"We must activate the change counter now": Feijóo brings forward the PP congress

MadridAlberto Núñez Feijóo's People's Party (PP) has been proclaiming for weeks with even greater intensity that Pedro Sánchez's government "is already in the countdown." The massive power outage, the railway chaos, and the latest judicial moves against the Spanish president's entourage have given the PP leader ammunition, who has decided to put the internal machinery in motion to face the next electoral cycle with his homework done. This entails convening the party's state congress, which was scheduled for April 2026, but which Feijóo has decided to move up to July of this year, among other reasons, given the possibility that the socialist leader will not last until the end of his term and end up bringing forward the elections. "I don't trust Sánchez," the PP president stated this Monday at the meeting of the party's national executive committee, during which he announced that the extraordinary convening of the PP congress, about which there had been speculation for days, will be held on the weekend of July 5 and 6 in Madrid.

"We must activate the change counter now with a strengthened team, an exciting project, and the determination to serve Spain," Feijóo proclaimed, joking that "we are moving from the Pope's conclave to the PP's conclave." The PP leader will run for re-election, and within the party, it is assumed that there will be a closing of ranks around the current president, who will be given a second chance to reach the Moncloa Palace.

The continuity of the team that has accompanied him until now in the leadership is less clear. Sources at Génova do not rule out changes in the structure and suggest that Feijóo will exhaust the deadlines to communicate them.

The future of Mazón

PP sources disassociate the course of the congress from the debate over Carlos Mazón and his continued leadership of the Valencian PP after his handling of the DANA. "[Feijóo] hasn't decided anything in this regard," they state. Although in Génova they downplay the impact of facing the congress with the Valencian president's case still open, it is one of the main hot potatoes for the PP president.

The convening of the state congress should activate the calendar for convening the pending regional congresses. These include two of the most thorny for Feijóo, the Valencian and Catalan congresses, which have been postponed for years. Sources within the PP leadership avoid linking the July congress with the debate over the leadership of Mazón in the Valencian Community and Alejandro Fernández in Catalonia.

What it will allow, they claim, is to facilitate the reinforcement of the leadership of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco in Castilla y León and Juanma Moreno in Andalusia, since both face regional elections in 2026. Advancing the state congresses, they argue, allows them to distance these two territories.

The pending ideological debate

The last PP congress was in 2022. However, it was an extraordinary one that limited itself to proclaiming Feijóo as the new leader, replacing Pablo Casado. For the moment, Feijóo has avoided addressing internal ideological debates. The last time these issues were addressed at a congress was in 2017, when Mariano Rajoy was still in power. Although the July congress will be extraordinary because it will not yet be four years since the previous one, Feijóo has announced that this time a political report "defining the priorities" of the PP will be debated, as well as another on the statutes governing its internal functioning.

Among the debates he will have to face are alliances with Vox and the position on abortion and euthanasia, which are among the most complicated and where internal disagreements may be evident. He also addresses his relationship with parties such as the PNV and Junts. Sources in Genoa deny that these debates "make them uncomfortable" and affirm that Feijóo's determination to finally address the ideological debate despite the extraordinary nature of the meeting demonstrates this.

Ayuso's pressure

While at the entrance of the national executive committee the regional presidents and men of the party who attended have remained cautious and have stressed that the decision rests exclusively with the party president, hours before Isabel Díaz Ayuso had made it clear at a breakfast briefing that she was leaning towards what Feijóo finally announced. At a breakfast briefing, the Madrid president opted to "speed up" the party congress in the face of the "rumor" of an early meeting, "because if not, everyone will have an opinion except the protagonists." Upon leaving the briefing, Ayuso hurriedly escaped from the press because, among other things, she said she had some pending calls.

Sources from Génova have explained that Feijóo has called throughout the morning to the men to inform them of the decision before announcing it publicly during the national executive committee meeting. Ayuso did not participate in the meeting due to scheduling issues. Former prime ministers Mariano Rajoy and José María Aznar were even more aware of Feijóo's decision, having been informed for days. The PP leader had been considering it for months, and the venue where it will be held was already rented in March, just in case it was necessary.