The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, launches to conquer the Presidency of France

From Cádiz to the Elíseo.

Anne Hidalgo - born in the Cádiz town of San Fernando 62 years ago in a family reprized by the Franco regime, who emigrated for economic reasons to France in the sixties, and mayor of Paris since 2014 - plans to officially announce this Sunday what has been time is an open secret: his candidacy for the presidency of the French Republic.

The socialist Hidalgo will try to break the duopoly that the current president, the centrist Emmanuel Macron, and his main opponent, the far-right Marine Le Pen, have maintained in this country since the 2017 elections in which the former was proclaimed president.

The mayor aspires to represent a left that goes beyond its formation, the Socialist Party (PS): an ideological spectrum that includes environmentalists, European social democrats like her and leftists of the old school.

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A key idea in the candidacy is the government of the cities, anchored in the territories in opposition to the exercise of power during the Macron years, vertical and concentrated in the Elysee palace. "Anne Hidalgo relies heavily on the PS and the mayors: for there to be true decentralization, the mayors must conquer central power," says Jean-Louis Missika, who was Hidalgo's deputy in the mayor's office during his first term and today he is editorial manager of the Terra Nova think tank. "If he wins," he adds, "it will be with the idea that the nature of French governance must be changed."

If she won, Hidalgo would be the first female president of France and the first born abroad. The mayor holds dual French and Spanish nationality, explains journalist Serge Raffy in the biography

Anne Hidalgo. Une ambition qui vient de loin

(Anne Hidalgo. An ambition that comes from afar), recently published.

Raffy travels in a conversation with EL PAÍS the particular geography of Hidalgo. First, the Andalusia where she was born, where her grandfather had suffered cruel persecution during the war and after the war, and where her father lived a Dickensian childhood. "All of Hidalgo's childhood is covered by this family legend: never forget the civil war and the Franco regime," says Raffy. Second scenario, the working-class suburbs of Lyon, the French city where the Hidalgo family settled in search of economic opportunities. The candidate

in pectore

He has not passed through the educational institutions of the elite of his country;

he has the faith in France - in the values ​​of the Republic and of secularism - of those who are French at will.

"His father was a worker, a proletarian," says the biographer.

"And she lived in her childhood and adolescence with a father who had a visceral fear of a work accident."

According to Raffy, that Hidalgo was a labor inspector by profession is explained by this context.

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There is a third scenario: Paris, where Hidalgo makes a political career and, in the mayor's office, leaves behind a green revolution, accelerated by the pandemic, but also an image of a leader that polarizes, a mayor who, as Raffy writes, “owns art both to be flattered and to detest ”.

Cádiz, Lyon, Paris: the last section, the road to the Elysee is not easy.

In the polls, it barely reaches 10% of the vote, far from the second round, in which the two most voted candidates are classified.

Another problem is that, since Macron arrived at the Elysee, the PS has been seen several times on the brink of extinction.

And the left is divided into irreconcilable fractions.

Together, these fractions would add up to around 30% of the vote, but if the populist left, the ecologist and the socialist of Hidalgo present themselves separately, they risk neutralizing themselves.

"Nobody knows if Anne Hidalgo can win," explains by phone Frédéric Dabi, general director of the Ifop demographic institute.

"Seven months before the vote, as now, there have been presidential elections in which everything was written," he says.

"But there have been others with many surprises."

At this point, five years ago, Macron was a remote hypothesis and it was assumed that the president would be the conservative Alain Juppé.

"Anne Hidalgo is not a favorite, not even close," continues Dabi.

But he adds: “He has a presidential image.

She is a woman.

He runs the first city of France.

It has a rather excellent international image.

It embodies a social and environmental trend ”.

To qualify for the second round and have a chance to reach the Elysee, there should be a combination of circumstances that today, with Macron and Le Pen leading the polls for months, seems unlikely.

Missika, who was key in Hidalgo's re-election campaign in the 2020 municipal elections, outlines a possible path for the comeback. "Number one: win the fight with environmentalists," he explains. That is to say, get either the ecologists to join her, or that they elect in the primaries that have organized a candidate so radical that the moderate ecologist voter prefers Hidalgo, whose environmental credentials she has left out of doubt in Paris. "Number two: get the useful vote," adds Missika. This required a rise in the polls by Hidalgo and a carry-over effect that would lead the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of the populist left, to focus their vote on the candidate with the most options. "And number three: bet because Mrs. Le Pen is weakened by a candidacy of Éric Zemmour", he adds,Alluding to the far-right polemicist who is considering launching himself into the race and who could take votes from Le Pen. A collapse of Le Pen would leave room for Hidalgo, or a candidate from the traditional right like former minister Xavier Bertrand, to qualify.

There are many

yeses

, many conditionals.

But even a defeat with an honorable result would give oxygen to the weakened SP.

The 2022 presidential elections don't have to be the end of the story.

They can also be a rehearsal for the next ones, in 2027.

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