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Originally from a small town of 300 inhabitants, four times president of Galicia with an absolute majority, a friend of Julio Iglesias and with some difficulties with English, as he himself admitted, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the People’s Party, is a candidate to become the next Spanish premier, the first from rural Spain. The polls give him as the favorite but, although he has tried to postpone the problem until after the vote, he will have to deal with the numbers and decide whether to ally himself, even at a national level, with Vox, the ultra-right party led by Santiago Abascal, born from dissidents of the PP in 2013.
Feijóo, 61 years old and father of a 6-year-old son, repeated throughout the electoral campaign that he wanted to collect the maximum support from the voters in order to have a free hand for the formation of the next government. Meanwhile, however, at the local level, after the administrative elections of May 28, the PP closed government pacts with Vox in key territories such as the Valencian community, arousing discontent among more moderate voters.
Although he managed to gain support thanks to a fierce televised debate against Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, it seems unlikely that the PP will achieve an absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies. The alternative to an agreement with Vox would be the abstention of the Socialist Party. For this reason Feijóo proposed a pact to Sanchez: that the PP and the PSOE agree so that the party that arrives first in the elections is allowed to govern.
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An option that Sanchez has ruled out, pointing out that in some territories where the PSOE came first, but without an absolute majority, the PP has preferred to agree with other parties, including Vox, to take the executive away from the socialists. This road barred, Feijóo will have to look to Abascal, who does not seem willing to give any gift to the popular ones.
The possible negotiations between the PP and Vox would be followed very carefully in the EU, where a part of the popular parties is aiming for an alliance with the conservatives (Vox group and Fratelli d’Italia) after the renewal of the Eurochamber in 2024. The leader of the PP, however, said he was confident of being able to replicate that absolute majority which he has repeatedly obtained, against the odds, in Galicia, the region of which he is originally from, like Mariano Rajoy.