MADRID — Pablo Casado believes he’s got just one path to power — and it starts with a hard turn to the right.

Ahead of the Spanish general election on April 28, the fresh-faced leader of the conservative Popular Party has been burnishing his right-wing credentials and presenting himself as the only alternative to Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Casado, 38, has amped up the rhetoric on issues ranging from abortion to migration, from Catalan independence to security and economics. He has flirted with nationalist, culture-war rhetoric that some say has more in common with the populist wave surging across the world than with the careful approach of his predecessor Mariano Rajoy.

“We’re at a crossroads, in which we need to decide not only what economic, territorial, educational or social policy we want for our country, but also whether we want to preserve the Spanish nation as we know it,” Casado told a crowd in Madrid as he kicked off his official electoral campaign last week.

In Catalonia, Casado has suggested imposing direct rule over the region — as Rajoy did after the region’s parliament declared independence in October 2017. Only this time, Madrid would take over not just for a few months but indefinitely and establish control over regional institutions that were left untouched during the previous intervention, including the public media.

“Pablo Casado is being influenced by what’s happening in other European right-wing parties" — José Antonio Zarzalejos, writer and journalist

On abortion, he’s flirted with reversing a 2010 liberalization and imposing tighter limits. On migration, he’s argued for increased border security and declared that migrants should adapt to Spanish customs. On economics, he’s advocated for aggressive tax cuts that critics say would endanger current social spending levels.

Within the party, Casado has promoted a cohort of media-savvy, young cadres with a taste for ideological fights and political incorrectness to the highest levels of the organization. These new arrivals mark a contrast with the bureaucratic profiles who dominated Rajoy’s mandate.

Some of Casado’s changes are only rhetorical. His party's electoral program, for example, doesn’t mention the word “abortion.” Instead, it promises help for women who do want to have their children. It also doesn’t include radical proposals against immigration and leaves open to interpretation whether Madrid would immediately apply direct rule in Catalonia.

But taken together, Casado’s repositioning of the Popular Party amounts to a conservative revolution. Some rivals and observers argue that he has placed his party at a critical juncture, from which it could take a path that would see it transform from a traditional conservative party to a populist right-wing force.

“Pablo Casado is being influenced by what’s happening in other European right-wing parties,” said writer and journalist José Antonio Zarzalejos, citing as examples the rising far-right party Vox in Spain, as well as the rightward shift of conservative parties or the emergence of large right-wing populist forces in Italy, France, Hungary, Austria, the U.S. and Brazil.

"He’s susceptible to these types of populism," he added.

Fragmentation

Casado’s move to the right can be explained — partly at least — as a reaction to changes in his country’s political environment.

Thirty years ago, former conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar managed to unify the Spanish right under the newly refounded Popular Party — pulling together everybody from hardcore nationalists to centrist liberals.

But since Spain’s financial and economic crisis pushed unemployment to a peak of 27 percent in 2013, the country's electoral spectrum has frayed. The establishment parties that dominated the country's politics for decades — Casado's conservatives and Sánchez's Socialists — have lost support to three upstarts that now split the electorate five ways at the national level.

On his party's right, Casado needs to cope with the far-right Vox, which burst onto the scene in a regional election in December in Andalusia and whose leader, Santiago Abascal, served in the Popular Party but now dismisses it as “la derechita cobarde,” the “little, cowardly right.”

On the other flank, Casado faces a threat from the liberal Ciudadanos party, which has moved from the center to compete for right-wing votes with impeccable anti-separatist credentials in Catalonia and no history of corruption — two problematic issues for the Popular Party.

“Pedro Sánchez’s only hope is fragmentation, the division of all us who love Spain and want fewer taxes and more freedom" — Teodoro García Egea, the Popular Party's general secretary

The third insurgent, the far-left Podemos, once posed a challenge to the Socialists but has recently collapsed in the polls and now hopes to work with Sánchez while pulling him to the left.

“Pablo, none of your predecessors had such a difficult job ahead,” Aznar told Casado as he endorsed him in a public speech at a party gathering in January.

In response to Spain's political fragmentation, Casado and his party are trying to persuade voters that any ballots cast for Ciudadanos or Vox would just make it easier for the Socialists to remain in power.

