Local vote, national consequence

It is a classic of regional and municipal election nights: "We must not extrapolate these results, each election is different."

The leadership of the parties makes an effort in the first hours to firmly ensure that nothing will change, that a bad local result will not have national consequences.

But the truth is that all the local elections in recent years have caused political earthquakes, and the ones on May 28 will be no different.

Everything will be oriented with that result.

From the recomposition of the space to the left of the PSOE to the expectations of the left bloc itself, depending on whether the Valencian Community is lost or preserved;

going through the PP itself, increasingly restless with the drop in valuation of its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the resistance of Vox.

The parties deny it in public,

Just do a little recent review.

The 2021 Catalan elections, which were a disaster for the PP, were the first major blow to the leadership of Pablo Casado, who responded desperately, announcing that he would sell his headquarters at Calle Génova 13 to distance his image from corruption.

Already then Alberto Núñez Feijóo began to show his paw as an internal rival and said that he did not agree with that sale, which he later paralyzed when he became president of the formation.

The 2022 Castilla y León elections, which elevated Vox, unleashed the final operation against Casado, who ended up falling just two weeks after those elections.

On the other hand, the early elections in Madrid in 2021, a total disaster for the PSOE, which did not even manage to be the second party, caused the biggest government crisis that Pedro Sánchez has made two months later, which relieved almost all of his hard core and removed his hitherto all-powerful chief of staff, Iván Redondo;

the organization secretary of the socialist party, José Luis Ábalos, and the first vice president, Carmen Calvo.

And the Andalusian elections of 2022, another great fiasco for the socialists with an absolute majority of the PP, led Sánchez to turn to the left in which he is still installed, to change the leadership of the PSOE and the spokesperson in Congress, and to start an offensive against Feijóo.

This seems to have paid off.

La Moncloa maintains this offensive against the PP strong and now Sánchez is also taking advantage of what the Government sees as an error in the book of the popular: the Andalusian law that legalizes unauthorized wells in the surroundings of Doñana.

Sánchez does not give truce to the popular ones, who have begun to back down.

With so many simultaneous elections, each one will keep the data that suits them best, but there is an element that no one can deny as the axis of the balance: which side does the Valencian Community fall on.

That will be the great test of the resistance of the left bloc or of the strength of the conservative wave.

In the Valencian PSOE they transmit tranquility, and most of the surveys bet on the continuity of Ximo Puig, a president who has achieved a good evaluation not only on the left but also in the center and business sectors, with a well-studied policy that included a reduction in personal income tax that La Moncloa flatly rejected.

But in the PP they are excited about the possibility of a reversal, especially if Podemos fails to go beyond 5%.

Throughout Spain this line is constant: the PSOE resists better than the parties to its left,

The municipal and regional elections, and especially this Valencian battle, are so decisive that many pollsters believe that the polls on generals that are being carried out now, including that of the CIS, are worthless because the result of May 28 will change completely. the mood of the voters, as happened after the Madrid elections of 2021 or the Andalusian elections of 2022. There will be depression or euphoria in one of the two blocks and that will condition the general elections, as has almost always happened.

In recent weeks, a trend has been detected in the polls of stagnation on the right and improvement in the expectations of the left bloc.

It is not a radical turn, it is a soft movement that could not be consolidated in the municipal ones.

But this change is altering the perceptions of the Government and its boss in the headquarters of the autonomies.

While the president of the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, continues with his policy of getting away from Sánchez - he again missed his meeting in Toledo on Friday, this time for a trip to Brussels -, not everyone has it so clear.

“If you ask me a few months ago, I tell you yes, it's better to distance yourself from the president, but right now, with the latest reforms and the progress of the economy, Sánchez and the Government add up.

We are going to ask that many more ministers come than expected, I think Emiliano is wrong ”, sums up an autonomous leader.

Even so, they are all looking for very local campaigns, fleeing the tension in Madrid to focus on their presidents, who are better valued than Sánchez.

Each community is different and the combinations are very different.

In Castilla-La Mancha, for example, the PSOE would like a weak Vox, which does not enter the distribution of seats, and that allows it to go into a hand-to-hand battle with the PP that it has almost won.

In other places, a strong Vox helps the Socialists to beat the PP in the key provinces and take the prize of the first party.

The result will also be decisive for the internal battle between Sumar and Podemos, and with it, for the coalition itself.

Despite the crisis of the

, the worst of the entire legislature, Podemos insists that its ministers will not leave the Government and in La Moncloa they assure that Sánchez will not kick them out.

The president, say his people, wants to vindicate the management, and breaking the coalition would be to agree with the right.

In addition, he wants to have the door open to repeat it if the results of the generals allow it, and breaking it could close it forever.

But there is a scenario that would change things.

A definitive break between Sumar and Podemos, which would lead them to present themselves separately, would make everything rethink, several ministers explain.

It is not an option that anyone contemplates as probable in the Government.

In La Moncloa they continue to think that Sumar and Podemos will end up reaching an agreement because it suits everyone.

But that difficult negotiation will depend a lot on the electoral result and the correlation of forces that it determines within the space to the left of the PSOE.

Again, the entry or not of Podemos in the Valencian Community would be decisive here.

So all roads lead to the same place: there is little more than a month left to have the electoral drawing that will mark the path to the general elections well defined.

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