The PP seeks a "great victory" that will push Feijóo and the PSOE deploys all its power springs to stop him

The PP opens the electoral campaign with the ambivalent feeling that its results will greatly improve compared to those of 2019, but without this necessarily having to translate into more regional power. Everything is open before the dilemma of agreeing or not with Vox. Being the most voted list in several autonomies would not guarantee anything, if the consensus of private polls is met.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo insists that the important thing is to win, but his party's candidates have no doubts: “Winning is important, but governing is the most important thing”. Although they are seconds in the elections. If not, tell Ayuso, López Miras, Juanma Moreno and Almeida. All of them managed to govern by being second.

The president of the PP sees the 28-M as a flying goal of the general elections at the end of the year, which is why he needs to activate two levers that will catapult him towards La Moncloa. The first, a clear victory in the local elections, which are held throughout Spain -“whoever wins the municipal ones wins the general ones”-. The second, to snatch some important fiefdoms from the PSOE. Of the 12 autonomies in which elections are held, the PSOE chairs nine. The PP believes that it is in a position to be the first in the Valencian Community -the jewel in the crown of 28-M-, Aragón, Baleares, La Rioja, Cantabria. And he does not rule out joining Vox in Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura. Nobody in Genoa sees options to win in the Canary Islands or Asturias.

If the popular ones recover Valencian power, it will be a “checkmate” for Pedro Sánchez, they say. If that does not happen, but they manage to unseat Javier Lambán in Aragón – agreeing with Aragón Existe – or Emiliano García-Page in Castilla-La Mancha, they will also be (more than) satisfied. There are many possible combinations, but to qualify the 28-M as a resounding success, the PP will not be worth a “great” global victory, as Feijóo proclaims, but rather more regional places will have to be scored.

But to add governments, the surveys indicate that today it would need Vox yes or yes. Will the PP agree with Vox to govern some autonomy, or will it stick with its idea of governing alone where the right has the majority? The devil is in the details. “We are not going to govern by losing. We are only going to govern by winning”, Feijóo himself promised this Thursday, in Valencia. “After a long time, the PP will be the first political force in Spain,” he agreed.

Today it is impossible to confirm what the leader of the PP will do the day after the elections. And it is impossible because he himself has not decided, as recognized in his immediate environment. It will wait for the results of each territory to act accordingly. A symptomatic clue is that Feijóo no longer maintains as before that his barons will have total freedom to design their pacts, as he himself told them behind closed doors.. Now he leaves it up in the air: «We have not assessed whether there will be a global or territorial strategy on the pacts. Let's see the ballot boxes.”

The president of the PP faces his second electoral appointment as national leader -after the success of Andalusia- with a motto that he has borrowed from Luis Aragonés: “Win, win and win”. But Feijóo's success will depend on whether the feeling of “beginning of change” is real and incontrovertible. And it will depend on a dilemma typical of game theory: option a) is to agree with Vox and harm the national candidate, and option b) is not to agree and weigh down the party's territorial power structure. behold the crossroads. In between is Feijóo's desideratum: that Vox step aside meekly and let him govern alone. Those of Abascal abjure.

That is why Feijóo is lowering the expectations of the PP, because deep down he knows that in a representative democracy, coming first and governing are not synonymous. Now here near.

PSOE: IN THE HANDS OF ITS PARTNERS

The President of the Government and leader of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, in Castellón. UmbertEFE _

“We go like motorcycles”. This is how a member of the PSOE Federal Executive summed up the state of mind of the party before the final sprint towards the municipal and regional elections to be held on May 28. Neither in public nor in private is margin left these days to contain expectations: “We went out to win.”

The objective is not trivial. In 2019, the formation of Pedro Sánchez was the one that obtained the highest number of votes in all the municipalities of Spain (6,657,119), managed to conquer three regional governments -Navarra, the Canary Islands and La Rioja- and retained the six that it already had -Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha, Aragon, Balearic Islands, Extremadura and Asturias-.

The electoral perspective that is being looked at now from the Ferraz headquarters is that all its barons without exception are “strong” and that in the examination of their management, which they face in two weeks, they will see their support increase at the polls.. They also predict without their voices shaking that the next legislature will increase the payroll of 2,500 mayors who hold power under their acronym.

The small print of this optimism is that, as all the party cadres have been warning for months, they need “the partners to hold out” in the places where they govern in coalition and they do not have the appearance of being able to do it alone.. Even so, in the part that depends exclusively on its own political apparatus, the machinery began to grease nine months ago and reaches this crucial appointment at maximum revolutions.

While Sánchez flies to Washington this Thursday to meet on Friday with US President Joe Biden at the White House, his ministers -even those who do not have a militant card- are spread out throughout Spain to kick off the campaign all over the top. The president of the Executive and general secretary of the party has also been personally involved in the run-up to this electoral race and will do the same in the next two weeks with at least one daily act, giving the impression that he is facing this process almost as a plebiscite on himself. same.

