Feijóo Los Congress Table Control as PP Group Revolts

Feijóo Los Congress Table Control as PP Group Revolts

How does one go from "brutal optimism" to depression in under three hours? This was the experience within the PP parliamentary group during the vote for the Congress Table. Past nine in the morning, popular deputies appeared in the hallways with selfies, group photos, and beach tans: someone had told them that ERC would abandon Pedro Sánchez, that the PNV would cause a last-minute scare, and that Coalición Canaria's support was secured. By ten, with the session already underway, Gabriel Rufián's agreement with the PSOE to preside over the Table came as a cold splash of water. And the final blow was missing: Vox voted for its own candidate. One of their own summed up the day: "After today's embarrassment, either Feijóo changes or he is dead."

The 'henhouse' of the popular bench

The discontent did not come solely from the lost vote. Before Génova made its presence felt, several veteran deputies, with long careers in Congress and the Senate, discovered that no seats had been reserved for them in the first three rows of the bench, the prime camera angle that everyone fights to show closeness to the leader. "This is chaos. No one has organized anything here," lamented one, while another wondered what he was doing in the henhouse. In Vox, however, the seating by hierarchy was resolved, and there were no complaints.

The detail has its nuance: those who complained about the location were more focused on the showcase than on a negotiation that would be resolved minutes later. The anger, however, was real and mixed old grievances with the morning's blow.

What peine with Vox: the veto that left the PP without a partner

The popular leadership played to veto Vox from the Table to seduce the nationalists, convinced that the PNV cannot afford to leave Bildu as its preferred partner when in a few months it will need their support to govern. From Vox, it is maintained that the popular party did not pick up the phone. The result was the worst-case scenario: neither nationalists nor natural ally. Some take it directly to the candidate's level: if Feijóo said he did not want Vox's support and would seek "good" socialist deputies, this current argues, he has exactly what he asked for.

Against this weighs another argument repeated in the bench: the negotiation was known from early morning, yet the morning was allowed to pass as if nothing were happening.

Génova against its own barons

The second front is internal. The regional "plumbers," with polling houses closer to the ground, never believed the GAD3 data that the leadership proudly managed during the last week of the campaign. This is compounded by the reproach to Elías Bendodo for not having realized earlier about Carlos Mazón's agreement with Vox in the Valencian Community, a drain that Miguel Tellado takes advantage of to gain organizational weight while Cuca Gamarra's general secretariat remains figurative.

The photo of the PP leader greeting Irene Montero and Ione Belarra, responsible for the "only yes is yes" law, with effusiveness, added ammunition to critics. It is the classic gesture seeking to lower tension on a bad day, which ends up circulating as proof of softness.

Is there a replacement for Feijóo?

In the party's backrooms, names are not hidden: Isabel Díaz Ayuso appears as the favorite, and some take for granted that Juanma Moreno will be the man the leadership prepares to stop her when the time comes. There is also the thesis that Feijóo will not resign, that he will remain opposition leader drawing a salary and waiting for the Government's wear and tear to serve up the Moncloa on a platter, something his critics see as pure voluntarism.

The full calculation, with cross-reproaches between Génova and the barons, has more facets than can fit in a three-line press release.

For now, the group continues with the same seats and the same faces in the same rows. The veterans demanding the first row now have their spot: watching others occupy the Table.