Feijóo targets Catalonia’s 48 seats with Albiol housing pledge

Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Oct. 18 commissioned Xavier Garcia Albiol to lead a state anti-squatting law, Diari Ara reported, as Spain’s PP targets Catalonia’s 48 lower-house seats.

The Catalan race matters for Feijóo’s route to power because those 48 seats are part of Spain’s 350-seat Congress. A CEO poll published this week put the PP on six to seven Catalan deputies, while Vox was projected to rise from two to five or six.

CEO refers to the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió, the Catalan government’s polling agency, not a corporate executive. Its latest survey, according to Diari Ara, suggested the PP would at best make only a limited gain in Catalonia from the six deputies it won in 2023.

Feijóo made the announcement at a Popular Party pre-campaign event in Barcelona, his third visit to the city in one month, according to Diari Ara’s English unverified translation. The report said he appeared with senior Catalan PP figures as the party tries to curb Vox’s rise.

“You will draft it and we will pass it, zero tolerance for squatters, whom we will throw out in 48 hours, maximum protection for the honest citizen,” Feijóo said, addressing Albiol, according to the report.

Albiol, the mayor of Badalona and the PP’s lead candidate in Catalonia, framed his candidacy around public order and everyday concerns. “I am the mayor of the fourth largest city in Catalonia and I govern with an absolute majority,” he said, adding that he was running “not to warm a seat.”

Feijóo also urged centre-right voters in Catalonia not to support parties that could help Pedro Sánchez remain Spanish prime minister, Diari Ara reported. He said the PP had fallen four seats short of governing after the last election, including missed seats in Girona and Lleida.

The event showed how housing, squatting and immigration are becoming campaign themes on Spain’s right. Alejandro Fernández, the PP’s Catalan president, said Albiol was “the best candidate” because he had acted “against squats or for security,” according to the report.

Feijóo used the rally to attack Sánchez and the PSOE over what he described as scandals affecting the Socialists. Those accusations were presented as campaign claims by the PP candidate in the Diari Ara account.

On Nov. 29, the Catalan result will show whether the PP improves on the six deputies it won in 2023 or remains in the six-to-seven-seat range shown by the CEO poll published this week.

On Nov. 29, Vox’s Catalan tally will test the same poll’s projection that Santiago Abascal’s party could rise from two deputies to five or six, a gain that would complicate the PP’s effort to dominate the right-wing vote.

On Nov. 29, the Girona and Lleida results will be a check on Feijóo’s claim that the PP narrowly missed seats there in the last election, including by 363 votes in Girona, according to his remarks reported by Diari Ara.