The president of the Xunta and candidate of the PP, Alfonso Rueda, walks with his family along Monte Pedroso, in Santiago de Compostela, this Saturday during the day of reflection.PP/Angel García (EFE)
Just three weeks ago, 80% of the 11,000 Galicians interviewed by the CIS had it very clear: the PP would once again win the regional elections called for February 18.
Less than a month has passed and it is as if the world in Galicia has turned several times.
Among the popular ones there is concern, the socialists are expectant and nationalism is sailing on a wave of euphoria.
On the street, certainty has dissipated.
For the first time since Alberto Núñez Feijóo recovered the Xunta for the right in 2009 - and although the PP continues to lead the bets - the atmosphere is no longer that of the overwhelming victory that was presumed and that which the popular people were looking for when they decided to anticipate the elections to this Sunday.
The symbolic importance of Galicia for the PP is beyond all doubt.
Its founder, Manuel Fraga, was from here, and its current leader, Feijóo, the leader with the most stake in this stake, left two years ago.
Here the Popular Party achieved, even in the time of AP, its first victory in all of Spain, precisely in the elections that inaugurated the Galician Parliament in 1981, when UCD still held the hegemony of the center-right.
Since then they only lost power briefly due to a motion of censure between 1987 and 1989 and due to the alliance between socialists and nationalists that governed from 2005 to 2009. From that moment on, Feijóo chained four absolute majorities and is now his successor, Alfonso Rueda. (55 years old), who is looking for the fifth.
The campaign started crooked for the PP from day one.
Just that February 2, it was learned through a strange leak from the socialists that Marta Fernández-Tapias, leader of the party in Vigo, the first city in Galicia, had presented her resignation.
It may not have seemed relevant, but it was like the preamble to a succession of bad news.
Immediately, a televised debate arrived, the only one that the popular candidate had access to and from which, according to all analyses, he did not come out well.
Then the hesitations and doubts began about the message, whether it was appropriate to import to Galicia the strident dispute over the amnesty and sanchismo, in a kind of second round of the 23-J - as an omnipresent Feijóo did and Rueda himself emulated at times - Or it was more effective to stick to the traditional and successful formula of wrapping oneself in the flag of Galicia and defending its interests.
Only one bomb was missing and it detonated in the middle of the campaign: the untimely revelations by the party leadership, at a lunch with journalists in Lugo, of their dealings with Carles Puigdemont's entourage to seek his support for Feijóo's investiture, a matter that It has sown confusion in the popular ranks and has clouded its final stretch to 18-F.
A rival with unsuspected strength has emerged in front of us.
The BNG candidate, Ana Pontón (46 years old), has packed auditoriums all over the country, her videos have triumphed on social networks, selling the image of a new Galicia in the face of the conservatism of the last 15 years, and the polls have put her at the top of the list. a position never achieved by Galician nationalism.
Pontón arrived with an exciting message, that of becoming the first woman and the first nationalist to preside over Galicia, and, according to all the polls, she will capitalize on the vote of young people and the left in general.
The PP's efforts to present her as “a wolf in sheep's clothing,” highlighting the more genuinely nationalist aspects of her program or her alliances with the Basque and Catalan independence movements, do not seem to have harmed her.
Pontón's rise is fueled largely by socialist voters.
But at the same time the viability of his project depends on the PSdeG, whose support he needs to reach the Xunta.
The socialist candidate, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro (56 years old), is trying to revive a party that has always played better in the field of general and municipal elections - it has the mayorships of the two main Galician cities, Vigo and A Coruña - than in the autonomous ones.
The massive landing of the Government, with Pedro Sánchez at the helm, has served to support Besteiro, but also to convey at times the idea of a campaign that looked too much at the national stage.
The enormous flood of the BNG threatens to overwhelm Sumar.
Yolanda Díaz has spared no effort to take flight in her country in support of her friend and candidate Marta Lois (54 years old).
Faced with the tacit pact of non-aggression between socialists and nationalists, the vice president has distributed some reproaches to her potential partners, such as recalling the Bloc's rejection of the labor reform.
Her surveys are very elusive.
Even more so for Podemos, whose forecasts move around a meager 1%.
With all these ingredients, the PP arrives at election day more rushed than ever since 2009. Some demographic studies indicate that participation can be around 65%, six points more than in 2020, a level that tends to favor the left.
The last few days have pointed to a slight growth of Vox—residual in Galicia—that could harm the PP.
And despite everything, the popular ones remain favorites.
They have in their favor a very powerful party machine that reaches to the last village, a substantial advantage - 42 of the 75 seats in Parliament - and an overwhelmingly favorable media environment.
Also a tailored electoral law, which gives priority to the less populated and more conservative provinces to the detriment of the two Atlantic ones, with a greater inclination to the left.
While A Coruña elects one deputy for every 43,000 voters, in Ourense the proportion is one for every 25,000.
Even in the event of dropping below 38 seats and losing the majority this Sunday, Rueda would have some wild cards left.
The first, the localist populism of Democracia Ourensana, to which demoscopy gives great possibilities of making its debut in Parliament and which has already made an agreement with the popular in its territory of origin.
Ultimately Rueda could still hold on to the emigration votes.
In Galicia, 2,217,710 citizens are called to the polls, whose votes will be counted this Sunday night.
But we will still have to wait until the 26th, when the ballots that arrive from among the 476,514 voters registered abroad (17% of the total census) begin to be counted, mostly from South America.
After the suppression of the requested vote, an increase in participation is expected in a group that does not mobilize much (its maximum is 40%) but that can decide in the event of a last highly contested seat.
Traditionally, he is inclined to the PP, whom he allowed in 2020 to remove a deputy from the PSOE.
The distribution of the vote by province and how it is distributed among the leftist formations can make drastic changes in the result.
In 1989, Fraga reached 44.20% of the vote and his first absolute majority, with 38 seats.
In 2005, however, with a higher percentage (45.81%), he remained at 37 and handed over the Government to PSdeG and BNG.
Seven years later, in 2012, with almost identical numbers (45.80%, one hundredth less than Fraga), Feijóo won 41 deputies.
A key factor is the difference between the first and second forces.
In 2012, Feijóo led the PSOE by 25 points, while in 2005 the distance between the PP and the second was half, 12. The average poll now places the PP at around 46% and the BNG at almost 30%. %.
Everything seems at the mercy of a few thousand votes.
It may depend on them whether one of the three autonomous communities considered historic crowns a nationalist president for the first time.
And also the fate of the leader of the opposition to Sánchez, who, after 23-J, would have a very difficult time surviving another electoral setback in a battle in which he is so personally involved.
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