Electoral advancement

Pedro Sánchez exercised himself this Monday morning making the riskiest decision of all he could take to fit the socialist defeat in the municipal and regional elections on Sunday. The dissolution of the Cortes and the fulminant call for general elections on July 23 seeks to "clarify" – is the verb that Sánchez chose – if the Government retains the social majority that has supported it these years or if that social majority has disappeared. It is a measure of democratic hygiene to summon citizens to pronounce themselves when there is such a general, quantitative and symbolic defeat, such as that suffered by the Socialists, although it did not appear in any of the pools on the scenarios after 28-M. The protagonism of the President of the Government in the campaign has not had the positive effects that were expected and the announcement of the electoral advance contained at the same time a message of gratitude to the mayors and presidents of socialist communities who have lost their positions since Sunday night and a way to cut the internal noise and the demand for responsibilities that could be generated from now on.

The president has made use of the power to call elections in the face of evidence that a large part of the population has voted in favor of a change of government where he could activate it – in the local and regional sphere – but supported by the resistance of his party, the PSOE, which in popular vote has not sunk at all and remains 3.5 points behind the PP. The first objective of the announcement of Sánchez is presumably mobilizing a progressive electorate as shocked as in Moncloa itself and stopping what may be a change of power cycle in Spain led by the PP – with the necessary help of Vox. Sánchez will not exhaust the legislature as he had repeatedly announced and bets on advancing and facing as soon as possible the plebiscite of truth on his political figure in which the opposition had turned the local and regional appointment of this Sunday.

The disaster of the left heir to the impulse of 15-M has been resounding. Podemos loses representation in the communities where it was, such as Madrid and Valencia, and that political space suffers a generalized setback that includes the local candidacies that Yolanda Díaz had supported in the campaign. The evidence is that the right is regrouped with the absorption of Ciudadanos and the left has squandered thousands of votes in tiny candidacies that have not managed to enter the institutions serving on a plate the governments to the sum of PP and Vox. In addition to neutralizing the echo of the euphoria of the PP, the advance decided by Sánchez cuts the bleeding of confrontations in that space that must decide in 10 days if they are presented all together, and in that case, a few days later present the candidacies led by Yolanda Díaz. This Monday all the protagonists made an effort to speak in public of unity, but that word has been emptied of content because recent experience shows that they then make it impossible. The Spanish electoral reality already sufficiently proves that any possibility of reissuing the current coalition government goes through an exercise of responsibility, maturity and political pragmatism that this left has not wanted or known how to do so far. In 10 days the effect of 28-M in that space will be verified.

With the electoral advance, Sánchez has suddenly changed the pace of Spanish political life. It has used the last bullet, but perhaps also the only one available to prevent the socialist fall and agony of the left to its left.