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

MadridAt the closing ceremony of the PP congress, Alberto Núñez Feijóo expressed his desire to govern alone. However, the PP leader raised this as an aspiration without closing the door to other possibilities. Less than 24 hours later, the PP affirmed that forming a solo government is a compromise. "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 confirming it when asked while the cameras were recording him. "It's a commitment to give Spain a single-party government; Feijóo's commitment is to govern alone," Tellado remarked in his conversation with the press.

In response to the PP's pronouncement on future alliances, Vox warned that Feijóo's party is getting involved. "What are they doing? They are repeating the same gigantic mistake of June 23rd. They haven't learned anything. They are dividing up seats, they are 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. During the 2023 Spanish election campaign, Feijóo expressed his desire to govern alone, but he didn't go far enough to close the door to a coalition with the far right at a time when the PP-Vox coalition agreement in the Valencian Community was barely finalized, only to fall apart last summer. Vox insisted in a press conference on Monday that the PP does not have, for the moment, any government to speak of, and its spokesperson considered it "madness" to be "selling the skin of the bone again before hunting it down." Feijóo himself appealed to his supporters during this weekend's congress not to trust the polls that "smile" at them and asserted that he had learned the "lesson" of what happened in the last elections, when he was the leading force but did not obtain a majority to govern either alone or in a coalition.

"We hope there will be elections and we will see which deputies we have," stated the new PP spokesperson in Congress, Ester Muñoz, this Monday morning on Telecinco when specifically asked about the possibility of Feijóo making Vox leader Santiago Abascal vice president. Muñoz opted for this "prudence," which Tellado later hours later dismissed. Hence, Vox has questioned whether Feijóo had truly learned his lesson and has laughed at his aspiration to see the PP return to ten million votes. On July 23, 2023, the Popular Party (PP) secured nearly 8.1 million votes, while Vox obtained just over 3 million. The PSOE's crisis 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 of Feijóo being able to do without Vox.

An investiture with the PSOE?

What PP leader Alberto Núñez 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 his aspiration to govern alone. It remains to be seen whether the PP can maintain this commitment, which they announced this Monday, if Vox has sufficient strength after the next elections and sets it as 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 "there is nothing that separates the PP from the PSOE."

"They are determined that there is a good PSOE, it has never been like that," Fúster warned the Popular Party, whom he sees as willing to reach the Moncloa Palace with the votes of the Socialists if the numbers allow them. "Mr. Feijóo will not have ministers from Vox because he wants his government to be a coalition with the Socialist Party," he accused Abascal in a message to X in which he claimed that "the true alternative" to Sánchez is his party and not "the scam" of the PP.

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 ruled out Feijóo's acceptance of the condition set by Junts of taking a photograph 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.