Who is surprised by the PP-Vox pacts

Judging by the turn that the electoral campaign has taken since the express pacts of the PP with Vox in the Generalitat Valenciana and the rest of the municipalities, Feijóo has gone from promising to repeal sanchismo to testing its limits and even copying some excuses. Anti-Sanchismo was a good campaign slogan, but it's getting old fast. That there is no choice but to agree with the only ones who want to agree with you, swallowing every principle or scruple to agree with extremes, sums up a good part of sanchismo. Sánchez waited until after the elections to contradict himself. As the municipalities were in a hurry, Feijóo has not had time.

Repealing sanchismo was a good slogan. He hoped to capture even the socialist voter disappointed with Pedro Sánchez and some orphan of Cs that was left out there. But that was before, last week, when anti-Sanchismo was still a diffuse claim. The lack of qualms in the pacts with Vox sets a clear limit to anti-Sanchism and is making many of those moderate and undecided voters doubt. Those to whom the president disliked, those to whom Feijóo neither was nor fa, but Sánchez fatal, have come to wonder how badly. Bad enough to risk having Santiago Abascal as vice president? There are many anti-Sanchistas, without objections to Vox, many fewer.

There are also many voters surprised by the surprise that Vox has taken from Carlos Mazón the vice presidency of the Valencian Generalitat, the Ministry of Culture, Agriculture and the Interior; or seeing that in that first coalition agreement the expression macho violence disappears and the parental pin appears; or that, when the agreement is known, Mazón says he is more focused on how much the PP unites him with Vox than on what differentiates them. Many took it for granted.

Those who have not been surprised at all to see how soon it took Mazón to agree with the Vox candidate convicted of mistreatment to win the presidency of the Generalitat are the voters who have been saying for some time that PP and Vox are very similar.

The pact may or may not surprise, but it must be recognized that the campaign this week has taken a turn when seeing PP barons saying the same thing that Sánchez was saying to try to mobilize the socialist voter after months of boasting of moderation. Emphasizing how much the PP and Vox are alike was an argument of the left-wing campaign. Now Mazón says it.

Among those who see it as perfectly normal for PP and Vox to agree to the first, there are both left and right. For those who had already decided to vote for the right, because they don't dislike Vox, and those who had already decided to vote for the left, because they dislike the PP as much as Vox, this week does not make any difference. But it has surprised other types of voters. And it is precisely those voters for whom an electoral campaign is relevant when it comes to deciding their vote, which by the way are becoming more and more.

The PP and Vox pacts are revealing for those who were thinking of voting for the PP, but who had never done so before, for example. Or to those who were thinking of abstaining from voting for the left and the idea of Abascal in the government does mobilize them.

Come on, Feijóo had not put an effort into emphasizing that he wanted to govern alone to attract the vote of the center. Or to win the support of feminists disappointed with the release of rapists by the Yes is Yes law and the trans law that internally divides the PSOE. Sanchismo had disappointed all of them, but would they vote for a party that makes an agreement with someone convicted of abuse and denies the existence of gender violence?

The spell of moderation has been broken. And something must be worrying in the PP because of how Feijóo is trying to fix it. As soon as the Valencian deputy for Vox, José María Llanos, one of those who sound like a possible president of the Valencian Parliament, came out affirming on Friday that violence against women does not exist, Feijóo tweeted that gender violence does exist and affirming that his party won't take a step back.

A tweet does not counteract a coalition agreement that excludes the very denomination of gender violence from the agreement as required by those of Abascal. “We are not going to give up our principles, whatever it costs us,” Feijóo wrote in that tweet. Unless what it costs them is to reach the government.