Yet he faces an uphill battle: a record low 41 percent of former Popular Party voters say they will choose the conservatives again in April, while 11 percent say they will vote for Vox, 8 percent choose Ciudadanos, and 24 percent are still undecided, according to a recent poll by the Center for Sociological Research.

“It’s either Pedro Sánchez or Pablo Casado,” Teodoro García Egea, the Popular Party's general secretary and second in command, told POLITICO. “Pedro Sánchez’s only hope is fragmentation, the division of all us who love Spain and want fewer taxes and more freedom.”

García Egea exemplifies the new style Casado has brought to the party and the young cadres that he’s elevated into top positions — the so-called “sin complejos” or “unashamed,” a reference to their dismissal of political correctness and willingness to bring the fight to the left.

Where Rajoy packed the party’s top echelons with elite public servants — mostly lawyers — Casado has chosen as his right hand a 34-year-old unknown lawmaker with a Ph.D. in engineering, a love for action sports and a penchant for social media and bashing the left.

Earlier this month, García Egea backed a labor protest of policemen at Plaza del Sol in Madrid — the heart of the Spanish anti-austerity Indignados movement in 2011 — and told reporters he’d rather see the square full of police rather than packed with “perroflautas,” a derogatory term that refers to punks or hippies who live on the street.

“We now speak more clearly,” García Egea said, arguing that voters should not look outside the Popular Party for a conservative voice. “Those who look for the PP outside the PP are not going to find it, and that’s why we’ve been saying all along that the PP is back.”

Yet not everybody thinks the party's new strategy is a sound one.

“What Casado is trying to avoid is the catastrophe,” said writer Zarzalejos, arguing that the conservative leader is "overreacting" in his pursuit of potential Vox voters.

“He’s made a sort of tourniquet of the bleeding that was going away on his right,” Zarzalejos said. “Is this sufficient, is this enough, does it have a future? We’ll see on April 28, but I am very skeptical.”

The Anti-Rajoy

Born in Palencia 250 kilometers north of Madrid, Casado is married and has two children. He entered politics in the regional branch of the Popular Party in the region of Madrid, where he had moved for his graduate studies. He served as chief of staff for Aznar after the prime minister stepped down from office, became a national lawmaker in 2011 and his party’s vice secretary for communications in 2015 under Rajoy.

Casado’s political vision was shaped by his early experiences in the party — first in Madrid under the leadership of Esperanza Aguirre, sometimes described as Spain’s Margaret Thatcher, then as a protégé of Aznar. He was nurtured by a wing of the party that is more conservative on social issues, more pro-market on economics, more pro-U.S. on international politics and tougher on regional nationalism.

“He’s a very young person but with deep ideological convictions,” Zarzalejos said. “He represents the most conservative branch of the PP … and he’s injecting high doses of ideology in a party that lost them under Rajoy.”

Rajoy put Casado in charge of dealing with the press during a constant stream of corruption scandals among the conservatives. Casado trained himself with aggressive reporters and political rivals on TV shows, and cultivated relationships with journalists.

While Rajoy dodged press conferences and difficult interviews, Casado argued that the party should make the most of any opportunity to make its voice heard, even in challenging circumstances.

After Rajoy was toppled last summer, Casado was quick to seize the opportunity, winning a party primary against — among others — former Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, who was seen as more of a continuity candidate.

Casado claims to have traveled 140,000 kilometers — the equivalent of three trips around the world — delivering his message from villages to towns to cities in all provinces of the country since he took the helm of the Popular Party.

It’s a telling figure that speaks to the energetic approach with which the 38-year-old lawyer and economist has replaced the cautious, sometimes leaden style of Rajoy. Indeed, in many ways, Casado is his predecessor's opposite.

Rajoy made his first bid for the premiership after a long career of public office, that saw him rise from local councillor to minister to deputy prime minister. Casado is a member of parliament but lacks any managing experience as a government official.

"We are going to tear down once and for all that wall of false moral superiority from the left" — Pablo Casado, leader of Spain's Popular Party

Where Rajoy was seen as the face of experience compared to his much younger rivals, Casado is the youngest leader among Spain’s five big political forces — even as he leads the party with the oldest electorate, with nearly half of potential voters over 65 years old.

