The Socialist Party of Navarra (PSN) does not even want to hear about governance agreements with EH Bildu. What's more, his campaign is focused on seeking a transversal vote so as not to depend on “external support” and to reissue with a stronger position the current government that the socialist María Chivite presides over in coalition with Geroa Bai and the territorial brand of Unidas Podemos, With you-Zurekin. Negotiations, more than a red line, are a taboo for the Navarrese socialists. A taboo that after 28-M those of Arnaldo Otegi intend to break after their free support for the investiture of Chivite in 2019 and a legislature in which they have agreed on four consecutive budgets, so that they correspond to the Pamplona City Council. The former mayor of EH Bildu, Joseba Asiron, has expressly requested it in a recent interview. The crossed dependencies, as confirmed by private surveys and the CIS, once again place the PSN at a crossroads with the presidency of Navarra and the Pamplona city council at stake.
Four years ago, the Abertzale mayor of EH Bildu lost the command baton of the city council, which returned to the hands of UPN, after not being “reciprocated” by the Socialists. The councilors of the PSN, as in the rest of the municipalities, voted for themselves, facilitating access to the mayoralty to the right. In Pamplona and in a good number of key town halls.
The abertzales have been turning in recent years not to put identity policies before social ones and to advance in their institutional normalization with Madrid as the spearhead of this renewed strategy. If their abstention to facilitate the coalition government between PSOE and Unidas Podemos was not the result of any investiture agreement, throughout the legislature they have negotiated and supported successive budgets, in addition to putting their stamp on some of the main laws of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez, such as the housing law that the Senate will definitively approve this week.
The EH Bildu tours in Navarra and Madrid are similar. And after the regional and municipal elections, they demand compensation from the Socialists to recover the mayoralty of the Navarrese capital. Madrid as a spearhead and Pamplona as a testing laboratory. Chivite, who last Thursday participated in an informative breakfast in Madrid, could not hide his discomfort when answering questions that had EH Bildu as the protagonist. Not only because in the campaign he logically seeks to value his government action, both economically and socially, and focus on the socialist project, but also because he tries to move in the field of ambiguity.
He did not emphatically express that he would not agree to investiture with the aberzales, beyond assuring that “of course” he would not include them in a coalition government. From his environment it does emerge in private conversations that they will not change the 2019 strategy. That is, not to negotiate post-electoral agreements with EH Bildu for the presidency of Navarra and not to facilitate with their vote that the aberzales obtain the command baton of the capital or other municipalities.
Regarding the inclusion of former members of ETA in the electoral lists of EH Bildu, Chivite expressed his rejection of a decision that he said he did not like, but that at the same time he assumed because it was “strictly legal” with the approval of the Electoral Board. His basic assessment, however, goes further, leaving room for speculation about the repeated “correspondence” of support: “Going from violence to impose your ideas to the word, to agree on them, I think it is a success of democracy and society as a whole. ETA disappeared ten years ago. The future of Basque or Navarrese society, like it or not, in certain places, has to be built with Bildu”, he assured, as he declared at the aforementioned informative breakfast organized by Europa Press.
A few words that coincide more with voices of the PSOE such as that of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero than with that of other socialist barons of inland Spain. Regarding the controversy over the lists, Zapatero stated in an interview in Radiocable's La Cafetera that “we told those who supported terror in their day that if they left terror they would have the game in the institutions, and I think that this democratic promise must be keep it”.
From the FAES foundation of former popular president José María Aznar they were quick to interpret these statements as a “normalization of the agreements in political life, specifically the agreements of the PSOE with Bildu”. In an analysis released by the conservative think tank, its member and deputy of the PP for Madrid, Miguel Ángel Quintanilla, maintained that “Bildu is a partner of the PSOE as much as the PSOE is of Bildu; for both of them, that society, with some more , is the only possibility of reaching the Government and keeping it. They are part of a structural agreement that defines a new political time in Spain”.
The crossroads of the PSN after 28-M, which may also be that of Sánchez after the generals, tries to save itself by the Navarrese socialists, relying on the fragmentation of the right in this community. The unitary candidacy of Navarra Suma in 2019 has been split for the 28-M in UPN, PP and Citizens. In addition, Vox would enter the Parliament of Navarre with between two and three seats, according to the CIS. The fall of UPN makes the Socialists dream of snatching the first position (with the formation of Javier Esparza with between 10 and 13 seats and Chivite with between 9 and 12, according to the CIS) and be able to shake off the “external dependencies”. This fragmentation could also have the effect that Eh Bildu would not need the support of the PSN to govern in minority the city council, especially in the face of a hypothetical lack of understanding between UPN and PP after their abrupt breakup.