The PP's 'ideological rearmament' and the (infallible) law of gravity

It is nothing short of a colossal irony of fate, which governs our days and torments our nights, that the grand theatrics of the next Genoa conclave are being enacted several weeks before its celebration by its main actors and the usual altar boys – understanding the term from a descriptive and functional point of view, not a derogatory one – with the argument that this new congress of the Spanish right, the first ordinary one in eight years, will achieve “the ideological rearmament” of the PP in the face of an electoral battle with no certain date, but as desired by one side as it is annoying for the other.

Feijóo thus makes it clear, to anyone who wants and can understand it, that the political resolution that will be approved at the beginning of next July in Madrid will be a solemn declaration of "principles" that will not be for sale regardless of the election results. In principle, this seems like a good start. Whether it will also be an optimal ending is debatable.

Especially considering that, although the leaders of this political committee have different sensibilities —depending on which signore or signora they owe obedience to—Génova insists that the regional presidents of Castile-León and Andalusia, who were sworn in at different stages of the process with the support of Vox, will play a relevant role in setting the political direction of Spain's main right-wing party.

Silence is a message

From the outset, it seems unlikely that the Popular Party will clarify its relationship with the ultra-montane party. Silence, however, sends a message. No matter how much they avoid mentioning it, the elephant has been in the room for a long time. The PP, according to the polls, doesn't win on its own. It needs one or more partners. And it doesn't have many pools of representatives to turn to.

Moreno Bonilla, the baron closest to Feijóo and an internal alternative to Ayuso's Madrid Peronism, is convinced that the cards should not be revealed. Mainly because no one knows for sure what the polls will say, and the pacts with Vox in the autonomous regions were one of the factors that led Feijóo to founder on the shore in the last general elections.

The Andalusian president has fabricated a self-portrait as a moderate politician. On paper, it's true. He embodies a Suarez-style PP, focused, unpretentious, and politically correct. Perhaps too much so. This profile, which he has successfully cultivated since being sworn in at the end of 2018 thanks to a cross-party pact—signed separately—with Ciudadanos and Vox, does not, however, stem from his very modest management. Nor is it the fruit of convictions.

His metamorphosis, which in Andalusia has taken him from being the candidate with the fewest votes in the entire history of the right to becoming the absolute leader of the southern political scene in just seven years, is due to a strategy that consists of telling everyone what they want to hear without promoting almost anything of what he, at the same time, promises to do.

Morenoism isn't a reformist movement, but rather a genetically conservative one. It's afraid of risk. It hides its lukewarmness behind smiles. It doesn't defend principles: it adapts to whatever suits the moment. Nor is it essentialist, but rather very pragmatic. It doesn't reproduce the ways, although it does reproduce certain habits, of the right. And it imitates the PSOE of the Old Testament.

The president of the regional government yearns to represent an aggiornamento ( updating ) operation for the Spanish right, which, in reality, camouflages a Gattopardo agenda. Nor is this an original (political) creation of his own. It is a product of circumstance.

The parliamentary sum

The parliamentary victory that brought Moreno Bonilla to the Quirinale (San Telmo) for the first time was as astonishing as a billiards game. The PP (then dependent on Vox; Ciudadanos threw themselves into its arms almost immediately) didn't hesitate to sign the political documents the ultra-montanists put before them, knowing they wouldn't be honored.

Then, worried about a social reaction from the left against it, which never came, but whose mere abstraction made it believe that its reign in the South of Spain could be a simple parenthesis, the PP began to rapidly blend in with the Andalusian socialists, attracting Cs, the Andalusian minorities and other critical voters into its orbit.

Moreno Bonilla hasn't touched the clientelist administration created by the PSOE in recent years. He hasn't lifted any rugs. He's allergic to any change. He's limited himself to replacing the Socialists with better public manners, but tolerating the same private vices.

This is demonstrated, among other examples, by the lack of enthusiasm for recovering the money defrauded in the ERE case or the handpicked placements of socialist militants – among them the wife of the current socialist spokesperson in the Senate and former general secretary of the PSOE in Andalusia, Juan Espadas – in the defunct Faffe Foundation, absorbed by the Andalusian Employment Service (SAE), where the Civil Guard (UCO) has confirmed the existence of at least 85 irregular contracts that, however, have been consolidated thanks to the nihil obstat of San Telmo.

These are not isolated incidents. The Quirinale 's priority during these two terms has been to institutionalize some of the most questionable practices of the Andalusian PSOE. For example, allocating subsidies to organizations in question: employers' associations, civic associations, and unions like the UGT, which was definitively convicted by judges for fraudulent use of public funds. Nor has it made much effort to reform the inherited administration.

If Feijóo's mission to Moreno Bonilla is to transfer his Andalusian approach —as he calls his style—to the national level, the ideological rearmament of Génova will be like going to war with wet gunpowder. Neither will Vox be manipulated by leopardism —if it did so in Andalusia, it was because this political position interested it only as an advance guard toward Madrid—nor will the Moncloa fall into the hands of the PP like Newton's apple: by gravity.

The Madrid conclave will bring changes to the leadership of Genoa. We will witness the inevitable parade of the dead sheep , which is what happens—as the saying goes—when two or more shepherds meet. But if it also ends with ellipses, detours, and circumlocutions, it won't be an act of political (self-)affirmation, but rather an advance resignation. To prevail in a war, you must first want to wage it. And then know how to win it. Without the former, there is no room for the latter.