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After crisis, Spain’s right-wing PP appoints new leader

Spain's opposition Popular Party (PP) on Saturday overwhelmingly voted Alberto Núñez Feijóo as leader as they hope the calm, experienced moderate will return the right-wing faction to power.

Published: 2 April 2022 12:30 CEST
Updated: 2 April 2022 15:11 CEST
The newly elected president of PP, Alberto Nunez Feijoo
The newly elected president of PP, Alberto Nunez Feijoo waves prior to delivering his speech during the 20th National Congress of the Popular Party (PP) at the Fibes conference and exhibition centre in Seville on April 2, 2022. Photo: CRISTINA QUICLER / AFP

After 13 years governing Galicia in northwestern Spain with a track record of four absolute majorities, the party is hoping the 60-year-old will be able to translate his regional success to a national level.

Feijoo said he would fight to return the right-wing party to power and warned he would not be a pushover.

“Moderation is not about being lukewarm and dialogue is not submission,” he said after being elected leader with 98.3 percent of the votes at a two-day party congress in Seville.

 “Enough of the heated debates and confronting each other, enough of creating problems, there are already so many… Let’s end these futile debates and face the real problems,” Feijóo told delegates.

“I’m not here to insult (Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez) but to beat him.”

European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas, a guest at the congress, said he had full confidence in Feijóo.

“Alberto knows the path to victory very well because if there’s one thing he knows about, it’s winning elections,” he said in fluent Spanish.

The Spanish premier congratulated Feijóo on his appointment, tweeting: “In these complex times, working with unity and responsibility for the common good must be a priority for everyone.”

Moving past a crisis

The Galician leader was the only candidate running to take over from Pablo Casado, who was edged out following a bitter internal dispute with one of the party’s rising stars.

When he took over as PP chief in July 2018, Casado was a young hardliner who promised to breathe new life into a party snarled in corruption and bleeding votes.

But barely four years later, the 41-year-old was left fighting for his political life after a very public confrontation with Isabel Diaz Ayuso, whose success as Madrid regional leader threw his own lacklustre leadership into sharp relief.

Casado told the gathering on Friday that he was giving up his seat in parliament and quitting all “positions of responsibility” in the PP. “It is best if I step aside,” he said.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo (L) and outgoing Popular Party leader Pablo Casado react at the end of the 20th National Congress of the Popular Party (PP) at the Fibes conference and exhibition centre in Seville on April 1, 2022.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo (L) and outgoing Popular Party leader Pablo Casado react at the end of the 20th National Congress of the Popular Party (PP) at the Fibes conference and exhibition centre in Seville on April 1, 2022. Photo: CRISTINA QUICLER / AFP

Two former PP prime ministers also spoke at the two-day gathering: Jose María Aznar, who was premier between 1996-2004, and Rajoy, who served between 2011-2018. Both urged party members to rally around Feijóo.

“I ask everyone for the greatest unity and the clearest support for this new stage of our party,” said Aznar speaking by video link because he has Covid-19.

Feijóo v. Vox and the Socialists

Feijóo is the only one of Spain’s regional leaders to govern with an absolute majority in a region where the Socialists pose no threat and the far-right party Vox has made no headway despite its growing popularity across Spain.

But at a national level, the scene is the opposite, and Feijóo will have to contend with a Socialist-led government, its hard-left partner Podemos and Vox in the ascendency.

During his long political career, Feijóo has steered clear of scandal, despite the emergence of photos from the mid-90s showing his friendship with a cigarette smuggler later jailed for drug trafficking. While admitting they were friends at the time, Feijóo said he had no idea about the illegal activities.

During a national tour to present his candidacy, Feijóo made a few slips, including a reference to the government as “autistic” for which he later apologised to those with the condition.

General elections are due by the end of 2023 but Pedro Sanchez’s left-wing coalition is already worn out by the pandemic, soaring inflation and social unrest over spiralling prices as well as the global uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.

The far-right has also been a headache for the PP, which has watched how Vox has, within eight years, managed to obtain 52 of the 350 seats in Spain’s parliament as its own showing has fallen from 186 to 88.

Feijóo’s job is now “to attract the centrist voters” that brought the PP’s Aznar and Rajoy to power, said Ernesto Pascual, a political scientist at Barcelona’s Autonomous University.

Even if the PP does succeed in next year’s election, recent polls suggest it could need the support of Vox to govern.

Alarm bells sounded last month when the PP made a coalition deal with Vox, letting the far-right faction into a regional government for the first time, raising fears it could be a blueprint for future power-sharing, both regionally and nationally.

