Battered PP officials gear up for tough EU parliamentary race

With seven months to go before the European Parliament elections, Popular Party (PP) leaders have ordered their officials across Spain to embark on a vigorous effort to clean up the party's image in the wake of several corruption scandals and concerns over Catalan independence.

PP leaders fear that the bad economy and record unemployment will also cost them votes in next May's European race, which is being seen as a staging ground for the general elections in 2015.

PP officials realize that they stand to lose badly in the European vote if they don't take action now, party sources say. Internal polls show that the PP will lose in Valencia and Madrid.

Last Monday, PP leaders called all of the regional secretaries general to a meeting, where they were ordered to immediately begin rebuilding the confidence that the party has lost over the last two years.

"It means that we will be working hard to mobilize [members] internally in all the regions," said one official who attended a strategy meeting geared to the assistant secretaries general.

The public's trust in the PP began to erode with the unpopular budget cuts and austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. But it further disintegrated in the wake of allegations that juicy extra pay bonuses over the years were made to the PP hierarchy, as detailed in ledgers kept by the party's ex-treasurer Luis Bárcenas.

In the last national committee meeting, Rajoy asked his PP officials for party unity and said that the focus of the European campaign will be on national issues and explaining the measures imposed by Brussels.

According to the latest official poll in August, the ruling party stands to gain 32 percent of the vote in a general election, which is 12 percent below what it achieved at the 2011 ballot. A September Metroscopia poll carried out for EL PAÍS gave the ruling party an even worse result.