In this display of political power, Nadia Calviño (head of Economic Affairs) is in Valencia for the countdown of the race to the polls; María Jesús Montero (Finance), in Barcelona; Miquel Iceta (Culture), in Tarragona; Teresa Ribera (Ecological Transition), in Madrid; Pilar Alegría (Education), in Zaragoza; Diana Morant (Science), in Castellón; Isabel Rodríguez (Territorial Policy), in Ciudad Real; Raquel Sánchez (Transport), in Malaga; Fernando Grande-Marlaska (Interior), in Elche; Margarita Robles (Defense), in Valladolid; José Manuel Miñones (Health), in Santiago de Compostela; and Pilar Llop (Justice), in Seville.

In parallel, the socialist wing of La Moncloa has been making announcements with an electoral flavor for almost a month, such as the investment of 2,190 million euros approved just 12 hours after the start of the campaign to alleviate the effects of the serious drought that is ravaging Spain and that includes direct aid to farmers and ranchers. Added to this is the commitment to put more than 113,000 affordable rental homes on the market, the granting of guarantees of up to 20% of the mortgage for people under 35 years of age and discounts of up to 50% on the Interrail for young people travel around Europe this summer.

The accounts that are made in Ferraz is that the governments of Navarra, Asturias, Extremadura and the Canary Islands will be able to maintain without surprises. The greatest concern is focused on the Balearic Islands, due to the issue of the resistance of the partners, and there are also doubts about La Rioja. In the rest -except in Castilla-La Mancha, where Emiliano García-Page needs an absolute majority to maintain power because he has no political network to his left- there is confidence in being able to reissue the coalitions, including that of the Valencian Community, where At the beginning of the year, a turnaround was feared.

At the municipal level, the realistic triple objective of the PSOE includes keeping the Mayor of Seville, winning in Barcelona and remaining the first force in Valencia, where the PSOE is the minority force of the two-color government with Compromís. Mobilization of the bases, for the moment, they are not lacking: only for a pre-campaign act by Sánchez in Murcia, which is a traditional stronghold of the PP, 4,200 supporters gathered.

WE CAN: RESISTANCE TEST

The Vice President of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, and the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón (IU), in Alcorcón. R.. Jimenez EFE

We can hold our breath. Well, it not only faces regional and municipal elections. It actually faces one of the most important endurance tests in its history. At stake, yes, is their presence in numerous parliaments and town halls and the challenge of re-editing or entering governments. But the political background is much harder. He needs to present a consistent enough result to turn the negotiations with Yolanda Díaz upside down and, thus, be able to force her into a pact that does not corner her future or lead her to play a residual role in space. Whether inside or outside Sumar. Another thing that would be to see.

That is why the relevance of 28-M surpasses any regional and local analysis. The space of the alternative left to the PSOE is in an accelerated phase of reconfiguration and what is decided at the polls is to update the weight and political capacity that each one has. The result is what will be put later in the negotiations that will open in June and where Díaz has the challenge of matching the interests of up to 16 parties.. Podemos has been demanding a leading role. If he is shipwrecked at the polls, he will be sold. More if others stick out their chests.

Podemos defends a quota in six autonomous governments (Valencian Community, Aragon, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Navarra and La Rioja), with the ambition of re-editing, but its great obsession is a figure: 5%. It is the minimum vote threshold to enter the Community of Madrid and the Valencian Community and in the municipalities of their capitals. In the Valencian Courts it is more on track but in the other three places it is at the limit -or even below-. Disappearing there would be the greatest of disasters. For the rest, it has coalitions with the IU in 10 of the 12 autonomies (neither Aragon nor Asturias), which gives it oxygen.

VOX: BECOMING ESSENTIAL

The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, in La Coruña. EFE _

No one at Vox doubts that the priority objective in 28-M is no longer only to be the party with the greatest growth at the polls, but also to become an asset at the regional and local level that is impossible for the rest of the actors to ignore, especially the People's Party.

Those of Santiago Abascal open the campaign with optimism, but demand prudence. They consider that they are within the “party” in autonomies such as the Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha and the Balearic Islands, places where it can be strategic for the right to govern, but it detects a slowdown in other points such as Aragon. In any case, Vox plans to enter all parliaments and is confident that the campaign will serve to consolidate Extremadura and La Rioja, and even win in Ceuta.

Vox has tried to change in the last days before the start of the campaign his speech about what will happen at dawn on May 28. While the PP remains silent and avoids talking about possible pacts, Vox has already publicly ruled out that it will support the popular for free, as happened at the inauguration of Isabel Díaz Ayuso in 2021. Thus, the leadership of the party points to the pact in Castilla y León of 2022 as a model agreement to follow from now on, in order to achieve new right-wing executives at the regional level.

Party sources advance an “extraordinary effort” by Vox to scratch every last vote to be as relevant as possible. The campaign kick-off will be this Friday in Valencia, in a macro event in the Town Hall square that all the parties will be competing for. First electoral mascletà.