The leadership primaries of Spain's Popular Party (PP) have revealed so many broken seams in the party fabric that even the winner can't feel satisfied. Because, certainly, the first round has been won by Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría. But her advantage over the second-placed candidate, Pablo Casado, is little more than 1,500 votes and, since María Dolores de Cospedal (third) and José Manuel García Margallo (fourth) are declared enemies of SSS, the votes that the former Spanish vice president has against her could see her Pyrrhic victory evaporate in the congress that will be held in a couple of weeks.
The primaries have revealed two other aspects, neither of them good for the PP. In the first place, that it is an organization with many fewer members than had been suggested by the image it has propagated for years. Although it is only an anecdote, it is worth noting that the president of Catalan pro-independence group Òmnium, the jailed Jordi Cuixart, received more votes on 16th June in the elections for his organisation's leadership than Sáenz de Santamaría has received from PP card-holders.
In the second place, the PP has emerged from its primaries as a clearly right-wing organization - centrism does not make an appearance, even in order to win votes; without the musculature to attract back voters that it could have gradually lost due to its corruption or political inaction, and, finally, immersed in a ruthless fight among its leaders, much more vicious than what might have been expected.
Although no candidate has said so publicly during the campaign, in the respective campaign teams there has been speculation about a war of dossiers, with enough damaging material being passed around to wipe out a candidate or two from the race. Whether or not this is true, the aggressiveness of Casado in defence of his options at the coming party congress demonstrates that the battle is clearly not over.