MADRID — Trust us. We are sober, sensible — even slightly dull — managers.

It’s not the world’s catchiest election slogan, but it’s the core message that Spain’s center-right People’s Party is banking on to propel it into government on Nov. 29. Reinforcing the idea that the PP wants to run the EU’s fourth-biggest economy like a competent, unflashy corporation, one senior party official, granted anonymity to speak freely, said the PP was “offering a CEO to lead the country.”

Amid profound frustration with corruption scandals under the Socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, it’s a message with traction, and polls suggest the PP will form the next government.

But it also presents the party with an identity crisis if — as expected — it needs to team up with far-right populists from Vox to build a majority. If the next government is a business, Vox will be a maverick on the board.

Business leader

The devastating Toledo rail crash that killed 69 people on Oct. 28 offered the PP an opportunity to shift the campaign onto territory where it feels comfortable, as party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo and his close circle doubled down on their strategy to present themselves as steady-handed executives.

Feijóo’s first move after the accident was to chair a closed-door gathering of 15 railway experts to project an image of a jefe interested in technicalities.

A second party official explained to Madrid Playbook that the party’s new mantra was: “Management, management, management.” When Sánchez called the snap election in early October, the PP rolled out posters that read “FINALLY.” In the days following the rail accident, the party added “management” to that original slogan. “Finally, management.”

While that low-drama C-suite approach may appeal to the PP, the obvious political challenge is that Vox — which is eyeing key ministries in the next administration — is running a very different type of campaign. Vox relishes political drama.

It was the only party to push on with campaign rallies immediately after the rail disaster and has accused the government of being “a bunch of crooks” who are planning to “steal the election.” Highly outspoken in its hostility to migration, Vox suggested the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal, which sparked nationwide protests, would never have happened if she had been North African.

Guillermo Fernández Vázquez, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, noted that Santiago Abascal and others founded Vox in 2013 precisely in rejection of the moderate profiles that dominated Mariano Rajoy’s PP at the time.

This means the challenge for the PP is now twofold. Firstly, its cachet as calm and collected managers could be eroded by Vox’s incendiary politics. Secondly, the party could be leaving its own ideological right flank exposed to Abascal’s party.

Even facing that second risk, the PP looks set to stick to its guns. “Even if Vox were to take votes from us with more aggressive messages, we want to be the safe haven for centrist voters,” said the first PP official.

Still, the PP is clearly alive to the danger that it will have to maintain an appeal to two types of voter. That is demonstrated by the politicians Feijóo chose for the highly symbolic second and third places on the Madrid list for the election, usually seen as the praetorian guard of the leader: Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, one of the flag bearers of the right-wing faction, and Borja Sémper, representative of the more moderate and liberal wing.

Questionable record

For its part, the Socialist Party isn’t buying the PP’s talk of prudent management.

“For the PP and Vox to try to present themselves as guarantors of good governance is a deception of the public,” said Rebeca Torró, the Socialist Party organization secretary and spokesperson. “Those who, through their denialism, their cuts and the way they weaken public services, are part of the problem and cannot be part of the solution,” Torró added.

Left-wing parties accuse the PP of hypocrisy, pointing out for example that it was a PP-led administration in Valencia that mishandled the deadly floods in October 2024 in which 229 people died. Carlos Mazón, the PP’s then-president of the Valencia region, was at a restaurant for hours as the crisis unfolded. He didn’t resign until a year later.

Alberto Ibáñez, member of parliament for the leftist Valencian party Compromís, said that the PP “is in no position to lecture anyone on public ethics.” The conservative party “is still keeping Mazón in his seat in the Valencian parliament to preserve his parliamentary protection and keep him from being tried,” said Ibáñez.

Intriguingly, however, the Socialists do look like they are trying to play the PP at its own game. After Óscar Puente resigned as minister of transport after the rail crash, Sánchez chose his most technocratic and discreet minister to lead the transport department: Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo. The Socialists also want to look like cool-headed managers.

Division of labor

For now, the PP and Vox seem content to keep out of each other’s way, as long as it enables them to topple Sánchez.

In a recent op-ed in Diario de Cádiz, Enrique García-Máiquez, a Vox candidate for the senate, writing about a possible rightward shift by the PP, said that “it would be wise for the two parties ready to kick out Sánchez not to step on each other’s toes on the dance floor.”

Political scientist Fernández Vázquez thought there were tangible signs of cooperation. “Unlike the 2023 campaign, Catalonia is now a topic that isn’t talked about at all. Why? Because the right’s takeaway was that they didn’t get the majority three years ago due to an extraordinary voter turnout in Catalonia that heavily favored the Socialists,” he said.

But he warned that the PP-Vox truce would likely fall apart after the election.

“If they ultimately form a government, things will not be easy for Feijóo. Vox will exert significant pressure and will derive a certain satisfaction from occasionally forcing his hand and humiliating him — because that’s rooted in Vox’s origins.”

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References

¹ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/estimating-potential-economic-costs-of-flooding/estimating-potential-economic-costs-of-flooding#calculating-potential-economic-costs-aad-of-flooding

² Verdant (2006), The Cost of Heat Summer 2026 Heatwave: an economic update

BRUSSELS — The Netherlands and Spain on Friday submitted candidates to succeed Christine Lagarde, who steps down as president of the European Central Bank on Feb. 7.

Pablo Hernández de Cos, a former governor of Spain’s central bank, and the Netherlands’ Klaas Knot, a former president of the Dutch central bank, were the only candidates to emerge after the 5 p.m. deadline, as expected.

Their candidacies are part of a larger game of musical chairs that includes France and Germany, as Europe’s four economic powerhouses negotiate how to secure their seats on the ECB’s executive board.

The ECB is one of the most powerful institutions in Europe, responsible for setting interest rates to keep prices stable at 2% over the medium-term. The six-person executive board oversees the central bank’s day-to-day activities and an army of economists who scrutinize financial markets and the economy at large.

Berlin is determined to hold onto the seat that German economist Isabel Schnabel will vacate on Jan. 3, when she leaves the ECB for a job at the International Monetary Fund. Paris, meanwhile, is targeting the ECB’s chief economist role once the Irish incumbent Philip Lane concludes his eight-year term on May 31.

Eurozone finance ministers will take stock of the ECB shuffling at Monday’s Eurogroup meeting in Brussels. Neither Hernández de Cos nor Knot are scheduled to attend the closed-door meeting. But their national ministers will talk up their respective compatriots.

Diplomats expect EU leaders to engage in horse trading at an informal summit in Dublin at the end of next week. The deadline for candidates to replace Schnabel is on Nov. 27.