Feijóo Picks Badalona to Open PP Campaign for Nov. 29 Election
PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo will open his Nov. 29 general election campaign in Badalona with Xavier García Albiol. Why Catalonia matters to the PP.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of Spain’s Partido Popular (PP), will open his party’s campaign for the Nov. 29 general election in Badalona, according to the Catalan daily Ara. He will appear next Thursday, Nov. 12, at the poster-hanging event with Xavier García Albiol, Badalona’s mayor and the PP’s lead candidate for the province of Barcelona.
The choice of venue reflects how much the party is counting on Catalonia. Sources in the national PP leadership told Ara they believe the four seats Feijóo was missing in 2023 could come from gains in Catalonia alone.
The four seats the PP lost in 2023
In the last general election, held on July 23 three and a half years ago, the PP and Vox together fell four seats short of an absolute majority in the Congreso de los Diputados (the lower house of Spain’s parliament). That gap kept Feijóo out of the Moncloa, the prime minister’s official residence. Ara reports that the PP also came close to winning one more deputy in each of Girona and Lleida that year.
Feijóo made a similar gesture then. He opened the 2023 campaign in Castelldefels, which, like Badalona, has a PP mayor (Manu Reyes), and he held his central campaign rally in Barcelona. The PP went from 2 deputies in Catalonia in 2019 to six in 2023, well below the 12 it won in 2000 with Josep Piqué as its candidate.
The campaign team now says it is “optimistic” about results across Catalonia and describes the polls as favorable. The same sources urged caution, Ara reports, after the party’s expectations went unmet in 2023.
Feijóo’s schedule after Badalona
The party has not said how much time Feijóo will spend in Catalonia beyond the Badalona event. Miguel Tellado, the PP’s general secretary and campaign director, told journalists that Feijóo will hold an event in Santiago de Compostela on Saturday, Nov. 14, and will appear at the Valencia bullring the following Saturday, Nov. 21. Tellado said the leader will travel to almost every part of Spain with a message centered on “management,” while other party leaders and regional figures run their own campaign agendas.
Regional presidents including Isabel Díaz Ayuso of Madrid and Juanma Moreno of Andalusia are expected to campaign outside their own regions as well.
The PP plans to present its election program next Tuesday. On the following day, which coincides with the general strike, Feijóo is due to appear on the Antena 3 talk show El Hormiguero. His team has not ruled out a visit to La Revuelta on TVE after Vox leader Santiago Abascal accepted an invitation and was announced as a guest for next Monday.
What it means for voters in Catalonia
Voters in Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia can expect the PP to put more resources into the region than in past campaigns, with Badalona and García Albiol at the front. Catalonia’s seat count could decide whether the PP and its potential partners reach a majority in Congress, according to the party’s own calculations.
The PP’s slogan: “The necessary change”
On Friday, Tellado unveiled the campaign slogan, “The necessary change,” replacing the pre-campaign slogan “Finally.” The party frames the vote as a choice between Sánchez staying in office and Feijóo taking over. Tellado called it “the most important campaign in the history of our country and of the PP.” He argued the party starts with an advantage on Feijóo’s management record, pointing to what he called the “collapse” of the PSOE, which Ara says is still absorbing the political cost of the recent railway accident in Toledo.
Source: Ara
