The PP now says it will not govern with Vox despite not making it explicit at its congress.

MadridAlberto Núñez Feijóo expressed his desire to govern solo at the closing ceremony of the PP congress. However, the PP leader raised this as an aspiration without closing the door to other possibilities. Less than 24 hours after not having made this explicit, the PP now affirmed that forming a solo government is a commitment. "There will be no coalition government," said the party's new secretary general, Miguel Tellado, who asserted that before governing with Vox, they will seek a repeat election. Tellado said this in an informal conversation with journalists after Monday's press conference in Génova, but he avoided stating it when asked while the cameras were recording him. "It is a commitment to give Spain a single-party government; Feijóo's commitment is to govern solo," Tellado emphasized in his conversation with the press.

In response to the PP's statement on future alliances, Vox warned that Feijóo's party is getting wrapped up in its efforts. "What are they doing? They're making the same huge mistake of June 23rd. They haven't learned anything. They're dividing up seats, they're talking about governments when they have absolutely nothing, and when they haven't even been able to present a motion of no confidence to oust this government," said the spokesperson for the far-right party. Vox insisted in a press conference that the PP currently has no government to speak of, and its spokesperson considered it "madness" to be "selling their backs again before they've even caught them." Fúster also laughed at Feijóo's aspiration for the PP to once again secure ten million votes. On July 23, 2023, the Popular Party (PP) remained at almost 8.1 million votes, and Vox obtained just over 3 million. The crisis within the PSOE over the Santos Cerdán case, according to the latest polls, is driving up voting intentions among the far right, a scenario that diminishes the chances that Feijóo will be able to do without the extra.

What PP leader Alberto Nuñez Feijóo stated during his weekend speech in Congress is that he is willing to reach parliamentary agreements with Vox. However, he did not explicitly say anything publicly about ruling out a coalition with the far right to govern; he only mentioned the aspiration to govern alone. Now we will have to see if the PP can maintain that commitment, which they announced this Monday, if Vox has sufficient strength after the next elections and makes it an indispensable condition for him to be sworn in as Prime Minister. The far-right party has also attacked the PP's roadmap of opening up to agreements with everyone except EH Bildu, an approach incompatible with Vox's demands, but which Abascal's party sees as beneficial to their interests because it allows them to claim that "nothing separates the PP from the PSOE." "They are determined that there is a good PSOE; it has never been like that," Fúster warned the PP, whom they see as willing to reach the Moncloa Palace with a Socialist abstention if the numbers allow them.

The alliance with Junts

According to sources in Génova, despite having opened the door to the PP congress to dialogue with Carles Puigdemont's party, no new contacts have been initiated after those Tellado attempted to maintain last week to forge a vote of no confidence (which has now failed). However, the PP urged them to speak with some of them after Sánchez's appearance in Congress this Wednesday in case it is not satisfactory. "I think they are increasingly uncomfortable," Tellado said in a press conference regarding the PSOE's actions. The mayor of Badalona, ​​Xavier García Albiol, from the Popular Party, has already stepped forward. In an interview this Monday on TV3, he called on Junts to join a vote of no confidence against the Socialist leader.

Unlike other PP voices, such as the leader of the PP in Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández, who rejects pacts with the separatists, Albiol has argued that with Puigdemont's party "we can talk" and should be able to reach specific agreements. In fact, the mayor of Badalona revealed that he himself spoke with the leader of the Junts three or four months ago when he met him at the European Parliament. However, Albiol has ruled out Feijóo accepting the condition set by Junts, such as taking a photo with Puigdemont in Waterloo. A possibility that, for its part, Vox claims the PP would be willing to accept were it not for the pressure exerted by the far right.