“The center (now) is me”

Whenever the PP's shifts to the center are recalled, Alfonso Guerra's scathing comment comes to mind: "The PP has been traveling to the center for years, and they still haven't arrived; where will they come from, that they're taking so long?" But the formula worked for José María Aznar. He adopted the centrist label at the 1990 Seville Congress, the refounding congress, under the slogan "Focused on freedom." And the operation culminated in 1999 with the appeal to the "reformist center," which, by his own admission, led Alberto Núñez Feijóo to join the party. At the PP congress held this weekend in Madrid, the current leader declared himself the heir to the "reformist center," thus using Aznar as an alibi to cover himself in a context in which many are pushing toward more extreme positions.

The Aznar of 1990 needed to present his party, which emerged from Manuel Fraga's antiquated Popular Alliance, as a modern and moderate formation that could "guarantee a change of government without trauma, with stability, with normality, democratically. No one will have anything to fear." Feijóo now also needs to convince voters who have grown distrustful of Pedro Sánchez. "Restore political normality," Feijóo promised yesterday. "I assure you that I will never separate the Spanish people," he insisted.

Acclaimed and with a united party, Feijóo has allowed himself to be more of a Galician leader at this congress.

Aznar had been in government for three years, thanks to the support of Catalan and Basque nationalists, when he began emphatically advocating for a new, liberal, and reformist shift toward the center: "I led the party from 1990 to 1996, when it became the government and the leading party in Spain. It's time to build a political force that I call the reformist center for the 21st century. I have to do it. And I am. I'm very excited about this project." He said this on the eve of the 1999 congress, which was presented as the second part of the Seville congress.

Eugenio Nasarre, a Christian Democrat and Faes collaborator in the 1990s, praised the "reformist center" as the most effective response to smoothing out the "irreconcilable clashes between Spaniards" caused by "religious, social, and territorial" reasons. Tony Blair's Third Way was in vogue. Today, faced with the eternal debate between right and left over how much state and how much market is desirable, more and more political currents consider both tendencies unbearable. Advocating for the center seems like a thing of the past, especially when Vox continues to rise. Feijóo knows this and reminded far-right voters that this is about ousting the current president: "Either Pedro Sánchez or me." But he is also aware of the opportunity that the current weakness of the PSOE represents for the PP, and to capture or at least demobilize socialist voters, he must ensure a smooth transition .

The PP president promises normalcy to prevent disillusioned PSOE voters from mobilizing.

So this weekend he allowed himself to be more of a Galician leader than a Madrid leader. To prevent Vox from breaking out, he's already appointed squires with sharp and forceful oratory, such as Miguel Tellado and Ester Muñoz. He only alluded to the far right to rule out a cordon sanitaire out of respect for his voters.

“I am the center,” said Aznar. He thus proclaimed that under his mantle and command there was room for “conservatives, Christian Democrats, or liberals.” Feijóo followed in his footsteps, perhaps more subtly, but equally clearly. His speech yesterday began with an “I accuse”—echoing Zola's remarks in the Dreyfuss case—to denounce the excesses of the PSOE and ended with six commitments in the style of Suárez's “I can promise and I promise.” Nothing new was made in them beyond the classic “within the Constitution, everything, outside the Constitution, nothing,” which applies equally to a left-wing or right-wing leader as it does to a Latin American dictator, as Isabel Díaz Ayuso speaks so often about. But Feijóo wanted to give his speech a presidential tone. It has nothing to do with Aznar 's desire to imprison Sánchez or the hyperbolic diatribes of the Madrid president, who painted a picture of an unbreathable Spain in which a communist Big Brother sucks the life out of us, except on the island of freedom that is Madrid, guarded by the Joan of Arc of the PP.

“I'm the center now,” Feijóo could have summed up. But that can only work if, as happened with Aznar, the entire party aligns itself with the leader. For that reason, Feijóo expressly expressed his gratitude for having been given a unity congress, a clear demonstration of closing ranks. The Galician told his followers that everyone can put whatever emphasis they want on their territory, as long as they contribute to pulling in the same direction. “The whole party is here,” Feijóo congratulated himself. True. No one made a fuss. Everyone hugged . The barons didn't skimp on group photos, including Carlos Mazón.

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If anything, in Ayuso's speech, amidst the tangle of exaggerations, between widely applauded passages such as "we must return Spain to the Spanish people" or a majestic "leave me alone!" in the first person as the pinnacle of the defense of endangered freedom, the Madrid president slipped in a double-edged phrase: "President, how many people say: if this doesn't change in two years, I'll stop fighting..." Unity, yes, to win in a maximum of two years.