Friday, March 29

Married claims that it will be “the PP or chaos” in a campaign closure threatened by Vox’s push


Not 50 days have passed since Alfonso Fernández Mañueco called elections in Castilla y León, but the sensations at the end of the campaign are as if much more time had passed. An eternity. The president, from the Popular Party, formalized the call shortly before Christmas Eve, convinced that he had a triumphal parade ahead that would conclude on February 13 with a sufficient majority to govern alone. Perhaps with the external support of Vox, but without becoming the person who opened the door of a government to the extreme right. The appointment was also the starting point of the path that the strategists of Génova Street traced to take Pablo Casado to Moncloa. But the plans don’t always go as one draws them in his mind. 48 hours after going to the polls, the PP has had to resort to Isabel Díaz Ayuso, attack the candidacies of the Emptied Spain, take out the ETA joker and go from disowning Vox to declaring that they will understand whoever is needed to stay in power.

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The PP has not endured the 15 days of the electoral campaign, due to the push of both Vox on its right and the PSOE on its left, and the provincial candidates. In addition, the polls suggest that Ciudadanos will maintain a presence in the Courts, although it will lose the majority of the attorneys, since United We Can even increase its current representatives.

A scenario of fragmentation that makes it difficult for the PP to put together a government majority, even if it prevails in the elections, that does not go through the extreme right. From Ciudadanos they have pointed out that they would not support an understanding between PP and Vox, and even the former vice president, Francisco Igea, has said that he will ask for Mañueco’s head if his votes are necessary for the right to remain at the head of the Board. The Empty Spain platform, in its different versions, has not been so clear, although they have marked some red lines that include the Sustainable Development Goals and the UN 2030 Agenda. Anathema for Vox, which points to them as their world enemies, in alliance with the ultras of Hungary, Poland or Brazil.

The PP has reached the last day of the campaign looking sideways to the right and left. In Valladolid, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco was accompanied by Pablo Casado and the presidents of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and of Galicia, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Neither the Murcian, Fernando López Miras, nor the Andalusian, Juan Manuel Moreno, have attended due to different unavoidable commitments.

Ayuso has received one of the ovations of the night, between shouts of “presidenta, presidenta” from the two thousand long people who have attended the last rally, at the Valladolid fair. The Madrid president, who has been called by Mañueco to do more acts than initially planned due to the obvious pull between her electorate, has broken down the decalogue of what, in her opinion, the PP represents. A difficult message to separate from the anger that she maintains with the national leadership for the control of the PP in Madrid.

Of course, at the end of his time on stage he has also claimed “the vote for Alfonso Fernández Mañueco for five reasons: Castilla y León, the Constitution, the institutions, Spain and a question that we must ask ourselves every day, how do I want to live? This Sunday, choose: socialism or freedom.” Earlier, Ayuso had hinted that the goal of investigating sexual abuse in the Church is to “wipe Catholics off the map.” “It is not Franco, it is the Transition. King Juan Carlos is not the problem, it is the parliamentary monarchy and the symbols that unite us all. And it is not the Church, but the Catholics who they want to erase from the map And it is not the love for the animalistic world, but the hatred for traditions such as bullfighting that is in the background. It is not health that worries these people when they condemn a steak, it is the sector that lives for it. field and makes its people free”, he said.

In his turn, Pablo Casado has demanded that the right-wing vote unite around the PP. Casado has pointed to Vox for “deceiving with caramboles and decoys” the voters who want the PP to govern. “There is no other alternative to Mañueco than those represented by Pedro Sánchez,” he said at a rally held in Valladolid.

Casado has accused Sánchez of having turned Spain into “an imperfect democracy”, despite the fact that the cause put forward by The Economist to lower the level to Spain is, precisely, the blockade to the renewal of the CGPJ. “The PP is the moderate, sensible, efficient and tolerant alternative”, he defended. “That is why we say that whoever governs the PP can only vote for the PP. That he does not deceive us with carambola or decoys. Or PP, or sanchism. Or PP, or the ruin, O PP, or the partners of Bildu and ERC. Either PP, or chaos,” he concluded.

The last to intervene was Mañueco himself. The PP candidate has assured that “they do not vote on Monday” and that it is not worth “complaining” on Monday, “You vote on Sunday. You have to vote on Sunday, go house to house convincing the neighbors by handing out PP ballots”, has indicated in the closing of the campaign, celebrated this Friday in Valladolid.

Mañueco has insisted that the PP militants in each province of Castilla y León go “house to house” and “make a list of those who are doubtful, talk to them and convince them to vote for the PP.”

The PP candidate has asked for the vote as a “call for responsibility” before “two models”: that of the PP or that of socialism, Podemos and the local and minority parties that are going to be pulling their jackets all day asking what there is his own”. Mañueco has warned before a “Government of PSOE, Podemos and the small parties” and has demanded “to concentrate the vote in the PP”. “The fragmentation can ruin everything we have achieved so far”, it is finished.

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The sociological decline of the PP, which in less than two months has lost six points in the average of the published public and private polls, has had a palpable translation in the discourse and the prefabricated arguments that the national leadership distributes every day to its leaders and spokesmen. In December, Mañueco was close to 40% of the vote and Vox had an unknown candidate, Juan García-Gallardo, who entered the campaign deleting his sexist and homophobic tweets and responding to the support he gave in his youth to Mario Conde, sentenced in several times to steal. A month and a half later, the extreme right is confident of a result that will place them as the third force in the Cortes, above the 10 attorneys, which would allow them to claim for the first time to enter a coalition government with the PP.

The PP has gone from trusting in governing alone to surrendering to the evidence that it will not be able to do so. In January, the messages of Mañueco’s candidacy focused on how the future Executive of the PP was going to manage the region. Macro farms were defended, even if it was from an extensive one. Casado’s presence in the pre-campaign was notable, with events that the press could access and ask about. Castilla y León would be the prelude to the Andalusian elections, and the victory in both, the springboard to 2023. In Fitur, the president of the PP staged his reconciliation with Ayuso, days after the Madrid president allowed herself to be photographed with her nemesis from Genoa , Teodoro Garcia Egea.

But at the start of the campaign doubts were already palpable. A third of Castilians and Leonese had not decided their vote 15 days before the elections. The PP has turned to its former presidents of the Government, José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, although both have used their spaces more to assert themselves than to support Casado’s speech. The first said that it is worth nothing to get to Moncloa if you don’t know “what for”. The second, revealed the PP’s rejection of the labor reform by saying that “nothing changes” about the 2012 reform. Its Employment Minister, Fátima Báñez, publicly supported Inés Arrimadas and the Yes of Citizens to the norm of Yolanda Díaz, while Cristóbal Montoro (former Minister of Finance) lamented the criticism of European funds.

The blunder in the validation of the labor reform caused by one of the Egea plumbers and the coldness with which Brussels has received the complaints against the management of European funds by the Government have not contributed to improving the expectations of a PP either , who has had to toughen his speech to try to contain the transfer of votes to Vox. “The 13F also votes favorably for ETA prisoners” is the message distributed from Genoa to the party’s spokesmen to repeat on the last day of the campaign.

Vox, for its part, has resorted to its usual campaign of messages aimed more at the cultural war than at the issues that affect citizens on a day-to-day basis, and with a presence of state leaders that has overshadowed its candidate. This same Friday, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros called for a “birth explosion” in Soria to “repopulate a Spain that is not depopulated, but abandoned.”

The average of the polls places them with 13% of the vote. A result that, if confirmed, will place those of Santiago Abascal in a position to demand that Mañueco enter the Government. As long as there is no alternative sum that puts the socialist Luis Tudanca at the head of the Board.



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