An electoral cycle began this Sunday in Spain that will culminate in six months, with the general elections in December. Six months left that rules it will be uphill while the right wing that aspires to do it is mouth watering.
After a year of verbal duel, finally the social democrat Pedro Sanchez, president of the government, and Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the opposition, found themselves in an election that, despite not being one, they were played in the tone of national contention.
The one on May 28 was the first rehearsal since Nunez Feijoo became president of the Popular Party (PP) -in April 2022- for the December staging, where the Spanish will decide if they prefer to continue being governed by the left Or if it’s time to change course, as they made clear this Sunday.
The PSOE arrived at these municipal and regional elections with some fatigue and wear and tear due to the five years of Pedro Sanchez in power, a management that was torn by disagreements with Podemos, the minority partner in the coalition with which Sanchez has governed since 2020, or the concessions to the pro-independence parties in exchange for parliamentary support.
The fall of the PSOE
Far from the well-toned muscle that socialism displayed in 2019, when it had just evicted Mariano Rajoy from La Moncloa with a motion of no confidence, the loss of emblematic territories this 28M predicts a second half of the year in which the only stimulus for Sanchez it will be the presidency of the European Union that Spain will have in its hands from July 1.
In that 2019, the PP suffered an unprecedented bleeding and he lost the elections by a difference of 1.5 million votes.
However, this, the 28M, will be a long party night for the blues, the color that identifies the Popular Party. Although the hangover the day after causes them a chronic headache, they hardly realize that if the PP manages to govern in so many autonomous communities -as never before in their history- it is because they agreed to get into bed with the ultra-right of Vox.
Its leader, Santiago Abascal, spoke of Vox on election night as “the absolutely necessary party to build the alternative to socialism”. And as soon as the polling stations closed, it was learned that he had already formed the negotiating commissions that will begin the push-pull with those of Nunez Feijoo.
Since the last elections of 2019, the PP recovered almost two million votes, which, to tell the truth, is not only its own merit: the dissolution of the liberal Ciudadanos party -which in 2019 gathered 1.6 million-, gave it a vitamin shock that today lets you celebrate the conquest of 30 provincial citals and 9 of the 12 autonomous communities that renewed authorities this Sunday.
“We have recovered the best version of our party,” said Alberto Nunez Feijoo, president of the PP, when he went out onto the balcony of the Genova street headquarters escorted by the best students of the party: Isabel Diaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, and Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, mayor of the Spanish cital. Both candidates for the employee of the month honor roll: they ran for re-election in their territories, a task they not only achieved but they will govern with an absolute majority.
Leaderships
That 31.5 percent of the votes that made the PP the most elected party on May 28 also gives relief to the leadership of Nunez Feijoothe Galician leader who left his small salary to assume the leadership of the party a year ago.
It hpened after the implosion of the leadership of the popular that produced the dispute between Diaz Ayuso and Pablo Casado, president of the PP between 2018 and 2022.
Diaz Ayuso, a journalism graduate who does not hide her rejection of Peronism or avoids criticizing Kirchnerism, denied Clarion that his next step is to run for governor of Spain. However, the tornado effect that it causes at the polls is still a ghost, as latent as it is disturbing, if it were to occur to him to dispute the seat of the PP leadership. to aspire to be president of the Spanish.
Nunez Feijoo liked to say from the balcony that Spain is facing a new political cycle.
In November of last year, days before a tour of Argentina, he had confessed to Clarion: “I travel like Candidate for President of the Government of Spain.
The results of this Sunday could bring him closer to that desire, although in the PP they prefer to feign dementia and not name Vox.
It was half past twelve at night when Diaz Ayuso, Martinez-Almeida and Nunez Feijoo went out to greet the balcony. After pealing to desire and “to the liberal way of life”, Diaz Ayuso said goodbye with a “Long live Madrid, long live Spain!”leitmotiv with which Abascal usually closes his speeches to say goodbye at Vox events.
There will be little time for festivities: on Monday the 29th the pre-campaign for the December general elections begins.
Source: Clarin
