Spain’s Popular Party picks new leader with eye on winning back far-right voters
MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s conservative Individuals’s Occasion elected Alberto Nuñez Feijoo as its new chief on Saturday within the hope of profitable again voters from a rising far proper and firming up its more and more shaky place because the nation’s major opposition drive.
Feijoo, who received 98.35% of the vote, was the one candidate to guide the PP after an inner scandal introduced down earlier chief Pablo Casado and tipped the occasion, which for many years traded energy with the incumbent Socialists, into disaster.
The PP has been dropping floor to new events that sprang up within the wake of Spain’s monetary crash, key amongst them the far-right Vox, which splintered off from the PP in 2014 and is now the third-largest drive in parliament.
Feijoo has led the northwestern Galicia area for 13 years, having received 4 consecutive regional elections with out dropping a single seat to the far proper.
“Thanks for selecting me because the president of the PP. The actually necessary factor now’s to proceed collectively in order that Spaniards select us for the long run,” he advised a celebration convention in Seville on Saturday.
Corruption scandals, which have dogged the PP for years, led in 2018 to the occasion being ousted from energy in a no-confidence vote.
Within the final nationwide election, in November 2019, the PP barely received 5 million votes in contrast with 10.9 million garnered in 2011. The subsequent election is due in late 2023.
In contrast, VOX got here from nowhere to take nearly 3.6 million votes in 2019 and has secured its first place in a regional authorities because of a coalition settlement with the PP in Castile and Leon.
One of many major selections going through Feijoo is whether or not to proceed pursuing political alliances with Vox or to freeze them out, as some voices inside the PP are calling for.
A senior PP supply stated Vox’s splinter origins meant that the PP “isn’t giving up on profitable again Vox voters”.
Feijoo goals to widen his base to change into a catch-all centrist occasion, the identical supply stated, though it’s unclear how he’ll obtain this aim.
Spain’s rising political fragmentation makes it tough to regain majorities like these of the years when a two-party system reigned. In 2019, some 16 events have been represented within the decrease home, and extra small teams have since emerged.
(Reporting by Belén Carreño; Further reporting Graham Keeley; Enhancing by Nathan Allen and Alison Williams)
