Does the PP congress jeopardize Alejandro Fernández's leadership in Catalonia?

BarcelonaAlberto Núñez Feijóo has decided to advance the party congress this JulyA congress that aims to be the electoral and ideological rearmament to unseat Pedro Sánchez from the presidency of the Spanish government, but which has also raised thorny issues affecting the party. To begin with, internal democracy: the Popular Party leader wants to eliminate the method of electing the party's state president through primaries, which will also affect the system at levels such as the regional level—the state system links the autonomous regions, which have the same model. How could this change affect Alejandro Fernández's leadership in Catalonia? He must fear for his position, considering that the Catalan leader has become one of the main critical voices With Feijóo?

It should be noted that the primaries were a convenient method for both Fernández and the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The Catalan leader's main supporter in continuing to lead the PP in Catalonia has been precisely the support of the membership, not the support of the leadership. The core of the reform would be the return to the system of delegates, and the undoing of the system implemented in 2016 to deepen the party's internal democracy, in which members could also vote directly. Until now, there was a two-round system: in the first, the party members voted for the candidate, while in the second, it was the delegates—the majority of whom were elected by the members. This system caused an uproar in 2018, when, in the first round, PP members at the state level voted for Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, while the delegates later opted for Pablo Casado in the second, as he garnered the support of María Dolores de Cospedal.

However, if the system were to change and return to the classic system of only delegates (with one round), sources in the Catalan PP are calm. They assert that even if they wanted to, those in Génova could take advantage of the situation to remove Fernández. Their argument is that they couldn't because—they maintain—the delegates are also chosen by the members. "The change doesn't affect Catalonia in the slightest," the same sources assert.

This figure between the positions and the members is distributed in the territory based on the number of militants in each area and also those elected: last time there were 3,100 delegates in Spain, of which only 400 were non-elected members because they were state delegates as members of the European Parliament, deputies. This adds more control to the leadership when choosing the candidates, but it is not the only one: Genoa's will is also that they have to obtain more endorsements to be able to stand or that they can directly only run for election if they have endorsements from the delegates.

The Catalan congress should have been convened in 2022, but It has been postponed due to the state situation And within the party, it is still assumed that nothing will change until Feijóo runs for the presidency of the Spanish government again. Whether it's delegates or primaries, the party member has the final say, and this means that any changes that may occur won't determine Fernández's future, according to sources within the Catalan PP.