"The PP retains its absolute majority" (El Pais), "Feijoo retains Galicia and the PSOE sinks in favor of the BNG" (La Vanguardia), "Victory for the PP and PSOE debacle", (La Razon), "Feijoo wins the match with Sanchez inGalicia" (El Periodico): these are some of the headlines in the Iberian newspapers which give an account of the victory yesterday of the Popular Party in its historic fiefdom in the north-west of Spain.
It is read by all analyzes as the reaffirmation of the key national leadership of the president of the PP, the Galician Alberto Nunez Fejioo, who in supporting his successor as governor, Alfonso Rueda, had launched the challenge, taken up and lost by the socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez after the elections July policies and to capitalize on the opposition to the amnesty law for Catalan independence activists.
The conservative party takes home its fifth absolute majority in the region with 40 seats (47.3% of the votes), despite the loss of 2 compared to 2020. But it is the important affirmation of the Galician Nationalist Bloc (Bng), the novelty, with the candidate Ana Ponton, managed to gather the useful vote on the left, and win 6 seats up to 25 deputies (31.5%) establishing herself as an alternative to the People's Party, however to the detriment of the PSOE.
With the loss of 5 seats, up to 9 deputies and 15% of the votes, the socialists brought home the worst result ever in the region.
Bad news for Pedro Sanchez, who had worked hard in the Galician campaign: a sign of a territorial weakness that sounds like an alarm bell, at the beginning of the electoral cycle in Spain, which will pass through the European elections in June, those in the Basque Country in July and will culminate with those in Catalonia in 2025.
The question that also hovers in the socialist house is whether Sanchez will continue with concessions to the independent-minded Talans, who supported him in November, or will respond more firmly.
The amnesty law has not yet been approved, while Feijoo, with his opening - later retracted - to a pardon for Puigdemont, could play the card of territorial agreements with JuntsxCat, which the PP has so far lacked in order to establish itself in regions such as Catalonia.
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