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Participation in the regional elections in Galicia drops 2.3 percentage points at midday compared to the 2020 elections, according to official data.
At 12:00, 17.09% of the more than 2.6 million Galicians with the right to vote had voted, compared to 19.42% at the 2020 event, held in the middle of the pandemic.
The main candidates for the Xunta have already exercised their right to vote, calling, as usual, for citizens to mobilize.
The BNG candidate, Ana Pontón, has asked for “massive participation”, “excited that a new time will open in Galicia”.
The PSdG candidate, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, has declared that he has “good vibes” regarding the results of his party, despite the polls, while the president of the Xunta and PP candidate, Alfonso Rueda, has said “ optimistic” and has asked that Galicians “be encouraged to vote freely and
meaningfully
.”
For her part, Marta Lois (Sumar) hopes that the “hope detected during these weeks will be translated at the polls.”
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Election day in Galicia
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The country
Express analysis |
Podemos: vindication of identity in the most difficult campaign
Podemos faces very complicated elections in Galicia, a priori without any option of obtaining representation in Parliament, from which it left in 2020. The naturalness of the former A Coruña councilor, Isabel Faraldo, chosen as the head of the list of a solo candidacy ( the party bases turned their backs on the pre-agreement reached with Sumar) and the design of very modest events have given the campaign a touch of proximity.
Aware that it is a profile that is little known to the general public, the head of the list for the Xunta made necessity a virtue and even explained in the debate on TVG that the fact that she showed up, “it was as if you did it.”
“I'm like you, I have the same problems as you,” she said to the camera in her final golden minute.
Faced with more technical speeches, Faraldo uses the strength of his voice, he knows how to question the audience and in a moment of withdrawal from the formation, he has claimed the identity of the brand: “It is the first time that a voter will be able to choose a ballot that says Podemos,” he claimed at the rally in A Coruña along with the leaders Ione Belarra and Irene Montero.
The support of the former general secretary of the party, Pablo Iglesias, a few days ago after having indicated that the best option was to vote for the BNG, has also allowed him to have some focus in these 15 days and hold his own in a contest that is taking place practically lost.
ACT.18 FEB 2024 - 15:04
Jacobo Garcia
Express analysis |
Jácome, the Galician Trump who wants to be decisive
When Donald Trump won the elections in the United States in January 2017, a wiry, talkative man with little hair celebrated his victory in a bar in the old area of Ourense.
Gonzalo Pérez Jácome was at that time an unknown 47-year-old councilor who had just founded a party, Democracia Ourensana (DO), which ran again and again without success for the mayor of Ourense.
That victory of the American magnate helped him incorporate a way of doing politics in which attracting attention is more important than the money invested.
Jácome toasted Trump that night and incorporated all the possible eccentricities to achieve his goal.
Since then it has not stopped growing.
Eccentric, crazy and groundbreaking, two years later he became mayor of Ourense, one of the four Galician provincial capitals, with more than 100,000 inhabitants.
With a program focused on denouncing the contempt that, in his opinion, Ourense experiences with respect to the rest of Galicia, Jácome and his candidate, Armando Ojea, have managed to convince a young electorate, who mainly voted for the PP, that their party is the only one capable of defending his land before the Xunta.
The strategy could give him a seat that would be vital for either bloc if they do not achieve an absolute majority.
Although he defines himself as having a “liberal” ideology, he says he is open to negotiating with anyone who brings money and investments to Ourense.
ACT.18 FEB 2024 - 14:30
The country
Ballots arranged at the Rosalía de Castro school in Lugo.
/ Eliseo Trigo / EFE
What has happened in the last few hours
-
Schools have opened without incident.
The constitution of tables, 3,951 in 2,346 schools in Galicia, has been carried out normally on a Sunday that woke up with good weather and fog in the south of the autonomous community.
-
The candidates call to the polls:
The BNG candidate, Ana Pontón, has called for the “massive participation” of Galicians, “excited that a new time will open in Galicia.
The PSdG candidate, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, has declared that he has “good vibes” regarding his party's results, despite the polls.
The president of the Xunta and candidate of the PP, Alfonso Rueda, has called himself “optimistic and has asked that Galicians “be encouraged to vote freely and meaningfully and set an example of normality.”
