The PSOE sees an opportunity in the elections on February 13 in Castilla y León after a campaign in which they maintain that they have gone “from less to more”. “The PSOE is always diesel”, acknowledges a prominent socialist leader. The Socialists have grown as the expectations of the PP were deflated and have thrown the rest in the final stretch of the campaign in which Pedro Sánchez has intensified his presence. Ferraz’s conclusion is that Pablo Casado will go wrong with the move to call the elections in Castilla y León with which he wanted Alfonso Fernández Mañueco to repeat the feat of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. “Neither Castilla y León is Madrid nor Mañueco is Ayuso”, they insist in the socialist ranks for weeks.
The objective that Ferraz has set for himself is to revalidate the victory that Luis Tudanca already achieved in 2019. “We are fighting to be the first force. From there we will see how the rest fare. If they add PP and Vox, we already know what is going to happen” , summarizes a prominent socialist leader. The fear of that coalition is also a mobilizing element for the progressive electorate that Sánchez always keeps in his hat.
In addition to mobilizing its 2019 electorate, the PSOE seeks to concentrate the vote for change in a community where the PP has been ruling for 35 years. That is why the appeal to the useful vote has been the central element of the final act of the campaign. “That we make this land move forward is only guaranteed by change and change is only guaranteed by the PSOE,” Tudanca said after recalling that in 2019 “there were already those who took the flag of change and betrayed it.” “Either the PP governs with Vox or the PSOE governs and wins the illusion, the future and Castilla y León”, Tudanca has settled. “We cannot distribute the vote but concentrate it on the party that can lead that change,” Sánchez added at the rally held at the Millennium Dome, one of the fetish places of his primaries.
The doubt that they have in the socialist leadership is how the votes that tip the balance of the last seats in several constituencies will be distributed, largely due to the irruption of the platforms of the Emptied Spain in places like Soria or Burgos, where they can make them a broken one, and also due to the exchange of votes on the right with the growth of Vox compared to the decline of Ciudadanos. Tudanca also hopes to get revenue from that electorate and that is why he has presented himself as a typical Castilian and Leonese profile, without fanfare.
“Mañueco called because he did not know how to impose himself on Casado and Génova”, expressed the socialist candidate at the end of the campaign in which he recalled that he has spoken of Castilla y León during the seven years he has been at the head of the regional PSOE and in a campaign that the PP has tried to focus on Sánchez: “Faced with this irresponsibility, I am convinced that the Castilians and Leonese, who are worthy people, who believe in this land, will teach them a lesson that the PP will not forget in a long time”.
But what they see yes or yes 48 hours after the polls close is that Casado comes out badly in an election that the PP called with the hope of even reaching an absolute majority -in a traditionally conservative land- or at least getting to govern alone thanks to the abstention of Vox. And what the polls predict is that he will have the extreme right as he had Ciudadanos. “No one doubts that change is just around the corner. Not even the one who called the elections doubts it,” said the mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente, ironically that there was an “error” when pressing the button of the call as the PP alleges in the case of the labor reform.
“There is no harm that does not come for good,” acknowledges a prominent leader about the possibility that Mañueco manages to revalidate the presidency with Vox on the campaign argument that the PSOE would have for Andalusia and the rest of the elections that come after. “The PP is going to change its leader before its headquarters,” predicted the Secretary of Organization, Santos Cerdán, this Thursday. “If the PSOE is at 29% or 30% in Castilla y León, which is not ours, explain to me how it can be at 26% in Spain,” they argue in Ferraz.
Sánchez vindicates his management while Podemos presses
Sánchez has stirred up the PP for the attitude it has in the opposition. In this sense, he has recalled that the lawyers of Congress have closed the door to the “ribbling” that denounces the labor reform or that the European Commission has ignored them in its campaign against European funds. “The policy is not to become a book of photos, it is not photographed in front of a ham dryer or talking in front of calves, pigs and cows [ha dicho jactándose de la campaña de Casado]. The policy is to raise the Minimum Wage, to revalue pensions, to approve a Minimum Vital Income, to approve a dignified death law, a Vocational Training law, to decentralize institutions. Politics is something very serious and it is what the PSOE government does and not the PP”, exclaimed the socialist, who at that time managed to get the nearly 1,500 people who packed the millennium dome to their feet shouting ” president, president.”
Belarra: “The PSOE looks to the right again”
With an eye on the socialists as electoral rivals, United We Can has made several reproaches to its government partners at the end of the campaign. In a veiled allusion to the labor reform pacts, the general secretary of Podemos and minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, has assured that in the PSOE “they look to the right again every time” that the confederal group “give the return”. Influencing, even more, in the performance of Sánchez’s party in the Executive, Belarra has encouraged the fifty attendees who have attended the event in Valladolid to support his candidacy “if they want guarantees that the agreements will be fulfilled”.
Supported by three ministers, the autonomous candidates of United We Can have put an end to a campaign that they have articulated around depopulation and the lack of opportunities in the region. Both Belarra and the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, have addressed the head of the Consumer Affairs portfolio, Alberto Garzón, also present, to recall that the campaign started with the controversy created by the political and media right after misrepresenting the words of the coordinator of the United Left on the macro-farms.
With a dedicated and standing audience, the Minister of Consumer Affairs was received this Friday with a standing ovation. Garzón has directly questioned Mañueco, who was the first politician to spread the manipulated words of the IU leader on meat production. “What does the candidate of the macro-farms offer? Lower taxes on the rich so that there is less money to pay for doctors, teachers, nurses or pediatricians”, he has highlighted.
Both the candidates and the ministers who have participated in the campaign have charged against the PP candidate and his party. “They are not democrats, what they establish where they govern are kleptocracies,” said the general secretary of Podemos, who has defined the regional president as the candidate of “traps and hoaxes.”
The second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, who has chosen to maintain a low profile in the first electoral campaign that the space faces after the departure of Pablo Iglesias, former general secretary of Podemos, has not been present at this act. Despite making a single visit in this electoral period, Díaz also entered the melee against Mañueco. “I wonder what the PP has been doing in Castilla y León during these 35 years. I think that people are already fed up with that way of doing politics that is to approach citizens through falsehoods in the electoral campaign,” said the second vice president on Thursday at the rally held in Castronuño (Valladolid), a town of just over 800 inhabitants, a bastion of the United Left since 1979.
The latest poll carried out by the CIS predicts that the result of United We Can oscillate between two and four seats. In 2019 Izquierda Unida and Podemos concurred separately. Garzón’s organization was left out of the autonomous parliament and Belarra’s got two prosecutors: Pablo Fernández for León and Laura Domínguez in Burgos. Three years later, Fernández heads the coalition, which is presented jointly for the first time in Castilla y León. With the push of Díaz and the visit of his three colleagues from the Council of Ministers, the confederal space ends the campaign with an attainable objective –according to the latest polls– to improve the result of the last elections.
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