PP and PSOE challenge in Galicia when Feijóo questions the absolute majority

The first electoral contest of the new political year takes place in Galicia in less than a month.

And there the PP and PSOE have gathered this weekend in separate conclaves to mobilize each vote now.

The appointment at the polls is the first after the fiasco of Alberto Núñez Feijóo on 23-J, when he achieved an insufficient majority to be able to govern in the general elections when he was already in La Moncloa.

In addition, it is the first held after Pedro Sánchez's transfer to the amnesty law, whose processing process continues to take steps in the Cortes in the midst of a climate of high voltage due to the frontal opposition of the popular ones.

The latter are also up in arms against the recent concessions of the Executive to Junts for the validation of three decrees.

On February 18, the popular Alfonso Rueda and the socialist José Ramón Gómez Besteiro will measure their strength in Galicia, but the result will have a great impact at the national level.

Aware of this, PP and PSOE will do the rest in the coming weeks to try to capture every last ballot: the final scenario may be left in the hands of a handful of votes.

According to the latest institute barometer 40dB.

For EL PAÍS and Cadena SER, the PP would obtain a comfortable absolute majority with 42 seats and the PSOE would continue as the third force with 14, behind the BNG, with 19. But the PP is not confident.

“I ask Galicians to mobilize and vote en masse.

When there is low participation, the PP governs;

and when there is massive participation, the left governs.

So, full ballot boxes and a sure change,” Sánchez appealed this Sunday at the closing of the political convention that the PSOE held in A Coruña.

“Don't take anything for granted.

To those who voted for me during the last 15 years, I will ask you to trust Alfonso Rueda,” Feijóo launched at the closing of the 26th interparliamentary meeting of the popular parties organized in Ourense.

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The PP brought together around 1,000 participants in its event, including public officials and other members.

Within the Popular Party they trust in a clear majority of the president of the Xunta.

But there is also a fear that Rueda will not reach an absolute majority, necessary to revalidate the mandate, crucial both for the candidate himself and for reaffirming Feijóo's leadership.

There is fear and, above all, caution, given what happened in the general elections in July.

Hence, the popular leader called this Sunday to concentrate the vote around the PP, appealing to the dissatisfied voters of PSOE and those of Vox.

Furthermore, he reiterated in his speech that we should not take anything for granted or trust surveys.

“I will ask whoever supported Vox to vote for the only alternative so that the

Sanchista

party does not govern in Galicia.

I will ask those who voted for the socialist party to trust Rueda.

“Don’t take anything for granted,” he expressed.

During his speech, Feijóo attacked the Executive, but focused his message on a speech with a marked Galician accent: “We do not want to bring the problems of other places to Galicia.”

The leader of the PP will be very present in the campaign in a terrain that he knows well, both because it is his homeland and because he has won four consecutive absolute majorities.

Rueda debuts after Feijóo achieved an overwhelming result of 42 seats in 2020. Now, according to most polls, the popular party would achieve a comfortable victory.

But the Vox factor could mean that the range of seats does not allow revalidation of the absolute.

Génova sees it unlikely that Santiago Abascal's party will enter the Galician Parliament, but the votes cast by the ultras could make Rueda lose some deputies.

In Ourense, on the other hand, the localist Democracia Ourensana party, which since 2019 has held the mayor's office of the capital, is attending for the first time.

01:05

Sánchez: "Galicia has a government installed in apathy, lies and bad management"

Feijóo urged Vox on Wednesday not to appear in Galicia because it puts that absolute majority at risk, in the first clear recognition that the head of the opposition made in public of that fear.

This Sunday he extended his appeal to dissatisfied socialist voters, a strategy also followed during the 23-J campaign, when internal polls of the PP and some media predicted that Feijóo would sweep, something that ultimately did not happen.

Faced with the anticipated euphoria of July, caution now reigns.

The memory of Touriño

Emilio Pérez Touriño, the last socialist president of the achieved by Manuel Fraga, who was just one seat short of the absolute majority.

That mobilization that Touriño carried out, and made possible a coalition government with the nationalists that only lasted one term - Feijóo won the 38 seats in 2009 - is the one that the PSOE would like to get closer to.

In his favor is that in the 2019 and 2023 general elections he fell short of half a million votes.

The problem is that in the municipal elections of March 28 they decreased to 420,000 votes, even so well above the regional elections of 2020.

The atmosphere in the PSOE has nothing to do with what was in the campaigns in which Feijóo was the candidate and was consolidated in the Xunta.

For the first time in almost two decades, they see a change of government as feasible in the great bastion of the PP in the northwest of the peninsula.

But the reversal requires bringing out of apathy the progressive abstentionists who in the regional elections take defeat for granted.

“Sanchism is that Feijóo and Abascal do not form a government and here in Galicia the same thing will happen to Rueda,” Sánchez predicted.

“I have good vibes in Galicia.

I believe that the response that the PP has given to the

pellet

crisis is the symptom of something more serious, of the exhaustion of a political project of the PP in Galicia, which is overcome by mismanagement, arrogance and lies.

That is why we all have to get involved,” he insisted.

The PSOE's strategy is to nationalize the campaign, as the PP has done after Rueda pointed out Sánchez as his rival on 18-F.

A decision that goes against Feijóo's campaigns in a strictly Galician key.

The current leader of the PP came to jibarize the PP logo in 2020, when he signed his fourth absolute majority in Galicia, but Génova has now opted for a radical turn in one of his great bastions.

Ferraz and La Moncloa celebrate it because the PSOE obtains much better results in Galicia in general: in 2019 and 2023 it doubled, with half a million votes, those obtained in the last regional elections.

“It is a risk, but it is the opportunity we have,” they explain in the direction of the Galician socialists, in a veiled allusion to the amnesty, the flag that the right waves against the PSOE and against the Government.

Directly, the Galician PP warns that Rueda's affront to Sánchez is limited to appearances by the president of the Xunta in national media or appearances in Madrid.

Along these lines, his idea is to “regionalize” the campaign by focusing on the issues that concern the Xunta.

Sources from the national leadership assure that they will accompany the Galicians in the formula they wish to adopt.

While among the regional barons there is debate about how to focus the campaign: whether to focus the message on Galicia or on the clash with Sánchez.

The framework of the PP opposition will be based in any case, both in Madrid and Galicia, on defending “equality” of Spaniards in issues that go beyond the amnesty, whether economic, legal or social.

The goal of the socialists is for participation to exceed 60%.

To engage these voters, Sánchez and the senior staff of the party and the Government will focus on the Galicia campaign.

The president has planned events in the four weeks ahead until the elections.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will also get involved in the campaign, as he already did in that of 23-J, in which he was fundamental for the PSOE to overcome the

shock

of 28-M and believe in a comeback that finally occurred against all odds .

The seats at stake are, according to socialist and popular sources, the last in contention - the so-called remains - in A Coruña, Pontevedra and Lugo.

The Atlantic provinces are precisely the ones that concentrate the urban vote and that is what the progressive bloc clings to in the face of the more rural implementation of the PP.

Meanwhile, on the popular side, all the regional barons with power supported Rueda last week and will also count on Mariano Rajoy, despite the latest information about Operation Catalonia.

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