Feijóo: a matter of expectations

Spain once again shows its complexity, but also the demand for pacts and the Spaniards make it clear that they do not want a government of the extreme right. Contrary to what is claimed, if the Popular Party can only negotiate with Vox, this is a problem of the Popular Party. The other conclusion does not affect the popular force so much as its leader. What will Feijóo do? The Galician candidate had raised expectations too much: that is the key word of the night and of these elections. Driven by a hyperventilating media right that set the winning frame from the beginning, everything that left the photo, from there, became abject. The PP has won, it is not a bitter victory like that of 1996, but useless because the blue formation does not seem capable of governing.

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Elections 23-J, live results

What has happened so that the least likely option has finally occurred? If in the regional and municipal elections in May the Socialists had a week left over from the campaign, in these, that week they had more than enough for the popular. Starting with an ace in the sleeve has its advantages if you know how to take advantage, but that winning framework as an entry bonus, fed by most polls, made them propose a campaign too comfortable, even haughty. Politics, however, does not respond to natural phenomena. There are no tsunamis that count; not even the blue winds that come from Europe can knock down an elementary maxim: victories are worked and Sánchez, as always, wanted to win. If there is any tsunami in these elections, it has probably been that of the extraordinary mobilization of the left produced during the last week.

Sánchez gives the umpteenth sign of his capacity for resistance: he exceeds by half a million votes the result of 2019 with a wild Popular Party campaign, and remains close to the blue formation in votes. Bipartisanship is strengthened, although we did not recover it. Vox wins by the minimum to Add the third place: it loses 19 seats compared to the 7 that loses the space represented by Podemos. Yolanda Díaz has endured the type very well. But these elections will remain for three things. A bad management of the expectations of a PP that gave in advance the party won by a landslide against a PSOE campaign that has been reasonably good, also for the management of expectations. The campaign will be remembered, secondly, for the lies and for that vileness that Muñoz Molina described with the precision of a surgeon: you cannot blatantly disregard the truth while losing respect for a journalist who does her job well. And, above all, the use of expressions that were part of the insurmountable red lines that we had given ourselves as a country cannot be trivialized. All. The additional chapter is that of the resistance of Sánchez, who could govern if he manages to get Junts to abstain.

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