Castilla-La Mancha is not just any territory for Alberto Núñez Feijóo on the route to reach La Moncloa. The popular ones seek to maintain control of their autonomies on May 28 and dye all those in which the PSOE now governs blue as a step prior to the general elections at the end of the year. And dethroning Emiliano García-Page, they reflected in Genoa, could cause a shock in the socialist ranks that would end up tipping the balance at the national level and definitively strengthen the Popular Party.

“If the PP wins in Castilla-La Mancha, Feijóo will win in the general elections,” summarize popular sources in this region, who assume that Paco Núñez will be the candidate with the most votes and that he will have enough room to govern. However, the polls predict that, at a minimum, Vox will achieve a representation of between one and three seats in the Cortes, which could give Santiago Abascal’s men the key to governance in Castilla-La Mancha.

But the PP not only seeks victory over socialism in this community, but will also try to grab votes from its left and right. As this newspaper has learned, the party will exploit the presence of former Prime Ministers José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy during the campaign in the region to attract all types of profiles during the fifteen key days of the campaign. To do this, he will focus Aznar’s presence on Cuenca, a Vox stronghold, while Rajoy, with a more moderate profile, will demand the vote for the PP in Ciudad Real, where Ciudadanos maintains the mayoralty. The strong territorial fall of the oranges and the battle for the vote with Vox will mark the expectations of the PP in the final stretch of the race to the polls.

They will not be the only acts carried out by both former heads of the Executive. As expressed from within the formation, Aznar and Rajoy will participate as an electoral “caravan”, with a special team for them, and will visit various points and towns in Castilla-La Mancha. All in order to achieve the enormous challenge of returning to govern in a historically socialist region and that only in one legislature -between 2011 and 2015, with María Dolores de Cospedal at the controls of the Junta- has been managed by the right.

To this we must add that Feijóo will visit Castilla-La Mancha, at least, on a couple of occasions throughout the campaign to lead two separate events. The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, in addition, will only hold one act outside her territory during the two weeks of the campaign. It will also be in Castilla-La Mancha. Full deployment of the popular ones.

The opposition leader’s commitment to this region, then, is absolute, as evidenced by the event held this Sunday in Guadalajara, where the president of the formation launched the PP framework program for the regional and general elections exactly within two months.

“No one has worked like him,” Alberto Núñez Feijóo extolled yesterday about Paco Núñez and his strategy for the polls. After presenting the program this weekend in Guadalajara, the popular leader accompanied and introduced the candidate to Castilla-La Mancha this Monday at a New Economy Forum breakfast in Madrid, where he announced that the victory of the PP in Castilla-La Mancha will be ” the prelude” to a national triumph in December. “My immersion in Castilla-La Mancha proves that it is a prosperous land, that it has pioneering companies in the agri-food field, and that I am convinced that they have much more capacity,” he said of the region.

Now, the popular president continues the path opened a month ago, when in Valencia, in the Intermunicipal held by the PP, Feijóo achieved the photo of the unit with Aznar and Rajoy as a symbol of “continuity” of his legacy. Both former presidents of the Government also participated a little over a year ago in the electoral campaign in Castilla y León, where they supported Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, who today leads the only regional government formed by the coalition between the PP and Vox.

Precisely last Friday, Santiago Abascal praised the government action of Mañueco, defined it as “an example” and predicted that the PP would end up abandoning and repudiating him for having been “the ugly duckling” that agreed with Vox. A comment that is answered by Genoa with the argument that each territory has autonomy to decide its regional pacts.

In this sense, and as this newspaper has been reporting in recent weeks, those of Santiago Abascal see themselves with serious options not only to appear in the Castilla-La Mancha parliament next May, but also to form part of a Government of rights in this territory. The weight of the rural vote, the various controversies unleashed by Minister Alberto Garzón that affect the livestock sector and the management of Vox in Castilla y León are the main assets of the party in this autonomy.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project