Alberto Núñez Feijóo's failed strategy

MadridThe People's Party (PP) is using every lever of power at its disposal to weaken the Spanish government. The Senate, which has traditionally acted as a chamber of second review, has become a true counterweight to the Congress, where the PP's absolute majority is using its resources to put the Socialist Party (PSOE) ministers on the ropes. There is a strong representation of leaders from the PP's hardline wing, including, for example, Alfonso Serrano, Isabel Díaz Ayuso's right-hand man. Alberto Núñez Feijóo intended to do the same with the autonomous communities: to leverage his control of 11 of the 17 regions to strengthen his national strategy and demand that Pedro Sánchez resign and call elections, given his inability to pass budgets and secure a solid parliamentary majority. For this reason, both María Guardiola in Extremadura and Jorge Azcón in Aragon called early elections, faced with the impossibility of passing budgets with the support of Vox. Feijóo's scheme was theoretically simple: to string together regional elections from Extremadura to Andalusia, passing through Aragon and Castile and León, to unleash a kind of democratic tsunami against the PSOE and force Pedro Sánchez to abandon his bid to lead the Spanish government. Now, at the midpoint of this strategy—with the Extremadura and Aragon elections completed—it can be said that Feijóo's plan has failed. He has succeeded in highlighting the PSOE's poor standing in the region and the lack of electoral support the Socialists currently enjoy in the autonomous communities, but he has also revealed the PP's weakness in the face of an increasingly powerful Vox. Both Guardiola and Azcón wanted to get rid of the far right and envision a PP government on its own, but the reality of the results makes this impossible: both will have to to meet Santiago Abascal's conditions to be able to be invested as nine presidents. And what's worse: it's not Feijóo who controls the pace of these negotiations, but Vox—as is being demonstrated by the deadlock in Extremadura since the December elections—and they can use it to their advantage for the March 15 elections in Castile and León and later in Andalusia. In fact, following the election results, the debate within the PP has reopened regarding the best strategy to counter the far right. Hardening their rhetoric—Azcón closed the campaign with the ultra-right-wing agitator Vito Quiles—doesn't seem to be working for them.

Boomerang effect

Jorge Azcón himself admitted this Monday that the centralized nature of the election campaign has hurt him. In other words, the fact that the Aragonese debate has mirrored Madrid's political landscape. He is surely right, and the polarizing climate in Madrid only contributes to disillusionment with politics, which directly benefits the far right. However, those who have contributed to this situation are not only Santiago Abascal—who has thrown himself into the campaign as if he were the candidate—or the Socialist Pilar Alegría, until recently the public face of the Spanish government, but above all Feijóo, by placing his regional governments at the service of the party leadership in Madrid.

Meanwhile, Pedro Sánchez, far from engaging in self-criticism for his party's decline, will not deviate from his strategy of resisting the Moncloa bunker and will try to capitalize on the rise of Vox and the confrontation with Donald Trump and the techno-oligarchs to stoke fear of the far right and try to mobilize the electorate ahead of the 2027 Spanish elections.