MADRID — Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party frowns on dissidence, but there are sounds of discord in the ranks over the acting prime minister's failure to deal effectively with nepotism and corruption.

The conservative PP doesn't have the monopoly on authoritarian leadership in Spanish politics — it was a Socialist deputy prime minister from the 1980s, Alfonso Guerra, who coined a phrase encouraging party discipline: “Anyone who moves won’t show up in the picture.”

But Rajoy is the only leader from the main parties to be chosen by his predecessor — in his case, José María Aznar — rather than competing in open primaries like Pedro Sánchez of the main opposition Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), Pablo Iglesias of the far-left Podemos and Albert Rivera of the centrist Ciudadanos.

The crisis of credibility within the PP comes as Spanish politics is stuck in a deadlock that is unprecedented since the return to democracy four decades ago. The electorate faces the prospect of voting for a third time in a year because of party leaders' failure to form a governing coalition after two indecisive elections. Rajoy came first twice, but without a majority; he now has the support of the fourth-biggest party, Ciudadanos, but that is not enough for him to win an investiture vote in Congress.

Opinion polls repeatedly show corruption is the second biggest concern for Spanish citizens, after unemployment, and corruption plagued Rajoy's first term in office, providing a constant stream of negative headlines for the past five years.

“The party leadership is used to making decisions which are never questioned" — Isabel Benjumea



“It’s the first time you see such a reaction inside the party,” said Isabel Benjumea, a rank-and-file member of the PP and director of Floridablanca, a minority current within the party that was founded last year and is very critical of Rajoy.

“The party leadership is used to making decisions which are never questioned,” she said. According to Benjumea, the new willingness of some party members to speak out responds partly to their impatience with what they perceive as months of fruitless political wrangling since December's failed election, and partly to Rajoy's mismanagement of the latest scandals affecting the PP.

In hindsight, Rajoy may regret the timing of the announcement that his disgraced friend and former industry minister José Manuel Soria was being sent to Washington with an executive director post at the World Bank paying $250,000 a year. It came just minutes after Rajoy's failed bid for a second term in Congress, on September 2, which raised the prospect of a third election.

Soria had been forced to resign from Rajoy's cabinet in April, following reports in the Panama Papers of his links with offshore companies and Soria's unconvincing explanation. His World Bank job quickly became a public relations nightmare for the government, and senior figures in the PP spoke out against it. Cristina Cifuentes, the PP's president of the Madrid region, said the nomination “shouldn’t have been made.” Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the president of Galicia who will seek re-election on September 25, said it was “difficult to understand for many people.”

Soria relinquished his nomination four days later, though Economy Minister Luis de Guindos still faced calls for his own resignation when he tried to explain it to congress on Tuesday.

Death Star

Pablo Simón, a politics professor at Carlos III University in Madrid, sees three main reasons why Spain is more vulnerable to nepotism in government than most of its European peers: it is excessively easy for civil servants to go back and forth from political posts; far too many jobs in the public administration depend on political connections; and the selection procedures for such jobs are more arbitrary and opaque than in most of the EU. The Soria case blended these three factors, said Simón.

“The PP is like the Death Star, but without an emergency exit” — Ignacio Escolar



On top of that, Benjumea says her party is the most “hierarchical” and enclosed of Spain's political forces, which puts its leadership out of touch with reality, as illustrated by the World Bank saga. “Each and every cadre in a position of power owes his or her post to the directorate," she said, adding that this hampers constructive criticism and debate.

This structure, which protects the power of the party president, has so far served Rajoy's ambitions — explaining, for example, how he survived an attempted internal coup in 2008, when he had already lost two elections to the Socialists' José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

“The PP is like the Death Star, but without an emergency exit,” said Ignacio Escolar, the editor of digital newspaper eldiario.es, in a meeting with foreign media this week.

In terms of corruption, too, the PP is not unique — as demonstrated by this week's news that two former Socialist presidents of the Andalucía region had been charged by public prosectors with embezzlement of public funds and abuse of authority. But Rajoy's party does appear to have fallen behind in terms of regeneration, transparency and internal democracy, and it has been slower to respond to corruption, as with the recent case of Rita Barberá.

Barberá served as mayor of Valencia for 24 years and is currently a senator. The Supreme Court decided to investigate her this week on charges of money laundering. Around 20 officials under Barbera’s command in Valencia have already been under investigation since the start of the year and it was assumed that it was only a matter of time until the accusations reached her.

Yet the PP went ahead and put her on its list for the senate for June's repeat elections. This week, party cadres began demanding her resignation, but Barberá dug her heels in, saying she would quit the PP but not the senate. A seat in the upper house comes with aforamiento privileges, meaning she can only be tried by the Supreme Court, not by the lower tribunals.

Once again, some senior PP officials felt compelled to speak out and divisions appeared in the party. On one side, Javier Maroto, one of the five vice secretaries of the party, blasted her for lacking dignity and setting a bad example. In the other corner, PP second-in-command María Dolores Cospedal defended Barberá and called for respect for the “presumption of innocence.”

However, although the atmosphere inside the party is getting heated, direct criticism of Rajoy himself is still limited to private conversations and isolated dissidents like Floridablanca. In public, there is a strong show of support for the leader. “Rajoy is our candidate. He is now and he will be tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. And it will remain like this for a long time,” were party speaker Rafael Hernando's vehement words in the investiture debate.

Advocates of change in the conservative movement are resigned to the fact that they may have to wait until Rajoy steps aside and a new generation steps forward. “The fact that a movement demanding a political party democratize itself makes the news in a democratic country in the 21st century illustrates the drama of that party being non democratic,” said Benjumea.

This article has been updated to correct the name of the PP speaker.