For her part, Marta Lois (Sumar) hopes that the “hope detected during these weeks will be translated at the polls.”
-
Participation decreased compared to 2020.
In the first participation preview, published by the Xunta at 12:00, 17.09% was recorded.
A decrease of 2.33 points compared to 2020, when it was 19.42% at this time.
ACT.18 FEB 2024 - 14:00
Silvia R. Pontevedraxinzo de limia
Women dressed as witches in Xinzo de Limia, in Ourense, during election day.
/SRP
Xinzo de Limia, between the elections and the Carnival
The town of Xinzo de Limia, in Ourense, is one of the towns on the planet with the longest Carnival (or Entroido).
From January 20 until this Sunday the 18th, known as Piñata Sunday, the neighbors live immersed in the party and manage to dress up differently each day, including this Sunday, which began before noon with brass bands through the streets and will end at dusk with the last festival of the festivities, when the polling stations in the municipal capital and the villages have already closed.
Although the king character of the Xinzo festivities are the Screens, ancestral and almost mythological beings who come out masked and armed with dried and inflated cow bladders with which they incite anyone who is not disguised on the street, most of the What neighbors do is dramatize, parody, represent scenes in groups, as Meli, Lina, Esther, Lola, Sole, Isa and Carmen have done, for example.
They are a group of friends united by music and environmental causes who have set up an alternative polling station, with a large pumpkin instead of an urn, and countless magic potions to scare away the
meigallo
(haunt) and combat the “curse of the
carrexo
.” ", that is, the hauling or transportation of voters to the polling stations, generally elderly and disabled, by groups interested in guiding the color of their ballots.
Ourense is, precisely, the Galician province that registers the most complaints for carrexo
in each electoral event
.
These neighbors of Xinzo de Limia have prepared various concoctions in front of the people, “some very tasty and others with terrible traps,” says Xosé Santos, another neighbor.
Piñata Sunday is the fifth (after Fareleiro, Oleiro, Corredoiro and Entroido) of the festive calendar of and Laza, although in reality it is a polyhedron with its own traditions in countless municipalities.
“For us it is not a farewell party for the flesh, Carnival, in a religious sense,” explains Santos, “but an entrance, an Entroido, to spring and the rebirth of life, that is why it is so colorful.”
Today the elegant Screens no longer appear, but all of Xinzo dresses up and many neighbors have come to vote, yes, uncovering their faces when identifying themselves to the president and the members of the table.
ACT.18 FEB 2024 - 13:40
Xosé Hermida
Express analysis |
Feijóo's most decisive hour
Two years ago, the then leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, pushed his partner and president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, to anticipate the elections in that community.
Casado needed an electoral trophy and some polls promised him a great victory in Castilian and Leonese lands.
Since elections would also be held in Andalusia a few months later, the PP leadership dreamed of a dazzling succession of successes at the polls that would take its leader to the threshold of La Moncloa.
The milkmaid's story did not make it past the first season.
The popular ones were left with a pyrrhic victory in Castilla y León in the face of a great escalation by Vox, with which they were forced to sign their first government pacts.
Casado barely lasted a few weeks at the head of the PP.
Still limping after the setback of 23-J and on the back of the great national crusade against the amnesty, Alberto Núñez Feijóo devised another great triumphal journey, starting in his Galician land and ending in the European elections in June.
The meeting in Galicia seemed very simple, and Feijóo's successor in the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, anticipated the elections to February in the conviction that he would achieve a brilliant victory and in the process give air to the national leader of the party.
Today we will see how the maneuver ends, although the bed of roses that the PP imagined seems to have been frustrated during the campaign, partly due to its own mistakes and partly due to the great successes of the BNG and its candidate, Ana Pontón.
The Galicians decide today their Government, but also the fate of their successful president for 13 years.
It has been Feijóo himself who has turned this battle into something personal.
That is why today's appointment has become the most decisive hour for the Galician politician.
And even more so after the dust raised by the confessions of the PP leadership about the deals with Junts to canvass support for the investiture of its leader.
For Feijóo it is an all or nothing duel.
Either the PP renews its absolute majority or a specter with Casado's face will begin to haunt again at number 13, Madrid's Génova Street.
