Feijóo blesses Alejandro Fernández with four years of delay

BarcelonaIn a political party in a democratic country, clean elections are called for governing bodies with a periodicity that usually lasts four years. In the Catalan PP, however, a four-year extension has allowed Alejandro Fernández to accumulate two terms in one: he was elected in 2018 in Sitges, but the party did not call the congress planned for 2022. Four years late and despite multiple challenges and public clashes with the state leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, he has managed to survive and this Saturday he will be re-elected in the sixteenth congress of the formation, in an enthronement led by Feijóo at the Barcelona Hotel Grand Marina.

Thus, Fernández will be able to far surpass the reign of Alícia Sánchez-Camacho in the party, who with nine years as president had been the leader with the most years in office – the current leader accumulates almost eight, in a year she would already surpass her and could reach twelve if there are no changes. However, her political impact is minimal in Catalonia — she does not influence government action — unlike what Camacho had in the first government of Artur Mas or the also popular ex-president Alberto Fernández Díaz in the final stretch of Jordi Pujol.

How does the party internally arrive at this Saturday's congress? The main struggle of recent days has been for the general secretariat to replace Santi Rodríguez. There have been upheavals: Alejandro Fernández's preferred option was for the current parliamentary spokesperson to be his number two and for Lorena Roldán to replace him as spokesperson in the Catalan chamber. In recent days, however, an alternative scenario emerged due to resistance to Roldán being the visible face of the Popular Party in Parliament: that the current deputy mayor of Castelldefels, David Solé, would be the general secretary. In this way, Juan Fernández would continue as spokesperson. The verdict will be known this very Saturday.

From maximum instability to calm

In the summer of 2023, Alejandro Fernández declared an all-out war on the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and rejected any contact or meeting with Junts – also any regionalist approach or attempt. At that time, the national leadership had sentenced him as the leader of the Catalan PP, and was counting down the hours for a replacement that was postponed to avoid a pitched battle in a congress. The dispute continued, but in March 2024, surprisingly, Feijóo dismissed other politicians he had sounded out, did not cut off his head, and presented him as a candidate for the Catalan elections. In April of last year, Fernández took a step further in a forceful book against the national leadership in which he resumed the war, demanding autonomy – his own – for the Catalan PP and criticizing Madrid's position historically. Still in 2025, he confronted the Spanish PP congress to veto pacts with Junts, although he ended up yielding with a generic wording for constitutional values.

In any case, in recent months, however, he has managed to soften relations with the national leadership, with fluid contact with the general secretary, Miguel Tellado, and in the meantime, the good results of 2024 and the fact that no one wants to dispute his throne, Fernández has achieved the prize of democratic extension as party president.

A leadership with too many casualties

"Tough and moderate, we end up living the same problems and the same fate: political defenestration." This is what Fernández denounced about the current and all previous national leaderships in his book A calzón quitao, which surprised Feijóo's team. "The national leadership imposes everything," he lamented. He, however, became regional president in November 2018 with Pablo Casado's blessing. His executive, however, underwent changes as months passed. Of the leadership appointed in 2018, only Juan Milián remained. Maritxu Hervás was left out three years later, Secretary General Daniel Serrano also left due to an accusation of sexual assault – which came to nothing –, Albert Fernández Saltiveri was dismissed for an accusation of mistreatment of his partner and PP leader – he was also not convicted –; and Àngels Esteller was left out, as were Marisa Xandri and Manu Reyes. Antonio Gallego, who was organization secretary, went to Vox.

After the setback in the 2021 Catalan elections, with a historic low of three deputies, Santi Rodríguez entered as Secretary General to restore order – and to replace Serrano–. Llanos de Luna joined the leadership, alongside the leader in Sant Feliu de Llobregat City Council Elisabet Ortega, the absent Isaac Martín Salvá, and Marcos Sánchez, who resigned after being caught in the scandal of personal invoices totaling 61,000 euros as expenses charged to the party in his role as councilor, which he also ended up leaving. Rodríguez had already been secretary in the turbulent year of Xavier García Albiol as president from 2017 to 2018.