Spanish conservative leader under fire as Galicia votes

Galicia, in north-western Spain, goes to the polls on Sunday in an election that is expected to have national ramifications amid a mounting controversy over clemency measures for separatists.

The Popular Party (PP) has governed the region for 30 of the last 34 years, winning majorities in each of the last four elections under Alberto Núñez Feijóo. However, in 2022, he left Galicia to become national party leader. With a resurgent Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) performing well in polls, the right’s regional stronghold is in jeopardy.

Núñez Feijóo has sought to give the election a national theme, campaigning hard in his home region and keeping his party’s candidate, the uncharismatic Alfonso Rueda, firmly in the background. On the campaign trail, the PP leader has focused on issues that affect the country as a whole, presenting it as a referendum on the left-wing coalition government of Pedro Sánchez.

“I don’t have anything at stake [in this election],” he told Faro de Vigo newspaper. “Galicia does: remaining stable, unlike the Spanish government.”

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The reliance of the Socialist Sánchez on nationalist parties has been a target for the PP, in particular his willingness to draw up an amnesty law for Catalan separatists in exchange for parliamentary support in order to form a new government.

Núñez Feijóo has previously described the amnesty, which has not yet been approved, as “an unbearable humiliation” and “a national disgrace” and has led several demonstrations against the measure.

However, it has been revealed that in the wake of his party’s victory in July’s general election, Núñez Feijóo had himself briefly considered an amnesty in exchange for the support of Catalan nationalist parties. This has unleashed a crisis for the conservative that has overshadowed his Galician campaign.

The reports came from an unnamed PP politician who met last weekend with a group of journalists. The source was also reported as saying that the party’s leader was still willing to discuss the possibility of a “conditional” pardon for Carles Puigdemont, the self-exiled former Catalan president who would be the highest-profile beneficiary of the government’s amnesty.

This has drawn a backlash from the left and right.

“Making hypocrisy your only political hallmark leads to defeat,” said former Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. “And that’s what has happened to the PP.”

The leader of the far-right and stridently unionist Vox party, Santiago Abascal, accused Feijóo of “massive political fraud” and of offering “impunity to coupmongers”.

The PP has been scrambling to present the revelations in a different light, playing down the tone of the remarks and even denying their veracity. “What we have always said is the same,” said Carlos Mazón, the party’s president of the Valencia region. “It’s no to the amnesty, no to pardons, no to blackmail.”

This is the latest in a series of apparent errors by Núñez Feijóo that have undermined his position. He was appointed party leader on the back of his electoral success in Galicia and with a reputation as a moderate. However, in Madrid he has struggled, with Vox and hardline elements within his own party seeming to push him into radical positions, particularly on Spain’s territorial question.

On one occasion, he supported a proposal to outlaw parties that stage independence referendums, before backtracking and ruling it out. Last month, he described 2019 pro-independence street protests in Barcelona as “pure terror … pure fascism”.

The PP’s decision to tell reporters about Núñez Feijóo’s willingness to consider clemency measures that it has so frequently attacked remains a mystery. Some media have speculated that it is a “controlled explosion” that seeks to pre-empt more damaging revelations that Puigdemont plans to make about his contacts with the PP.

It comes as polls suggest that the PP’s majority in Galicia is far from secure. The left-leaning BNG, under candidate Ana Pontón, has been surging in polls. Although her nationalists look set to come second, behind the PP, if they and the Socialists performed well enough the two could form a majority and a new government.

“Losing in his home region would have lethal consequences for the future credibility of the Galician leader,” noted commentator Rubén Amón of Núñez Feijóo. “And winning has gone from being a mere obligation to a dramatic emergency.”

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