ACT.18 FEB 2024 - 13:30
Paula Chouza
Express analysis |
Add: Díaz plays at home for his regional debut
Sumar seeks to refute this Sunday what was predicted by the polls and achieve entry into the Galician Parliament.
Yolanda Díaz, leader of the left-wing coalition, is risking the debut of her project in some regional elections and she is also doing it at home.
The second vice president of the Government is an old acquaintance of Galician politics.
She already attended the Xunta alone when she was leader of the extra-parliamentary Esquerda Unida and later joined forces with Xosé Manuel Beiras' Anova in 2012, an experiment that was then a success, although now the party has turned its back on Sumar.
The elections come one month after the first assembly of the formation and with the debate on the weight of the parties in the new space still open.
For better or worse, the results will impact the platform's next steps.
The key to saving the furniture is to get representation in A Coruña and Pontevedra, where the bulk of its voters are traditionally concentrated.
Throughout a very difficult campaign, with a projection that has gone from more to less in contrast to a BNG that has skyrocketed in the polls, its leaders have repeated like a mantra that the two seats in those provinces are the ones that would allow the PP to be dislodged. of the Xunta de Galicia after 15 years of absolute majorities.
“If Sumar enters, Rueda falls,” Marta Lois, the head of the list, has stressed in each speech.
The thesis of the formation is that if the threshold necessary to enter (5%) is not reached, due to the distribution of the d'Hondt law, this support would favor the party with the most votes, the PP.
And that in a tight scenario like the one shown by the studies, two fewer deputies would leave the conservatives without the absolute.
Sumar's challenge, however, is complex: fighting against that dual vote that could choose its ballot in the general elections and would now opt for the BNG.
ACT.18 FEB 2024 - 13:00
The country
Participation drops 2.33 points at 12:00 compared to 2020
In the first preview of participation, published by the Xunta at 12:00, 17.09% has been registered.
A decrease of 2.33 points compared to 2020, when it was 19.42% at this time.
Participation has decreased in all provinces: in A Coruña it has been 16.69% (2.10% less);
in Lugo, 17.71% (0.49% less);
in Ourense, 19.27% (2.43% less);
and in Pontevedra, 16.64% (3.21% less).
The external vote has also been reported, which was 6.15% of the entire census, which made up 476,514 voters.
About 29,300 ballots.
This vote will be recounted starting February 26.
Regarding the comparison with 2020, the spokesperson for the weather at the time of voting.”
In any case, he added: “The assessment must be done at the end to see the real comparison once election day is over.”
ACT.18 FEB 2024 - 12:48
Maria Fernandez
Express analysis |
José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, between the vice presidency and the third force in Parliament
This campaign has been bittersweet for the candidate for the presidency of the Xunta for the PSOE, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro (Lugo, 56 years old).
He goes to the polls this Sunday after the PSOE did everything on its part to make the slogan “desta vai” (this time yes) true.
He has been supported by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and by former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, but not even his surprising electoral promise to make the AP-9 free, the toll highway that links the autonomous community from north to south, has managed to change the direction of the polls.
The CIS polls, of 4db for EL PAÍS, Sigma2, Sondaxe and Gad3 that have been known these days give a range of between 9 and 14 deputies in the Pazo do Hórreo, headquarters of the autonomous Parliament (currently the party has 14 seats ).
Obtaining less representation is unknown territory for the socialists: it would break their ground obtained in 2016 and 2020 and would be the worst result of the 11 calls held since 1981. If it maintained its current representation, the party would need a rise of at least five seats in the main candidate of the left, Ana Pontón, who in turn would be obliged to break the historical ceiling of the BNG of Xosé Manuel Beiras.
This is assuming that Sumar and Podemos Galicia do not overcome the entry barrier.
It would be Besteiro's best option: occupying a vice presidency in a hypothetical bipartite BNG-PSOE, with a change of roles compared to the left-wing coalition that between 2005 and 2009 was headed by Emilio Pérez Touriño (PSOE).
But if the PP maintains the presidency of the Xunta, Besteiro will have to settle for another electoral cycle waiting on the bench as the third force in Parliament and with the task of rebuilding a party that has not been successful with the last four candidate bets in Galicia.
He, he says, does not believe the polls.
The ballot box, as always, has the last word.
ACT.18 FEB 2024 - 12:30