Catalá, the ‘super spokesperson’ of the PP: will be the voice in the City Council and Les Corts to recover Valencia

Maria Jose Catalá is going to assume an unprecedented leadership in the Valencian Community. She will be the spokesperson for the PP both in the Valencia City Council and in Les Corts, the regional parliament. Mayor Joan Ribó (Compromís) and the president Ximo Puig (PSPV-PSOE) will face the same woman, who will agglutinate the opposition to both.

It is a controversial accumulation of positions whose purpose is clearly recognized in the party. They seek greater visibility for the leader in order to win in the capital of Turia. “My goal is Valencia,” he reiterated this week a long-standing policy despite his 40 years of age.

Catalá was mayor of Torrent between 2007 and 2012, the date on which she left office to become Minister of Education in the Government of Alberto Fabra, for which he was also a spokesperson between 2014 and 2015.

He is a well-known face in Valencian politics, but the PP is well aware that the degree of knowledge of the first mayor of Valencia is much higher. That is why he has decided to make a virtue out of necessity. What Carlos Mazon, the regional president of the party and predictable candidate to compete with Ximo Puig, is not an autonomous deputy and could not assume the parliamentary spokesperson, has decided to offer Catalá a double showcase.

The decision was made by Carlos Mazón himself, according to sources from the PP. It had the approval of both the national president, Pablo Casado, as the general secretary, Teodoro Garcia Egea. Both, in their recent visits to Valencia, have referred to the leader as “the next mayor of Valencia”, and her election as regional spokesperson confirms that, at least at this time, her roadmap contemplates that it is Catalá who fights with Ribó for mayor in 2023.

It is the national leadership that chooses the candidate in the big cities, and in Valencia there was speculation about the possibility that the mayor was Toni Cantó. But the appointment of María José Catalá as regional spokesperson and the strategy explained by the training give a good account of the commitment to the leader.

It should be remembered that María José Catalá is, in turn, president of the Popular Party in the city of Valencia and general secretary at the regional level – number two in Mazón. It will add, therefore, four important responsibilities in the Valencian PP.

The internal rise of Catalá has been dizzying in recent months. Isabel bonig She assumed the reins of the PP in 2015, a very tough stage for the party in which it was she who assumed the bulk of the wear and tear that Catalá did manage to avoid. Finally, he assumed the difficult task of refloating the PP in the city, where the formation He came to have his 10 councilors charged.

Catalá took the reins shortly before the municipal elections of 2019. The decomposition of the party at the local level and its origin from Torrent, the largest of the cities in the metropolitan area of ​​Valencia, played against him. Her condition as former mayor of this municipality made visible that from a city other than the capital, and Ribó tried to take advantage of this circumstance.

Despite its little room for maneuver, the center-right was only one councilor away from taking the mayor’s office from the mayor of Compromís, who formed a government together with the vice mayor’s PSPV-PSOE Sandra Gomez.

The 10 councilors of the nationalist coalition and the 7 socialists added the 17 necessary for the absolute majority of the current Executive. The PP was second force with 8 representatives. Citizens obtained 6; and Vox, the remaining 2 of the municipal plenary session. The opposition currently has 16, only one less than the local government.

It was considered a dignified defeat, and the PP believes that the political context of 2023, with Catalá much more settled in the city after four years of opposition and Citizens in clear danger of extinction, will propitiate its return to power. And the party works in this line, with the aim of recovering the city eight years after it Rita Barberá lost the mayoralty in 2015.

But being the chosen person again has required a lot of work at an organic level on the part of Catalá. She, like Bonig, came from the previous government, but Genoa chose different paths with both leaders. He set aside Bonig and chose Mazón to lead the formation at the regional level. No one would have been surprised that he also bet on a change in the city. But Catalá did manage to gain the trust of both the national leadership and that of Mazón himself, who has become number two.

The foreseeable premiere of Catalá as regional spokesperson will take place on September 27 at the General Policy Debate, where it will already be the one who questions Ximo Puig. In the party they explain that the municipal plenary session has barely coincided with the regional one a couple of times since he is in charge of the PP in the Valencia City Council, but it remains to be seen if he will encounter this obstacle in the next few dates, since the The plenary session is controlled by the left.

As specified by the popular, Catalá will have Elena Bastidas, José Antonio Rovira and Miguel Barrachina as deputy spokespersons. The current spokesperson, Eva Ortiz, will remain as president of the parliamentary group and will continue on the party’s board of directors. All of them will have a prominent role because they are a new spokesperson with an eye on the City Council.

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