Spanish politics has had another week of those that, emotionally, seems to be a semester. On Sunday the Spaniards went to bed with images of the euphoria of the PP for having injured the PSOE in six autonomous communities and some of these citizens went to sleep on Monday with the fly behind their ear: Why Pedro Sanchez had advanced the general elections to July 23? If he’s so touched, why does he risk it? Alberto Núñez Feijóo Will you finish it off in eight weeks?
Sánchez, the matryoshka man
On Monday, the Prime Minister announced the electoral call in one of those narrative turns to which he has accustomed us, but that this time no one had even half guessed. With his decision, Sánchez managed to stop talking about the victory of the PP, closed any hint of an internal crisis in the PSOE and forced his partners on the left to come out of their counterproductive lethargy: to “add up” quickly and get ready Yolanda Diaz, because he is going to sell himself as the useful vote to stop the extreme right and the PP-Vox alliance. That is going to be the crossroads that Sánchez is going to pose in the campaign: either he continues or ten years of “reactionary right& rdquor ;, as they have begun to say in the PSOE.
with his hit the board, Sánchez went from being a defeated president on Sunday night to a feisty candidate on Monday morning. The man from Madrid is like a matryoshka and now he has put on the battle dress. He leaves willing to live a few weeks worthy of being included in what could be the second part of his memoirs ‘Resistance Manual’, the book in which, in 2019, he recounted how he overcame his dismissal as leader of the PSOE, recovered the helm and knocked down Mariano Rajoy with the motion of censure.
The Galician ambiguity before Vox
In the PP, the advance unleashed such a wave of disbelief that, at first, some leaders came to wonder if “the trap & rdquor; it would not be that Sánchez was going to take a step back and the PSOE would present another candidate. Despite the fact that Feijóo had asked for months that the president convene generals “as soon as possible”, “now”, “immediately”, His first reaction was to complain about the heat that he will do on July 23 and, the second, to underline that there will be Spaniards from vacation.
The good results on Sunday gave Feijóo a truce for just a few hours: no one outside or inside (Isabel Díaz Ayuso) could question his leadership. But Sánchez’s rapid movement forces him to accelerate the plans he had to design his PP (with the lists for Congress and the Senate as the main milestone) and to campaign while his regional leaders dodge questions about Vox. After 28M, the PP can reach the presidencies of the Valencian Community, Aragon, Extremadura, Murcia and the Balearic Islands, but in all of them it will be thanks to the support of the far-right party.
These first few days Feijóo has stopped any impulse for territorial rapprochement (in Extremadura) and has tried to pretend that this need did not exist. In fact, he has asked Vox to “facilitate & rdquor; those governments without advice in return. The leader of the PP is going to try to take Galician ambiguity to the highest levels.
The crux is going to be to check to what extent Santiago Abascal allows it and if the Vox leader allows him to reach July 23 without requests that escuezan in the PP: against him feminismthe immigrantshe abortion, the European Union…
The mobilization of the progressives
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Feijóo asked his barons on Tuesday not to rest on their laurels. They cannot be carried away by the good results of 28M or gloat that Ciudadanos does not show up (Inés Arrimadas has even announced that she is leaving politics). They can’t let their guard down. In that they trust in part in the PSOE. In Ferraz, once the data has been analyzed, they believe that there is a battle: in municipal governments, the PP “only& rdquor; has surpassed them by some 750,000 votes and in communities “such as the Canary Islands, the Valencian Community and Andalusia& rdquor; results have improved. All is not lost, they say. The objective is to mobilize the progressive electorate with messages about the “risk & rdquor; that the ultra-right can enter the central government hand in hand with Feijóo and put an end to consolidated social rights.
For now, however, the Galician politician is frustrating the strategies that seek to muddy him with the PP more trumpist with which the socialists link Ayuso. The Madrid president went so far as to insinuate that last Sunday Sánchez would make a pout in the municipal and regional elections, an accusation that she forgot 48 hours later, when her party seized several communities from the PSOE.