The PP demands that Feijóo snatch some weighty community from the PSOE on 28-M

The forecast has changed in just a few months.

In January, the PP proclaimed that an "electoral tsunami" awaited Pedro Sánchez on May 28.

A little earlier, in November, the leader of the PP allowed himself to bring his high expectations about the regional and municipal elections face to face with the president in the Senate, and blurted out, defiantly, that in May "a motion of no confidence" awaited him in all the town halls of Spain”.

At that time, the PP also maintained that the regional elections would function as "the first round" of the general elections scheduled for December.

On Monday, however, Alberto Núñez Feijóo surprised by acknowledging before the barons, in the national executive committee, that the PSOE is going to "endure" in May better than in the legislative elections at the end of the year.

In a short time the melody has changed, and it no longer sounds like a victory so resounding that it puts Feijóo on one foot in La Moncloa.

At the start of the pre-campaign, the leader has cooled expectations, aware that the PSOE is resisting and that just winning is no use for him.

The party expects him to prevail in votes in the municipal elections in the whole of Spain, but also to wrest from the Socialists some of their first-rate regional strongholds, such as Castilla-La Mancha, Aragon or the Valencian Community.

To sell a change in the cycle, it is not enough to remain at a table or to conquer only a minor position, say leaders of all levels.

"Some relevant community has to turn to our side," sums up a territorial leader of the PP.

But what has happened from the triumphalist proclamations to the more contained vision of Feijóo on May 28?

The same Monday as his speech before the executive committee, the leader had had breakfast with three new national polls in which the Socialists held up.

In the 40dB.

For EL PAÍS, the photograph said that the game begins with practically a tie in voting intentions between the PSOE and the PP.

According to this poll, the Socialists placed a 27.4% vote estimate, only six tenths of the PP (28%).

The reality is that the government party, despite the wear and tear, is resisting.

"It was expected that the PSOE would have arrived at the start of the pre-campaign with more lead in its wings," recognized a PP adviser on Monday with the polls fresh out of the oven.

More information

Feijóo, on the regional and municipal elections: "Sánchez's party will hold out better than in the general ones"

Feijóo, interpreted in the PP, has corrected the shot to adapt to the new circumstances.

"At the beginning in Genoa they set expectations too high, and now they have adjusted because even if we win in votes we are not going to sweep, the PSOE is strong and has good candidates," analyzes a veteran leader.

The party expects a "balanced" result with the PSOE in May, points out a prominent baron, although the leadership maintains that the PP will be the first force in the municipal elections - which would already imply a reversal because the last ones, in 2019, were won the PSOE with more than six and a half million votes, for the five million that the PP achieved― and that they will get more mayors and more autonomous governments.

"Getting only La Rioja would be a failure"

"I am not satisfied that my party has three autonomous governments," Feijóo said before the barons in the executive committee, referring to the three places that the PP is playing for in May ―Madrid, Murcia and Ceuta―.

But in the territorial power of the PP they specify that scale of demand: it is not enough, for example, to get only La Rioja, the smallest autonomous community in Spain and that the popular take for granted that they recover for the right, but it is necessary to strike a blow to the socialists in one of their great strongholds.

"The PSOE plays defensively and we attack", analyzes a leader, "but we need to win votes and win some relevant place held by the Socialists, such as Castilla-La Mancha, Aragón or the Valencian Community, if we want to sell the change of cycle”.

In the team closest to the leader, they recognize that the "checkmate" of Sánchez would be achieved with the symbolic crown of the Valencian Community, which in the most recent polls of the PP, just over 40 days before the elections, is achieved in sum with Vox, although nobody wants to take anything for granted.

“The weight of the candidates in these elections is very relevant.

The communities and town halls are going to make up the wear and tear of Pedro Sánchez.

The realistic calculation is that, especially in the autonomous communities, everything is up in the air”, points out a member of the campaign committee.

Feijóo, say those around him, is usually prudent in forecasts and demanding with his own.

In the closed-door meeting of the executive committee on Monday, he gave one of lime and one of sand, according to sources present at the conclave.

The leader told the barons there that the last internal poll held by the party, from before Vox's motion of no confidence, says that the PP already reaches 34% of the vote and 143 seats nationwide, a better scenario than the one drawn by the polls published in the newspapers.

At the same time, he warned them that they must prepare so that Sánchez has a missile ready against the PP, and demanded that they throw the rest.

"Sundays are over," he summed up.

The leader's demand with his candidates in May is total, but it is back and forth.

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