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Could Spain ever dethrone King Felipe and become a republic?

After a decade on the Spanish throne, King Felipe VI is steadily growing in popularity. If things were ever to turn sour, could the Spanish public and government actually oust the monarch and turn Spain into a republic?

Published: 17 June 2024 17:15 CEST
Could Spain ever dethrone King Felipe and become a republic?

King Felipe VI is set to celebrate a decade on the Spanish throne. He became king on June 19th 2014 following the abdication of his scandal-ridden father, former King Juan Carlos.

This meant that Felipe took over the crown needing to somewhat rehabilitate the public image of la Casa Real. According to polling data released to coincide with his decade as king, it seems he’s done a decent enough job of it so far. In fact, after 10 years on the throne his approval rating has grown.

READ ALSO: What do Spaniards think of their royal family?

Felipe obtained an average score of 6.6 among Spaniards polled, surpassing, for the first time, the 6.5 mark. This is according to a survey carried out by the IMOP Insights Institute for Vanitatis.

In fact, after a decade the majority of Spaniards approve of the King’s performance: 46.4 percent have a positive view of his work, compared to 20.9 percent who are critical or hold a negative view.

Older people generally have more favourable views of Felipe and the monarchy, whereas under 25s are the only group with a negative opinion of him.

In terms of regional breakdown, the most pro-Felipe part of the country was found to be Andalusia and the least, to the surprise of absolutely nobody in Spain, was Catalonia.

Many royal commentators in Spain argue that Felipe, along with his daughter, Princess of Asturias Leonor, have taken big steps to restoring the Spanish crown’s credibility.

That Felipe’s personal approval rating has grown over time is testament to that, and positive ratings, especially after a decade in the public eye, is something most politicians could only dream of.

That is to say, there doesn’t seem to be any danger of Spaniards turning on their king for now. But what if Spanish public opinion changed over time and suddenly Spain did want to become a republic?

Legally, constitutionally speaking, could Spain ever dethrone King Felipe and become a republic?

Spain’s King Felipe VI and Spain’s Queen Letizia attend a ceremony for the Spanish Crown Princess of Asturias. Photo: JAVIER SORIANO/AFP.

The steps to a republic

Even if Spaniards themselves wanted it, transitioning from a constitutional monarchy to a republic involves a lot of steps that make it highly unlikely, perhaps even impossible.

The change would require two-thirds support in both chambers of the Spanish Congress, something that is very unlikely in the current political climate. Such consensus across both houses is very, very rare.

But, theoretically speaking, to get rid of the king the Spanish legislature would first need to amend Article 1 of the título preliminar of the Spanish Constitution, which outlines the state structure and clearly says that: “the form of the Spanish state is a parliamentary monarchy”.

To do this, the government or Congress would have to call for a vote on constitutional reform in the Congress of Deputies and it would have to pass with a qualified majority, that is, with a majority of two thirds or more, which is equivalent to 234 or more deputies.

READ ALSO: How much do Spain’s king and royal family make?

It would then have to be ratified in the Senate with the same qualified majority. Of the 265 senators, 177 would have to be in favour.

But it doesn’t end there. If both chambers agree, Congress would be dissolved, a general election would have to be called, and the voting would have to be repeated among the new deputies.

However, there’s still one final hurdle: a general referendum. The people’s referendum is meant to function as a sort of fail-safe or quality control on the actions of the legislature, especially on such a huge constitutional question.

Javier Tajadura, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of the Basque Country, told Spanish website Newtral that “the referendum serves as a form of citizen control of what the Cortes want to carry out, and it must be carried out after the votes [in both houses] have been taken.”

If, after all the votes in Congress pass with suitable majorities, the referendum also results in a yes and it is undeniable that Spaniards want to change from monarchy to republic, Spain would become a republic.

Then the debate would shift to whether Spain would need an entirely new constitution, or it would need to make some (pretty huge) changes to the pre-existing constitution of 1978.

So, yes. Spain could, in theory, become a republic. Clearly, the Spanish system has a lot of checks and balances embedded within it that makes moving from a monarchy to a republic constitutionally complicated, politically unlikely, and, in realistic terms, very improbable to the point of being almost impossible.

As Miguel Ángel Cabellos, Professor of Constitutional law at the University of Girona, puts it: “Beyond the fact that it is a change of an essential and core element of the political system, which would also radically divide society, the truth is that from a legal point of view the difficulties are very notable, one could almost say insurmountable in practice.”

READ ALSO: The one thing to know about each of Spain’s ‘crazy’ kings and queens

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