Alberto Núñez Feijóo opened on 7 October in Ceuta the pre-campaign of the Partido Popular opened and, in the event of an election victory, promised to make the city a priority, “as the first item on the Council of Ministers’ agenda”. At the same time, he announced that he would Junta Electoral Central request additional guarantees for the voto por correo He said he trusted “the postal workers, but not the directors of Correos”, Feijóo said. The appearance came 48 hours after early parliamentary elections were called for 29 November 2026.
With his visit to the North African enclave, Feijóo is striking a note on issues beyond the housing debate that currently dominates. Alongside the city’s president, Juan Jesús Vivas, he highlighted the need for a stronger state presence in Ceuta, thus returning to recurring fault lines around migration and security. Feijóo was president of Correos in the early 2000s and explicitly invoked this administrative experience in the current dispute.
The appeal to the Junta Electoral Central is aimed at procedural steps intended to make postal voting more transparent and verifiable from the PP’s perspective. Feijóo cited no specific cases of irregularities and presented no evidence of systematic manipulation. His remarks therefore remain within the bounds of political scepticism towards Correos’ senior management, without directly questioning the legality of the election.
Politically, the PP is trying to shift the pre-election agenda away from social issues such as housing policy towards questions of law and order, migration and institutional trust. Spanish media place Feijóo’s initiative within the struggle inside the right-wing camp, where the rhetoric around electoral procedures is becoming a means of raising one’s profile. The central government and Correos management now have the task of explaining postal voting’s operation and safeguards once again, in order to strengthen confidence.
What is clear is that the visit to Ceuta, the pledge to prioritise the city and the announced request to the Junta Electoral Central shaped the official launch of the PP’s pre-campaign. Whether this will lead to procedural changes in the short term remains to be seen and depends on the electoral authority’s assessment. So far, the dispute has centred on symbolism and control of the narrative, with Ceuta as a deliberately chosen stage and postal voting as a proxy issue for the coming weeks.
Editor: Phillipe Schmidt-Araguin (Article created with AI assistance).