“There is a little bit of a smaller mess,” Juan Manuel Moreno admitted this Monday at the doors of Génova, upon his arrival at the National Board of the PP, where the party members greeted him with the same round of applause as all his fellow barons who have been tested in this electoral cycle, overshadowed by the loss of the absolute majority in Andalusia. The Andalusian president acknowledged that his result, two seats short of the absolute majority, forces him to negotiate parliamentary agreements, but he insists that Vox remain outside his government. “The result gives us room to maneuver to govern alone,” Moreno emphasized, leaving open the question of whether he will accept the “national priority” demanded by the far right. “We are going to defend the Andalusian priority,” he stressed. Despite the setback of depending on Vox in a community where it was not necessary before, Génova stuck to the planned script and took advantage of the Andalusian victory to boost Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s campaign for the general elections, which are more than a year away. The PP leader was explicit in his speech before the PP’s top leadership: “The campaign to achieve change in Spain starts today.”
Feijóo argued that the electoral cycle that began last December 21 in Extremadura and ended yesterday in Andalusia leads to the conclusion that “the Spanish, with different accents but with one voice, have said that Spain wants change.” That is the message Génova wants to resonate after a period of four elections in autonomous communities where the PP was already governing (Extremadura, Aragón, Castilla y León, and Andalusia), where the party will continue to govern, but now more conditioned by Vox. “Change is closer,” says a large banner that the PP placed this Monday on the facade of its headquarters on Génova street.
Despite the toll of Vox, the PP leader did not refer to the far right in his open speech before the National Board. Feijóo focused on his roadmap and promised that if he reaches the Government of Spain, he will make “a change of direction, with values and with a program.” “There is no fucking boss here,” he stressed to his followers referring to Pedro Sánchez, “there is a servant.”
With the electoral cycle over, Génova switches to campaign mode for the general elections and with that perspective opens the organic melon and calls the PP congress in Catalonia and in New Generations. The National Board this Monday has convened the Catalan conclave, which will be held on June 27, and the NNGG on July 11, according to PP sources.
But before that, the Andalusian government still needs to be resolved, about which Feijóo gave no indication in his speech beyond proclaiming that there will be “President Moreno for four more years” after “a clear, unappealable, broad, and spectacular victory in these times.”
The acting president of Andalusia argues that his result is “sufficiently overwhelming” (53 seats, two short of the absolute majority, and by “21,000 votes”) so that “the reasonable thing” is that he can govern alone. “The sensible thing is to respect what the majority of Andalusians have decided, which is that the Popular Party governs alone,” Moreno stated at the doors of the party headquarters. “Another thing is that the parliamentary dynamic leads us to seek agreements, we must not be naive,” the Andalusian baron acknowledged, dismissing the theories that he would be able to repeat elections just to avoid making a pact with Vox. “Repeating elections is the last resort,” Moreno emphasized today, opening up to at least parliamentary agreements with the far right.
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The Andalusian baron faces the challenge of assuming the “national priority,” the preference of Spaniards over foreigners to access public aid, demanded by Vox and from which he distanced himself during the campaign. “We have a priority, which is the priority of Andalusia, and that is what we are going to respect,” the PP candidate hinted. In the interview with EL PAÍS, Moreno said that the national priority “is a campaign slogan, a flashy one,” from Vox, “but there is an organic law called the Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia. And what fits there fits.” “We are in favor of control in migration policy because otherwise integration problems arise, and if integration problems arise, we have coexistence problems, and that is where populism grows,” he added then.
The “national priority” appears as the next battle that the PP and Vox will fight in Andalusia. The far-right party’s secretary general made it clear this Monday that this will be “one of the topics to negotiate,” and pressured Moreno by saying that the other barons have already accepted it. “Surely Moreno will not put obstacles to talking about national priority when it has already been discussed in Castilla y León or Extremadura,” Ignacio Garriga emphasized.
The autonomous presidents of the PP agree with Moreno that it is logical that Vox will not ask this time to enter his government, but they admit that Andalusia will also have to pay the toll of the far right. Privately, several of them highlight that the “national priority” is a “political concept” related to “rootedness” and “registration,” so they consider Moreno could end up accepting it by appealing to that nuance.
Among the leaders who traveled to Madrid this Monday are the three leaders who preceded him at the polls in this electoral cycle. In that group is the president of Extremadura, María Guardiola, the first to assume the far-right concept as her own. “I am convinced that Juanma will be invested without having to renounce his values. Juanma Moreno already has measures that prioritize rootedness. The only thing being done is to value rootedness to the land. What is written in the agreements is what will be fulfilled,” defended the Extremaduran leader, who achieved the highest percentage of the four. For the president of Aragón, Jorge Azcón, Moreno “has a historic result and enough judgment to know what he has to do.” “No one has achieved Juanma Moreno’s results. Each autonomous community is different; making extrapolations would not be appropriate,” he said.
Still pending agreement is the PP candidate in Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco. “There has been a clear, very clear victory for the Popular Party. In Andalusia, there is no other option than a government led by Juanma Moreno. All with Juanma Moreno,” Mañueco argued, who did not want to give clues about his negotiation. Also present was the president of the Valencian Community, Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca, who signed an investiture agreement with Vox, although in a solo government, as the Andalusian leader wants. “It must be recommended that there be dialogue, understanding, and that the citizens’ mandate not be lost, who want a right-wing government. Agreements must be reached for that to happen,” Pérez Llorca argued.
