Feijoo, who won 98.35% of the vote, was the only candidate to lead the PP after an internal scandal brought down previous leader Pablo Casado and tipped the party, which for decades traded power with the incumbent Socialists, into crisis.
The PP has been losing ground to new parties that sprang up in the wake of Spain's financial crash, key among them the far-right Vox, which splintered off from the PP in 2014 and is now the third-largest force in parliament.
Feijoo has led the northwestern Galicia region for 13 years, having won four consecutive regional elections without losing a single seat to the far right.
"Thank you for choosing me as the president of the PP. The really important thing now is to continue together so that Spaniards choose us for the future," he told a party conference in Seville on today.
Corruption scandals, which have dogged the PP for years, led in 2018 to the party being ousted from power in a no-confidence vote.
In the last national election, in November 2019, the PP barely won 5 million votes compared with 10.9 million garnered in 2011. The next election is due in late 2023.
By contrast, VOX came from nowhere to take almost 3.6 million votes in 2019 and has secured its first position in a regional government thanks to a coalition agreement with the PP in Castile and Leon.
One of the main decisions facing Feijoo is whether to continue pursuing political alliances with Vox or to freeze them out, as some voices within the PP are calling for. A senior PP source said Vox's splinter origins meant that the PP "is not giving up on winning back Vox voters".
Feijoo aims to widen his base to become a catch-all centrist party, the same source said, although it is unclear how he will achieve this goal. Spain's growing political fragmentation makes it difficult to regain majorities like those of the years when a two-party system reigned. In 2019, some 16 parties were represented in the lower house, and more small groups have since emerged.
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Very good question Mark. I consider myself politically and socially left of centre how can I say socialist lite. Now listening to some politicians and social commentators and press along with other perveyors of new speak. I must now consider my opinions to be slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Now my views and values haven’t changed much but this clamour for the state to rule every aspect of or lives and limits to our personal freedoms and responsibilities is truly scary.
I would love to know what actually describes far right? It seems to mainly be based on nationalistic grounds and being against immigrants and or people of different colour and religion. So that makes China and Russia far right too.
Corrupt? Spanish politicians? British politicians, Italian politicians, any politicians? Of course they are. Bunch of self serving f@ck3rs.
The PP is the party that recently renamed a Madrid street after a battleship that murdered 5000 fleeing civilians, the majority of whom were women and children. Not the way to appeal to any centrist voters though the far right would probably approve.