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Elections in Spain: the erosion of the PSOE in power and the new leaderships in the Popular Party

2023-05-29T01:10:50.052Z

Highlights: An electoral cycle began this Sunday in Spain that will culminate in six months, with the general elections in December. Six months that the governing left will be uphill while the right that aspires to do so is watering its mouth. Pedro Sánchez, president of the government, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the opposition, met in an election that, despite not being so, was played in a tone of national contest. In the December general elections, Spaniards will decide if they prefer to continue being governed by this left or if it is time to change course.


In the December general elections, Spaniards will decide if they prefer to continue being governed by this left or if it is time to change course, as they made clear this Sunday.


An electoral cycle began this Sunday in Spain that will culminate in six months, with the general elections in December. Six months that the governing left will be uphill while the right that aspires to do so is watering its mouth.

After a year of verbal mourning, finally the social democrat Pedro Sánchez, president of the government, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the opposition, met in an election that, despite not being so, was played in a tone of national contest.

This May 28 was a first rehearsal since Núñez Feijóo became president of the Popular Party (PP) – in April 2022 – for the December staging, where Spaniards will decide if they prefer to continue being governed by the left or if it is time to change course, as they made clear this Sunday.

The PSOE arrived at these municipal and regional elections with some fatigue and wear and tear for the five years of Pedro Sánchez in power, a management that was pulled by disagreements with Podemos, the minority partner in the coalition with which Sánchez governs since 2020, or concessions to pro-independence parties in exchange for parliamentary support.

The celebrations of the Popular Party in Madrid after the triumph. AFP Photo

The fall of the PSOE


Far from the well-toned muscle that socialism showed in 2019, when it had just evicted Mariano Rajoy from La Moncloa with a motion of censure, the loss of emblematic territories this 28M predicts a second half of the year in which the only stimulus for Sánchez will be the presidency of the European Union that Spain will have in its hands from July 1.

In that 2019, the PP suffered an unprecedented bleeding and lost the elections by a difference of 1.5 million votes.

However, this, the 28M, will be a long party night for the blues, the color that identifies the Popular Party. Although the hangover of the day after causes them chronic headache they hardly become aware that if the PP comes to govern in so many autonomous communities – as never before in its history – it is because it agreed to get into bed with the extreme right of Vox.

Its leader, Santiago Abascal, spoke of Vox on election night as "the party absolutely necessary to build the alternative to socialism." And as soon as the polling stations closed, it was learned that he had already formed the negotiating commissions that will begin the tug-of-war with those of Núñez Feijóo.

Since the last elections of 2019, the PP recovered almost two million votes that, to tell the truth, are not only its own merit: the dissolution of the liberal party Ciudadanos -which in 2019 gathered 1.6 million-, gave it a vitamin shock that today allows it to celebrate the conquest of 30 provincial capitals and 9 of the 12 autonomous communities that renewed authorities this Sunday.

"We have recovered the best version of our party," said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, president of the PP, when he went out to the balcony of the headquarters on Genoa Street escorted by the best students of the party: Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, and José Luis Martínez-Almeida, mayor of the Spanish capital. Both candidates for the honor roll of employees of the month: they presented themselves to be re-elected in their territories, a task that they not only achieved but will govern with an absolute majority.

Leadership


That 31.5 percent of the votes that made the PP the most elected party on May 28 also gives relief to the leadership of Núñez Feijóo, the Galician caudillo who left his small payment to assume the leadership of the party a year ago.

It happened after the implosion of the dome of the popular that produced the dispute between Díaz Ayuso and Pablo Casado, president of the PP between 2018 and 2022.

Pilar Alegría, the PSOE spokeswoman, after the defeat. AFP Photo

Díaz Ayuso, a journalism graduate who does not hide her rejection of Peronism or shy away from criticizing Kirchnerism, denied to Clarín that her next step is to run for governor of Spain. However, the tornado effect that causes at the polls does not cease to be a ghost, as latent as disturbing, if it were to occur to her to dispute the chair of the dome of the PP to aspire to be president of the Spaniards.

Núñez Feijóo liked to say from the balcony that Spain is facing a new political cycle.

In November of last year, days before a tour of Argentina, he had confessed to Clarín: "I travel as a candidate for president of the government of Spain."

The results of this Sunday could bring him closer to that longing, although in the PP they prefer to feign dementia and not name Vox.

It was half past twelve at night when Díaz Ayuso, Martínez-Almeida and Núñez Feijóo came out to greet the balcony. After appealing to the desire and "the liberal way of life", Díaz Ayuso said goodbye with a "Long live Madrid, Long live Spain!", leitmotif with which Abascal usually closes his speeches to say goodbye in the acts of Vox.

There will be little time for the festivities: on Monday 29 starts the pre-campaign for the December generals.

See also

Elections in Spain: the Popular Party prevailed and snatched key territories such as Valencia and Seville from the PSOE

Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Patricia Bullrich and María Eugenia Vidal congratulated Isabel Díaz Ayuso for the triumph of the PP in the elections in Spain

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-05-29

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