While Rajoy sometimes appeared uncomfortable in social gatherings, party insiders say Casado enjoys rallies and contact with the public, something he himself has said is essential in electoral politics.

Rajoy was born in a bilingual region, Galicia, and although he never properly learned the Galician language, his origin exposed him to Spain’s cultural diversity in a way that Casado’s Castilian origin may have not.

And Rajoy championed technocratic management, sidelined more ideological cadres and shifted to the center in his third — and eventually successful — bid for power in 2011. Casado, in contrast, defends the importance of ideology.

"We must mobilize our values to solve problems,” Casado said in a speech in front of leaders of the European People’s Party Congress in Helsinki in November, where he advocated for “politics rather than mere bureaucratic management.”

His rhetoric reflects the renewed focus on ideological divisions. In January, Casado told a national party gathering: "We are going to tear down once and for all that wall of false moral superiority from the left."

Casado’s shift to the right and his openness to deals with the far right are the new normal for conservative parties in the EU, said Ignacio Molina, a researcher for Elcano, a think tank. He added that Sánchez used a similar strategy to counter the rise of the far-left Podemos, shifting sharply to the left before moderating after taking office.

“Rajoy’s PP was akin to Merkel, while Casado’s PP is akin to Kurz,” said Molina, comparing the conservative party's leaders to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who moved her party to the middle, and Austrian leader Sebastian Kurz, who is ruling the country in a coalition with the far right.

Sánchez problem

On the campaign trail, Casado has railed against the prime minister. “Pedro Sánchez is a public danger for Spain,” he told a rally last Thursday in Madrid.

He went on to draw a nightmarish portrait of the Socialist leader, who he said is ready to cut Spain into pieces and grant independence to Catalonia in association with the region’s separatists and the radical left for the sake of remaining in office.

In recent months, Casado has labeled Sánchez a “felon,” a “traitor,” “the most radical prime minister of Spain’s democratic history” and the “friend of terrorists and putschists.”

The conservative leader's rough tone reveals the scale of the task he’s facing, with Sánchez polling a strong first and the right-wing electorate divided.

Casado’s right-wing turn — plus the fact that the Popular Party and Ciudadanos toppled the ruling Socialists in Andalusia with the backing of Vox in December and have vowed to do the same at the national level — has allowed Sánchez pitch himself as the only moderate choice.

In a rally in Las Palmas over the weekend, Sánchez accused the Popular Party and Ciudadanos of “embracing” the far right. “It is one right with three names,” he said. “They’re going to act like a bloc if they add up a ruling majority after April 28, as they did in Andalusia.”

The prime minister has also maneuvered to deepen the divisions in the right. When Casado demanded a face-to-face debate with Sánchez, the Socialist leader declined, opting instead for a format including all five leaders of the major national parties.

A series of mistakes during the campaign add to Casado's problems. The conservative leader spoke of the minimum wage in a radio interview in terms that could be interpreted as a formal plan to cut it down if elected prime minister; his economic guru did the same talking about the pension system; and another candidate came up with a bizarre theory that a new law in New York had legalized abortions “after birth.”

Still, with around 42 percent of the wider electorate still undecided, polls suggest the conservative leader remains the only candidate with a shot at replacing Sánchez at the top of Spain's government.

“I believe [our efforts] will be rewarded but, in any case, the situation I found wasn’t easy" — Pablo Casado

“Pablo Casado is in a very delicate situation, but he could become prime minister,” said a Socialist official working on the party’s campaign.

If he doesn’t — and his party experiences the collapse in support some polls predict — Casado could soon face a leadership challenge of his own.

Asked about the issue last week in a radio interview, Casado said he intends to continue to lead the party no matter the results, and reminded the interviewer that both Aznar and Rajoy lost two elections before they won one.

“I’ve seized the reins of a party with 16 percent of voters’ intentions and with an electoral base split into three,” he said. “I believe [our efforts] will be rewarded but, in any case, the situation I found wasn’t easy.”

Nonetheless, a conservative counterrevolution could be in the offing.