Regional elections May 28 | The elections in the Balearic Islands are a plebiscite around the figure of Francina Armengol

05/24/2023 at 08:14

CEST


The president pursues her third term with a campaign in a personal key that corners the initials of the PSOE

Balearic Islands foresees a clear result for the distribution of the 59 deputies of his Parliament the 28M. The balance will be 30 to 29. All that remains is to decide which bloc will reach thirty absolute majority, once it has been ruled out that no party can add that figure alone. The PSOE defended the title with declining expectations, but the latest polls give it options to maintain its Progress Pact with Podemos and the Més eco-sovereignists. Although the PP started with the band of favorites and harbored dreams of governing alone, it will need the crutch of Vox to crown the precious thirty. With Ciudadanos in danger of extinction, the panorama is rounded off with the regionalists of El Pi, threatened by the five percent bar essential to cross the threshold of the chamber.

With the spoils of the corresponding pacts, six games therefore they claim quotas of effective power. The negotiations will be more important than the elections, but the axis of the 28M is unipersonal. The figure of Francina Armengol, the first woman to preside over the Balearic Islands and who has already been at the Consolat headquarters for eight years with a pandemic involved. The socialist candidate has assumed her role as the axis of the dispute, with billboards adorned by a “Chairwoman” gigantic in size, compared to the modest typography of the acronym PSOE.

The plebiscite around the figure of Armengol will corner his attributes of republican, nationalist, leftist and feminist, to assess the ability to surrender at his feet the complete saints of the hoteliers, except Barceló. He has forged universal consensus from a moderate policy, and tougher in the confinements of the pandemic than in the actual wuhan. Hence the paradox that the right accuses the left of not having carried out a management of sufficient progressive substance, which of course PP / Vox will not address in case of victory.

Marga Prohens, president of the Balearic PP and presidential candidate. |

Armengol has managed to be the president of all the Balearic Islands, which does not imply that they are going to vote for her. Another certainty of 28M is that the president of the community will be a woman. The PP promoted the deputy Marga Prohensthe whip of Irene Montero in Congress, during the era of Pablo Married. The proximity of his profile to Isabel Diaz Ayuso, when it was intended to export the Madrid model, although the Mallorcan with nationalist roots has tempered its sound performance in the stage of Núñez Feijóo. Together with Vox, he will add 30 deputies if they are not 29, and the moderate far-right candidates have already reminded him that he must be inspired by Castilla y León to get their support.

Prohens is practically unknown compared to Armengol’s seniority, but the victory of the second would be a surprise despite the support of the CIS. Another important candidate for the Balearic Parliament is Patricia Guasp by Citizens. The expectations of the state leader of the dying party, with five seats today, are more than limited.

If there is no pandemic, the Balearic Islands welcome more than fifteen million tourists annually. The figure only acquires its true significance by noting that, if the rest of Spain received the same proportion of people as the archipelago, the country would attract two billion visitors a year. Under these coordinates, it would be irresponsible not to focus the economic and social debate on tourist saturation, which turns the community into a gigantic industrial plant. The PSOE timidly joins the degrowth word raised by its partners, the PP preaches an increase in the already runaway supply.

Clichés are immortal, and the Balearic Islands will go down in history as a right-wing autonomy, at the level of or above Galicia. Historically, the PP still concentrates the superiority in forty years of regional governments, by 24 to 16. However, the trend is reversed when considering only the executives of the 20th century, with 16 years to eight for the left. Armengol is the only socialist candidate who has surpassed the PP in some regional elections. That is why she has raised the 28M in the first person.

Finally, the irregular distribution by islands causes a demographic distortion, with the vote of a Menorcan equivalent to that of four Majorcans. Ibiza will probably lean to the right, the only seat in Formentera point left, Minorca It is a progressive stronghold and Mallorca stands as the great challenge for the polls.

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