a moderate profile within the independence movement.

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This situation is not scary in Genoa, where they take it for granted will easily break through the 5% barrier. for the practical disappearance of Ciudadanos, for whose initials he will almost certainly fight Anne GraduationMember of Parliament. Feijóo’s entry into Genoa, of which a greater territorial sensitivity is perceived than his predecessor, Pablo Casado, was accompanied by a recovery that is already reflected in the polls in Catalonia. The determined commitment of the Galician to the catalanism Constitutionalist or “friendly bilingualism” has won him whole in the region, and allows the popular to venture that Vox will not repeat in Barcelona the surprise to the PP that he obtained in the last regional elections.

Those of Santiago Abascal will try to enter the consistory of Barcelona for the first time with an unknown candidate, the businessman Gonzalo Oro-Pulido. The Populars will also compete for the same political space with Valents, an emerging formation led by the former deputy Eva Parera, which ran for third place on the PP list in the last regional elections. the boss He reached out to Vox, Cs and PP explore some sort of joint bid, but there has been no progress so far.

More than six months have passed Josep Bou was ruled out repeating as PP leaders in Barcelona, ​​but Alberto Núñez Feijóo the task of finding a powerful replacement capable of blowing oxygen to training in a territory where he has been wandering in the desert for years. The delays of the national leadership, which has already closed all its candidates at the regional level and most of the important squares at the municipal level, have aroused great perplexity in sectors of the Catalan popular. But the PP will put an end to the mystery next week when he is expected to announce his permanent commitment to Barcelona.