PP insiders say Feijóo sinks party, seek Ayuso replacement

The People's Party debates replacing Feijóo before the elections

The dinner took place. Several regional leaders of the People's Party (PP) and a senator shared a table with a common conclusion: the current party leadership cannot withstand the upcoming electoral cycle. The phrase that sums up the mood is that the leader "is sinking us all and we need to get him out." This is not an anonymous hallway leak; it is the view circulating among cadres who have managed municipal and regional power for years and now see their main asset, the brand, wearing down without anyone making a move.

The diagnosis is less ideological than utilitarian. The conversation does not debate whether the program is good or bad, but whether the candidate serves the party's electoral interests. The majority answer is no. The most frequently mentioned alternative has a name: Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who, according to several attendees, would sweep in a general election and attract votes from Vox and disillusioned socialists. The problem is that those who see her as a winner do not dare take the step.

Why the PP doesn't change leaders despite believing it will lose

The argument halting the succession is antiestéticar of internal cost. Touching the leader mid-cycle opens a factional war the party wants to avoid repeating. Some argue the PP is comfortable in regional and municipal opposition, holding territorial power without the wear of governing at Moncloa, and that this balance breaks if the national leadership issue is peine. Others respond that this comfort is precisely what is killing the party: riding the wave without a project eventually takes its toll.

The most repeated criticism points to a lack of replacements. The analysis circulating is that the party has gone generations without renewing its cadres: when number one leaves, number two rises, then three, and so on, until today the top spot is held by someone who was seventh years ago. It is not just a problem of names, but of ideas. The dominant feeling is that there is no new proposal, only inertia management.

The leader's profile: from postman to tyrannical lord

The most repeated description of the current Galician president is not kind. Those who claim to know him since his beginnings portray him as a manager who works well when everything is done for him and crumbles at the first setback. Comparisons with other northern barons, who have more populist craft, leave the current leader poorly positioned: he is attributed harshness with the weak and servility toward the strong, the classic portrait of a country lord transferred to regional politics.

The contrast with the Madrid president is inevitable. Against the institutional and predictable profile, she appears as the only asset the left considers a real rival. That perception, shared even by those who would not vote for her, feeds the thesis that the succession is a matter of time. The calculation being handled is simple: if she could win an absolute majority and he cannot, keeping him has a measurable electoral cost.

The thesis that the PP does not want to govern Spain

One analytical stream holds something more uncomfortable: that it suits the PP not to reach Moncloa. The hypothesis is that the party lives better with a worn-out socialist government, collecting protest votes without assuming the cost of implementing the agenda imposed by Brussels. From this reading, the current leadership would be functional to that design: a candidate who does not win but does not hinder either.

The underlying accusation is that the Spanish establishment is corrupted by external interests and that pact-based alternation serves to prevent indignation from deriving into something more serious. It is a thesis without proof that circulates strongly in the margins of the debate, and it should be treated as what it is: a hypothesis some hold, not a verified fact.

Brand erosion and borrowed votes

The fundamental problem is not just the leader, but the product. The most repeated accusation from the right is that the PP has become a blue PSOE: same European framework, same agenda, same votes in Brussels. If the voter perceives no difference, the argument for alternation collapses. And here appears the hardest calculation: to vote for a substitute, better to vote for the original.

That reasoning explains why the party has lost the ability to mobilize its right flank. Every time the PP agrees with the government in Europe or avoids confrontation in Madrid, it hands a free argument to those accusing it of being the same thing with another logo. The consequence is an electorate that stays home or migrates, and a brand that wears down without anyone taking responsibility for the direction.

What might happen next

With these elements, the most probable short-term scenario is paralysis: everyone sees the problem, no one wants to pay the cost of solving it. The succession will occur, if it occurs, when the electoral calculation is so bad that the antiestéticar of changing is less than the antiestéticar of staying. By then, the party will have burned through another entire cycle.

The prediction, with all reservations, is that the substitute will not come from a clean internal vote but from an office operation. And that the argument used will be unity, that word which in politics always means someone has lost and does not want to admit it.