Spain • • • 🌿 Progressive

Políticos revisando listas de candidatos en una sala de reuniones.
Revisión de candidaturas electorales en una sala de reuniones del partido. · Imagen generada EPM

Feijoo rations PP list news as lawmakers grow anxious

Feijóo is releasing the PP lists for the 29 November election in small doses while nervousness grows among his lawmakers over his secrecy.

--- The context --- The People's Party is drawing up its lists for the general election on 29 November under growing internal strain. Its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is rationing the announcement of the lists, releasing names in small doses, while nervousness grows among lawmakers and senators over his secrecy. Members of the Popular parliamentary group privately acknowledge that there are nerves and that this is normal, because the large majority want to keep their seats in the new chambers of the XVI legislature, which will be constituted on 23 December. They are also sure Feijóo will unveil the full lists in the final stretch. --- The facts --- Only a few names are known so far: Xavier García Albiol as head of the list in Barcelona and Sergio Sayas as number two on the joint list for Congress between UPN and the PP. On Wednesday, 21 October, the period opens for parties to present candidacies to the electoral boards, and it will close six days later, on Monday, 26 October. The definitive proclamation will take place on 2 November, with official publication the following day. Feijóo's team, with Miguel Tellado as his lieutenant, is consulting regional barons and territorial party officials to draw up the candidacies in each constituency, but Génova, the national headquarters, has the last word. Unlike in the general election of July 2023, the leader has more data after more than four years at the head of the party and is looking for profiles with management experience. He must also commit to balance in the candidacies, with alternation between men and women, under the Parity Law that entered into force in August 2024. Feijóo is expected to place almost all his deputy secretaries as number one in their provinces: Tellado in A Coruña, Cuca Gamarra in Logroño, Ester Muñoz in León, Elías Bendodo in Málaga, Juan Bravo in Seville and Carmen Fúnez in Ciudad Real. --- The positions --- One open question is what place Alma Ezcurra, deputy secretary for Sectoral Coordination and a member of the European Parliament, will occupy, since party voices place her on the Madrid list that Feijóo will head. PP voices believe Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, deputy spokesperson in Congress, will have a more prominent position; she is defined as a brilliant speaker although many officials consider her a loose cannon, and some sources place her as number two in Madrid, where three years ago she held sixth place. In Madrid it is taken for granted that there will be room for Alberto Nadal, deputy secretary for the Economy and formerly Secretary of State for Budgets and for Energy under Mariano Rajoy, and for Jaime de los Santos, deputy secretary for Education, who held place 12 and could climb. Borja Sémper, deputy secretary for Culture and national spokesperson, who was number three on that list, could keep the same position. There will be change in Barcelona and Valencia. In Barcelona, Nacho Martín Blanco will not repeat and Feijóo has chosen Albiol, mayor of Badalona, a profile to attract voters closer to Vox because of his forceful discourse on security and immigration. In Valencia, headed in 2023 by Esteban González Pons, now a member of the European Parliament, Susana Camarero, vice president of the Valencian government, appears as a possible head of the list, which would force her to leave that post. In Alicante and Castellón continuity is taken for granted with Macarena Montesinos, secretary of the Popular group in Congress, and Alberto Fabra, former president of the Valencian regional government. Continuity is also expected in A Coruña, Lugo and Ourense, with Tellado, Francisco Conde and Ana Vázquez, but there will be change in Pontevedra, because Ana Pastor left active politics in May 2024 and party sources point to Pedro Puy as the best placed. The Madrid list will lose names from 2023: Pablo Vázquez, who died recently; Noelia Núñez, who resigned in 2025 over the controversy about her curriculum; and Antonio González Terol, who moved to the private sector. In Biscay there will be a new number two because Beatriz Fanjul, former president of Nuevas Generaciones, is leaving active politics and explained this week that she is 35 years old and wants to do other things. --- What remains unknown --- The full lists are still missing, along with Ezcurra's place, confirmation of the promotion of Álvarez de Toledo, the head of Valencia and the exchanges between chambers. --- Unanswered questions --- When will Feijóo unveil the full lists? Will Álvarez de Toledo be number two in Madrid after being sixth three years ago? Which sitting lawmakers will lose their seats in the fitting exercise of the Parity Law? Will the PP and Vox coordinate any response in the Senate to the joint lists of the PSOE and Frente Amplio? --- EPM analysis --- Rationing gives power to whoever announces: it keeps the negotiation open until the last day and prevents those dropped from organising resistance in time. But it turns elected representatives into silent aspirants measured against an unknown list. The other key looks to the right: party sources argue that visible heads such as Álvarez de Toledo or Albiol point to stopping leakage to Vox, which according to some polls could double its current 33 seats. The pact between the PSOE and Frente Amplio for joint Senate lists opened the debate on the reaction of the PP and Vox in the upper house, where the Popular group held a comfortable absolute majority in the dissolved legislature. Santiago Abascal reacted this Saturday by appealing to a sense of perspective and common sense, and by arguing in substance that they will do whatever is necessary for Spain to be free and not depend on the prime minister or his allies. Some see there the possibility that Vox might not stand in some provinces, which would favour the PP. 📌 EPM Take: In EPM's view, Feijóo's secrecy is effective as a tool of power in the short term and problematic as an internal practice, because a party that aspires to govern should explain openly how it chooses those who will ask for the vote in its name. If the final lists reward management, parity and renewal with clear criteria, the rationing will look like prudence; if they reward only loyalty measured in silence, the nervousness of these weeks will have been the first symptom of a deeper malaise inside the party.
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