Alberto Núñez Feijóo intends to repeat in 2024 the two victories of the PP in Álava in 2011 and in 2015. Two close electoral victories with Javier de Andrés as a candidate for the Alava deputation that extended the prominence of the popular in Euskadi with protagonists such as Ramón Rabanera, Alfonso Alonso o Javier Maroto. The deputy secretary of organization of the PP, Miguel Tellado; the president of the popular of the Basque Country, Carlos Iturgaiz; and the three Basque provincial presidents sealed the foundations of a commitment to guarantee the replacement of Iturgaiz with De Andrés as the future leader of the Basque PP and with the aim of defeating the PNV at the polls again. Urcullu y Ortuzar.
The Board of Directors of the Basque PP will make official this Wednesday the call for the congress that will put an end to the three and a half years of Carlos Iturgaiz’s presidency. The PP intends to hold the conclave on November 4 or 5 and is looking for the right place in Vitoria for a congress without surprises. Formally, the open process will allow any member with 70 endorsements to be eligible to be the president of the Basque PP, but the team of Feijóo, Iturgaiz and their three provincial presidents have agreed on the presentation of a single consensus candidacy.
Feijóo likes the profile of De Andrés (Vitoria, 1967) because he has already shown that he “won” in the Alava provincial council elections in 2007, 2011 and 2015, and because he has held institutional positions such as that of Government delegate in the Basque Country, from 2016 to 2018. This was stated by PP sources yesterday, after a press conference by Feijóo in Congress. “He has an interesting profile” and it is clear that the president of the party supports him, because he named him number one on the list for Álava, sources from Genoa add to this newspaper. Feijóo’s team does not rule out another candidacy, but they do not hide his preference for the Alava politician: “We would like a single list that combines sensitivities. “The PP of Euskadi cannot afford to be divided.”
So Deputy De Andrés will be the candidate for president of the Popular Party of the Basque Country, but it has yet to be determined who will assume the role of general secretary. The PP in Vizcaya defends how number two a Eduardo Andradespokesperson in Getxo and one of the president’s strongest supporters Raquel Gonzalezbut it is an option still open.
The new tandem in Euskadi will have to reinforce the work done by Iturgaiz and Laura Garrido -general secretary and Basque parliamentarian, who had options at the beginning of Iturgaiz’s succession career-, who managed since 2020 to keep together an organization broken by the confrontation between Alfonso Alonso and Pablo Casadowhich concluded with the abandonment of politics by the former mayor of Vitoria and former Minister of Health with Mariano Rajoy.