Aznar sets the course for Feijóo: Page yes, Junts no

BarcelonaIn Madrid, Galician ambiguity doesn't pay, and that's why when Alberto Núñez Feijóo sends messages that can be interpreted as a gesture towards Junts or towards Catalonia (whether or not that is the Galician leader's intention), someone quickly reminds him that this path leads nowhere. This Wednesday, the great mastermind of the Madrid right and its spiritual guide, José María Aznar, has set Feijóo on the course he should follow. Aznar has called for a "national majority" that includes the left and the right to oust Pedro Sánchez. "This majority will be national or it will not be," he reiterated. Translated into political terms, Aznar tells Feijóo that he must forget about Junts and the PNB and, instead, look towards people like Emiliano García-Page and Jordi Sevilla, that is, the Felipe González-era PSOE. Lest there be any doubt, Isabel Díaz Ayuso has cried out against "the constant independence threat".

This, as far as the PP's political strategy is concerned, because if we look at the substance of what Aznar says, it is much more serious and profound. What the former Spanish president defends is that the governability of the State can never again rest on those who are not "national," that is, unequivocally Spanish. What the Spanish right, represented by Aznar and Ayuso, which is what truly matters, wants is to move forward with reforms that limit the power of Catalan and Basque sovereignist parties. And it is in this context that Feijóo's proposal last Monday, to grant bonus seats to the party that wins the elections under the guise of facilitating governability, should also be read.

For Aznar, Sánchez's pacts with ERC, EH Bildu, or Junts have contaminated the PSOE with a kind of "plurinational virus," and therefore, the way must be found to extirpate it and return the PSOE to its classic Jacobinism, currently represented by Felipe González. It is not, therefore, a matter of forming a simple parliamentary majority to unseat Sánchez from power, but of preventing a plurinational majority with republican airs from governing Spain again. Nor is it a matter of left versus right, but of Spain yes or Spain no. Spain, obviously, understood according to the most rancid Spanish nationalism, where Catalans and Basques are "per sesuspicious.

Faced with this project, Alberto Núñez Feijóo's efforts to present himself to Catalan society as a moderate autonomist are totally fruitless. As was seen at the last sessions of the Cercle d'Economia, Feijóo has already completely adopted the Aznarist discourse. And if on any occasion he deviates slightly from the script, he is quickly brought back by those who truly rule the PP. Because it must be assumed that Feijóo does not have the internal strength within the PP to impose a line different from the one set by Aznar and Ayuso. He hasn't even had the strength to appoint a leader of his own in Catalonia and has had to swallow the Ayusista Alejandro Fernández. And if there was still any doubt, José María Aznar has taken care to make it clear that he continues to set the PP's line.