The PSOE has resisted and the PP is not in a position to build a parliamentary majority by adding its seats to those of Vox, despite having won the elections. This result, led by Pedro Sánchez after a campaign planned as a plebiscite around the so-called ‘sanchismo’, once again confirms his extraordinary capacity for resilience. It is true that the leader of the PSOE started from a positive government work on the social and economic level, but the economy is no longer everything in developed countries, and the PP knew how to focus the debate on issues related to the identities of the citizens who were adverse to Sánchez after the erratic and confusing behavior of his government in everything related to the so-called ‘culture war’.
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The results obtained by the PSOE contrast with the political climate of recent months where the mobilization of the right was much higher. And with the feeling of anticipated defeat that was the setback for Sánchez in the face-to-face with Feijóo. When did the sign change that explains these results occur? Probably, during the second part of the campaign, when the PP became entangled in agreements with Vox in different autonomies and municipalities. Feijóo was wrong following the advice of Isabel Diaz Ayuso according to which the Spanish had already normalized the need for pacts with the extreme right. These pacts aroused deep concern in Brussels, frightened a part of the centrist electorate and mobilized socialist voters who had abstained in the May elections. The results of Catalonia, where the PSC returns to first place after a campaign focused on blocking the way for the right, and those of Andalusia, where the PSOE has recovered part of its traditional vote, They are significant of what happened in the last week. A lethal week for Feijóo who has also paid the price for inaccuracies and slip-ups that are difficult to justify.
On paper, Feijóo could obtain a tight majority by offering an agreement to the PNV and some other small party, but the need to also have Vox seats makes this possibility unfeasible. Especially after the delicate electoral situation of the PNV in Euskadi, where Bildu has removed one more deputy. Arithmetic also says that if you don’t add the block on the right, you can add the rest, as it happened in 2019. But the ‘ides’ have come together in such a way that this sum is even more difficult because now it would need the party of Carles Puigdemont. All this, after the defeat of the Catalan independence movement, which can lead him to suicidal maximalisms. Shortly before the elections, we already said that Puigdemont’s call for participation it was only understood by the dream of being decisive. He has achieved it, more because of the setback of Esquerra than on his own merits. It remains to be seen if he will accept that his party abstains so as not to bear the responsibility of a blockade and an electoral repetition that usually punishes the one who provokes it.