If there was any doubt, the resistance that tried to maintain the Socialist Party in the municipal and regional elections of 28-M has been insufficient to clarify the future of Pedro Sánchez in the generals, marked in December on the calendar. Sanchismo adds 800,000 votes less than the PP and the great bump hits in historical autonomies for the PSOE. The loss of communities such as the Valencian, the Balearic, the Extremaduran or the Aragonese, the unknown of the Castilian-Manchegan, the eviction of the left in cities such as Valencia, Palma, Valladolid and all the Andalusian capitals and the incontestable majorities of Almeida or Díaz Ayuso in Madrid, they come to announce that Pedro Sánchez reigns, but his party barely governs where it used to do so easily.
Municipal elections have not been held since before the pandemic, to whose management more than half of their administration has been dedicated by autonomies and city councils since 2019. It seems a long way off, but only three years have passed. Pedro Sánchez and his government waged a battle against an external, viral element, alien to politics. And from that struggle it can be said that he came out better off than many international leaders, partly thanks to the measures adopted by his barons and mayors, by Ximo Puig in the Valencian Community, by Lambán in Aragón, by Barbón in Asturias, by García Page or Fernández Vara in Castilla-La Mancha or Extremadura. Some of these regional leaders have even improved their results and several of them have renewed their support in a significant although very insufficient way, given the paradoxical case of Ximo Puig, who with an exemplary management in the worst of the health alarm contemplates astonished how a newcomer and barely known by the electorate (except in Alicante ) Carlos Mazón, overtakes him on the right by not adding the majority with the until now members of the Botànic, Compromís and Unides Podem.
Feijóo at the gates
Six months after the general elections, it is now, after the results of 28-M, when Sanchismo begins the authentic de-escalation, that term that we used freely just after the confinement ended and that soon fell into disuse. In September of that year it was barely used and now those who are de-escalating from power are the socialists and the entire block of the left. The results threaten that they are not even going to give us a truce in August and that between now and the end of the year, Spain is going to maintain a permanent electoral campaign. More because of Pedro Sánchez’s demerit than because of the actions of his rival, Feijóo is already at the gates of La Moncloa.
The defeat of the left must be sought in how the Socialist Party and its partners overshadowed their proposals by entering all the rags that the right put in front of it, not the one led by Pablo Casado, first, or by Núñez Feijóo, later, but by an Isabel Díaz Ayuso who from the Puerta del Sol has been marking all the debates from the story. Or how the cañas and the bars were more important than the dead; or why putting ETA back into the campaign and the banning of Bildu have overlapped with social issues. In summary, govern from the anti-Sanchismo and put it as the axis of the discussion. And it has worked. Some presidents, like Puig or Lambán, have not even had time for what is called ‘wear and tear’.
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According to the results, the Socialists have not gone alone to the precipice. The mystery of what Podemos has done during this campaign has yet to be solved. Lost among the hodgepodge of leaders (it is still not very clear what Pablo Iglesias has been up to in the last 15 days), some voters thought that on 28-M they could already vote for Yolanda Díaz. From the speeches of Belarra and Montero, their disagreements with the Government have transcended more than their own initiatives, some of them as extravagant as the creation of public supermarkets. The most ‘revolutionary’ thing that has been known to them in the campaign is to hang a giant banner with the face of Ayuso’s brother in the heart of the Salamanca neighborhood in Madrid, the usual stronghold of the center-right.
For the PP, good news and less good news. He wins without discussion despite the wasted votes of Ciudadanos, a formation that is already history. In many enclaves, on the contrary, you must agree with Vox. AND The success of Núñez Feijóo will also depend on how the PP manages between now and December their agreements with a party that barely respects the most elementary rules of common sense.