The leader of the Popular Party Alberto Núñez Feijóo, accompanied by the leader of the party in Murcia Fernando López Miras (on his left) during a moment of the 18th Congress of the party in the Region of Murcia this Friday Víctor Villegas Auditorium Marcial Guillen (EFE)
The President of the Region of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, was re-elected this Friday to lead the PP in this autonomous community in a congress to which he came as the only candidate and in which he was supported by the national leadership of his party, the has attempted to convey the idea of ”unity” as a key value and strength to win the next regional elections in May 2023, and with an explicit mandate to achieve this with a sufficient majority to avoid the need for pacts.
It is the idea that the General Secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, who opened the meeting in Murcia, and the National President of the formation, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who closed it, reiterated in their contributions. Also all the regional positions that rose to the lectern in the Víctor Villegas auditorium, which seats around 1,700 people, during the more than four-hour event. However, critical voices can also be heard from those who threatened to challenge López Miras’ leadership before the congress was convened.
Manuel Durán, director general of emergencies of the autonomous community until 2017 and local administration until 2019, and Patricia Fernández, mayor of Archena, did it. The first even announced that he would submit his candidacy and that he would collect endorsements, but later withdrew to favor that unit. The second has never confirmed the rumors and did not attend the congress this afternoon, although López Miras included her in his team as a member of the Executive Committee.
Not so with Duran, who, upon arriving at the event, bemoaned reporters’ poor “integration” into the new popular team. López Miras responded to this criticism with a gesture: he vacated one of the voting offices and several deputy secretaries with the aim of speaking again with all positions and member organizations to listen to their proposals and integrate those who wish to participate in his project.
It will not be his only task for the coming months, because the party’s national leadership has given him clear “duties”: to win the next elections, which the Murcian has not yet achieved despite leading the region for five years, and to cope with one large majority that enables him to rule alone.
“In Murcia we can only win to continue building our future,” he said, praising former President Ramón Luis Valcárcel, the only one, he assured, to have fought with “exorbitant absolute majorities”. And he joked about this “competition” within the party itself: “That the presidents of Murcia, Valencia, Zaragoza compete for votes on election night” encouraged him.
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No small challenge for López Miras, who has never won an election. He arrived at the Palacio de San Esteban in May 2017 after Pedro Antonio Sánchez resigned, motivated by the numerous corruption cases he was under investigation. At the time, it was almost taken for granted that the 33-year-old from Lorca, Spain’s youngest regional president, as he himself repeatedly suspected, would hold the post on an interim basis and hand the seat back to Sánchez, who was a close friend when his judicial situation improved.
However, time passed and López Miras, a law graduate, consolidated his position: in 2018 he submitted to another PP Congress, which earned him the regional chairmanship of the party, and in May 2019, despite losing the regional elections in votes and seats Having been in the PSOE for the first time in 24 years, he managed to form a government in coalition with Ciudadanos and with the support of Vox. The most politically critical moment of the legislature was in March 2021, when her Cs partners signed a motion of no confidence with the PSOE, which was unsuccessful: four of the six Citizens MPs decided to stay by her side, even though she had already signed the motion of no confidence. The votes of the defectors and three of the four Vox MPs who were expelled from the party support the Murcia government today. In fact, two of the Orange defectors, Congressman Francisco Álvarez and Vice President and Social Policy Adviser Isabel Franco, attended the Congress as guests.
At this congress he received the votes of 97% of the votes and in his closing speech he promised to fulfill the mandate given by Feijóo. “Surveys are useless to me. I’m not content with getting more seats than the left, I’m here to win and govern with stability and without dependence on anyone,” he said to public applause.