The PP seeks Catalan votes after falling short by 3,502 ballots in Lleida

Xavier García Albiol will lead the PP's candidacy for Barcelona in the general elections on 29-N. The party wants to regain ground in Catalonia, where in 2023 it fell just short of winning a seat in Lleida.

Catalonia distributes 42 of the 350 seats in Congress, and the outcome in this community weighed heavily in 2023, when Alberto Núñez Feijóo was only four deputies away from the presidency. This is recalled by Infobae, which attributes that defeat to a handful of lost votes in Girona against Junts and another seat ceded in Lleida to the PSOE.

Since Feijóo took over the leadership of the party, the Popular Party has prioritised regaining the electoral weight it lost after the procés. In the 2024 European elections, it doubled its results in the community, and in the regional elections, it multiplied its seats in the Parlament by five, with independence sentiment at its lowest.

Now the PP competes with Vox, which also doubled its European representation and will try to attract some of the voters that could have been drawn to Aliança Catalana. Its leader, Silvia Orriols, has ruled out running in the general elections because her focus is on the upcoming Catalan elections, where her party is close to the PSC of Salvador Illa, who leads the polls.

To try to gather support, Feijóo has convinced Xavier García Albiol, the mayor of Badalona, to head the list for Barcelona, a constituency that distributes 32 deputies. In 2023, the PP obtained only five seats there. Albiol gathered 6,000 attendees in September at an event in Badalona, which did not go unnoticed in Génova.

The mayor has achieved four consecutive absolute majorities with a tough discourse on immigration and housing, focused on “squatters.” Feijóo has tasked him with leading the PP's law in the next legislature to expedite evictions in less than 48 hours and allow water and electricity cuts to illegal occupants. In his 2025 report, Feijóo cited the eviction of the former B9 institute in Badalona.

Outside the Catalan capital, the PP hopes to recover what it lost in Lleida, where it fell short by 3,502 ballots. In Girona, the task appears more difficult, as the party has had no representation there for a decade, and Aliança Catalana managed to enter that territory with an anti-immigration message. According to the party's Deputy Secretary for Institutional Regeneration, Cuca Gamarra, the main proposal of the party is:

“to move from crime to decency”

The general elections will be held on 29 November, and in Lleida and Girona, the votes from these provinces will determine whether the PP can regain seats it currently does not hold.