Catalonia has become one of Alberto Núñez Feijóo's big electoral bets. The leader of the Popular Party will hold an event this Sunday in Barcelona, the first of the official pre-campaign in a community where the popular party believes that they still have room to continue advancing after the increase in voters in recent years: "There is capacity to grow," they maintain in Genoa, convinced that expanding their representation in Catalonia will be decisive to shore up a future government majority and achieve the seats that they lacked in 2023 to achieve the Presidency.
With all the predictions in its favor, Moncloa ended up moving away from Feijóo in 2023 by four seats. Two of them narrowly escaped in Catalonia: in Girona they were 366 votes short of taking a seat from Junts and in Lleida they were 3,502 votes away from taking away the second of their deputies from the PSOE. Those results reinforced Génova's conviction that the Catalan community offers room to continue growing and, therefore, the popular leader has been intensifying his presence in Catalonia for months with the aim of gaining electoral weight. Since October last year, it has held seven official events: most in Barcelona, although it has also visited Granollers, Badalona and Terrassa.
In Genoa they do not reveal the content of their internal tracking, but they admit that the electoral strategy distinguishes between territories where there is still "capacity for growth" and others in which the objective is to "protect the seats" achieved in 2023. Catalonia falls into the first group. In a context marked by bloc politics, Feijóo is committed to expanding a pool of key votes to lead the country. In the popular leadership they analyze the latest results of the political opinion barometer of the Center d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO), which "says that the PP would not go down and Vox would go up four." "The PP does not govern by four seats," they recall, convinced that "the center-right bloc could make the difference."
The popular support their confidence not only in the polls, but also in the evolution of their results in Catalonia in recent years. In the general elections of 2023 they went from two to six deputies and practically doubled their percentage of the vote, while in the regional elections of 2024 they multiplied their representation in the Parliament by five until they obtained 15 seats. The latest barometer of the 'Catalan CIS' reinforces this perception by placing the PP as the third force in Catalonia with 6 or 7 deputies, and pointing to additional growth of the center-right bloc thanks to the advance of Vox - it would go from two to 5 or 6 seats. In Genoa they believe that this trend shows that there is still a way to expand their electoral base on November 29 in a community that they consider strategic to reach Moncloa.
Precisely, the electoral weakening that the polls predict for Junts has led Feijóo to redouble his efforts to attract part of that disappointed electorate. In Genoa they maintain that many Catalan center-right voters have verified that supporting Carles Puigdemont's party has ended up serving to support a left-wing government. For this reason, the PP tries to present itself as a refuge for those disenchanted with Junts, although it also aspires to attract support from other formations such as the PSC for the seats that may be at risk in the next elections. The argument they put forward is that a reissue of the majority that has supported Pedro Sánchez would open the door to an Executive with the left of the PSOE strengthened. "The alternative is a Government of Pedro Sánchez with Irene Montero and Ada Colau," popular sources say, in reference to the negotiations to lead the Broad Front that brings together the formations to the left of the PSOE.
In this context, Feijóo's entourage considers that "if you are right-wing and Catalan, the only possibility of protecting yourself from that government is not by voting for Junts, nor PSC or ERC," argue the same sources, who only see the popular formation as an alternative for said voters. They believe that there is room to attract the center-right electorate that rejects both the independence movement and Vox. "It is not compatible to be a Catalan center-right and want Ada Colau as Minister of Housing," they say.
Of course, they insist on distancing themselves from the strategy they attribute to Pedro Sánchez with respect to the pro-independence parties. As Feijóo recalled in his last visit to Catalonia before businessmen, he is neither willing to "ask for favors" to get to Moncloa nor to "give them away" to stay there. The Popular Party believes that there is an electorate that demands a relevant role for Catalonia in State institutions, but at the same time does not expect political concessions from the PP in exchange for parliamentary support. "They do not expect us to give them our ear or submission in exchange for votes," summarize sources from the popular leadership, in a veiled criticism of the agreements reached by the Government with the independence groups.
Far from any conformism, Feijóo aspires to continue expanding his representation in a key community from an electoral point of view. Catalonia distributes 48 deputies in Congress, only behind Andalusia, which elects 61. The objective of the popular parties is to convert the thousands of votes that they lacked in 2023 into seats to win in Lleida and Girona and, in addition, win one more deputy for Barcelona. "We would be more than halfway done," they summarize in Genoa, convinced that those three seats would mean recovering a good part of the four that prevented Feijóo from carrying out his investiture after the last general elections.
