Legend has it that every night in the gardens of the Parque de María Luisa, which was once part of the Palacio de San Telmo – seat of the presidency of the Andalusian Government – apparitions and strange phenomena take place that send shivers down the spine of those who see them. they perceive They are manifestations of the figure of a strange lady dressed in white who walks between sobs and tears and that some relate to the consort of Carlos II, Luisa Fernanda de Borbón and others, to Queen María Mercedes, first wife of Alfonso XII.
Since Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla summoned the Andalusians to the polls, his most feared vision every time he set foot in the presidential seat was not that of the image of any sovereign of the past, but that of a far-rightist of the present, of Loose verb and sentencing epithets, who walked with a threatening step towards the seat of the Andalusian government to be part of it. The popular has managed this Sunday to completely clear the ghost of Macarena Olona by adding a historic absolute majority and not depending on Vox to continue in San Telmo. Situation or trend?
Moreno, and by extension Feijóo, who defends the same right-wing model as the Andalusian, has served him not to risk too much, to stand in profile before the extreme right and play moderation so that the electorate trusts a PP that with Pablo Casado he looked self-conscious at his main block competitor. The PP candidate, in fact, did not compete more than against the expectations generated from his own party, and he has won them on the street. Unquestionable success that the new leader of the PP also scores on the scoreboard and that greatly complicates the future of Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa, in addition to knocking out the entire left.
The “Olona effect” with which the extreme right tried to sweep the south and overwhelm the popular, far from catapulting those of Abascal as a decisive political force, has ended up scaring the Andalusians in elections that clearly presented continuity because what was at stake was not so much who would govern, but with whom the PP would govern. The polls have given him such an overwhelming result that he will be able to do it alone.
The cycle change is consolidated
The Andalusian right has its best victory before it and consolidates the change of cycle that began in 2018, when the sum of the left was below the block led by Moreno, who snatched institutional power from the PSOE for the first time in 37 years. The PP reaches an absolute majority, with 58 seats and 825,000 votes more than four years ago. This is the best result in Andalusia for the popular, higher than the 50 parliamentarians that Javier Arenas achieved in 2012, where until now the ceiling of the party was located. It wins in all the provinces at the cost of the death of Ciudadanos, which goes from 21 seats to zero and is now only waiting for a date for its incineration, while Vox achieves a slight but irrelevant improvement with only two more deputies compared to 2018 .
Moreno also leaves KO to the left in all its versions. To the PSOE because it remains at 30 deputies, three less than the worst result in its history, the one scored by Susana Díaz in 2018. For Andalusia, which is the sum of UP, IU and Más Madrid, because it was the pilot experience of Yolanda Díaz and is left with a pyrrhic result by obtaining only 5 seats while Adelante Andalucía, Teresa Rodríguez’s brand, achieves 2. Both marks from the left to the left of the PSOE are far from the 17 parliamentarians they obtained four years ago, before for their coalition to break up.
Moreno unquestionably wins and Feijóo also wins in what was his first electoral test since he was elected national president. The PP thus consolidates a party model that moves, even if only apparently, in centrality and moderation, and consolidates its upward trajectory with a result that, if it does not corner, contains at least the upward trajectory of the far right.
In Genoa they will now be able to say that Castilla y León was just an accident as a result of Casado’s mistakes, and not the symptom of a paradigm shift in the relationship between the popular ones and Vox that, with another result in Andalusia, no one doubts that he would have mortgaged the national strategy of the PP. A second coalition with Vox would have completely broken the transversality discourse with which Feijóo intends to reach La Moncloa.
Moreno vs. Ayuso
What happens on the national scene remains to be seen, but the pact with Vox would have served as ammunition for the left less than a year after the municipal ones and a year and a half after some general ones in which Pedro Sánchez risks his continuity at the helm of the Government of Spain. Nor should we underestimate the internal readings that will be held in Genoa starting tomorrow regarding the battle between the two souls of the PP – the moderate one represented by Feijóo and the Andalusian president and that of Ayuso’s unapologetic tambourine liberalism – and the leaderships that can stand out in the middle horizon.
A coalition with Vox in Andalusia would have consolidated the Madrid leader as the only option of the PP capable of stopping the advance of the extreme right, after embracing its most ideological postulates and the complete catalog of its cultural battles. From now on, the party can see Moreno – who does not hide his national aspirations either – as a possible successor after the Feijóo stage, to whom many only grant a single bullet, that of the 2023 generals.
In any case, 19J will mark a before and after, not so much because of the change in cycle that the right has been shaking for months, but because the left has come out of the trance very knocked out and Sánchez will have to show signs that he does not disdain the national impact of the Andalusians if you want to revalidate mandate.
As much as the socialists maintain that the cycle changes are consolidated by the municipal ones, and not by regional ones, Sánchez will have to read well, and not as Adriana Lastra did on Sunday night, a defeat that has been without palliatives and that leaves socialism in a vegetative state in what until now was his main electoral stronghold. Compared to 2018, Andalusian socialism lost 127,000 votes and almost 4 points in voting intention
Swords has not endured the result of Susana Díaz four years ago and has added 883,700 votes, far from the million ballots where in Ferraz they had placed the psychological barrier to distinguish between an acceptable defeat and a worrying result.
The Socialists, KO even before the defeat
The foundations of the PSOE are creaking less than a year after municipal elections with which the party will have to test its organic muscle in the territories, after having even been knocked out before the coup came this Sunday, in part due to the deep wounds that still fester after the last Andalusian primaries and partly due to the lack of political weight in the federal leadership.
In any case, Pedro Sánchez’s strategy has his eyes fixed on September and goes through redoubling the presence in the territories and recovering the political initiative. At the moment, in La Moncloa they have instructed all his ministers so that this week they give the appearance of ultra activity with the celebration of multiple acts and with a notable presence in the media.
The Federal Executive, which was convened on Monday by the general secretary of the PSOE, promises to be intense, despite the fact that the Socialists already took the defeat in Andalusia for granted before the campaign even began. Although Sánchez has not given any sign that he foresees a change in the government, as he did after the debacle in Madrid a little over a year ago, no one rules out that the change in strategy that is being talked about includes some adjustments in the party that could occur not so much now as with the entry of a new political course. The Socialists consider it essential to go on an offensive for which today they do not have indisputable referents in the party and for which they will also need the political project that Yolanda Díaz intends to build.
Bad premiere for Yolanda Díaz’s project
For Andalusia, the brand led by Inma Nieto and sponsored by the second vice president of the Government is not a good start for Díaz’s journey to build a broad left-wing front. Autumn will be decisive to demonstrate the ability of Sánchez but also of the left to his left to repair what happened this Sunday. Otherwise, the block would go straight to a time horrible which would inexorably end with his passage to the opposition in December 2023. For now, Feijóo, with the wind in his favor of a limping economy and a government that shows notable wear and tear, has reason to celebrate. And the left, just out of concern.
We will see…
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