There was a time, not so long ago, when, if the PSOE decided to hold a large public event in Andalusia with the presence of its national leader, the leadership of the PSOE in Andalusia would be called from Ferraz and they would be able to gather 15,000 people in any place. It is not necessary to go back to the times of Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra: I have seen this done with Almunia, with Zapatero and with Rubalcaba, although progressively with greater effort and less impetus..

That of the Andalusian socialists was the most powerful and efficient political machine that Spanish democracy has known. Today, what once called itself “the great party of the Andalusians” is an unrecognizable bunch that the 28-M steamroller has finished leaving ready for the infirmary. Stripped of the control of the Junta de Andalucía, of the provincial councils and of most of the important town halls, and directed (?) by a puppet executive, it is not even capable of organizing a decent rally in Dos Hermanas to start the pre-campaign of the President of the goverment. They say it's because of the heat, but it seems to me that it's more because of melancholy.

The result of 28-M, or one similar, was in the forecasts for months. The size of the tide may have surprised us, but you didn't have to be a genius in demoscopy or political foresight to foresee a turn favorable to the right in the distribution of territorial power.

However, it seems that neither of the two major parties previously carried out the essential strategic planning exercise to face the scenario resulting from the vote.. Neither the PP shows signs of having designed the political management of its victory with sufficient care —which had a few time bombs in its gut, almost all related to Vox— nor did the Monclovite court, arrogant and disconnected from reality, prepare its body supporter for the digestion of a sung defeat.

Sánchez alone had the nuclear button for the dissolution of the chambers, and alone – “with my conscience”, he said – he pounced on it, in a clearly emotional reaction, while the rest of the Government and the leaders of his party found out of the news at the same time as the rest of the Spanish. It is not usually a good idea to surprise your generals with a jerky movement, in full shock after a collective hecatomb for which you are held responsible and with the troops in panic; extreme caesarism entails these servitudes.

The consequence is in sight. On July 23 we will check the degree of inhibition or abandonment of the social base of the left, but the massive deactivation of its organic bases in this campaign is assured. In the case of what was United We Can, because the liquidation of the Iglesias party was deliberately sought to make way for a formless confederation of acronyms with a face in front. In the case of the PSOE, because there is a disbanded army of those expelled from power, trained for decades to combine public office with the management of the party apparatus, whose immediate concern is not exactly giving their skins away in an additional —and surely sterile— effort. not to save the face of those who have led them to a defeat that they feel is undeserved, but to seek paid employment (in many cases, for the first time in their lives).

I have a feeling that they are not exactly for the job of hauling buses with which to fill the auditoriums for the boss, nor will the homes of many small towns receive the usual visit this time from the socialist mayor or his councilors to deliver the ballots already tucked into their about.

The legendary electoral apparatus of the Socialist Party is open in channel from top to bottom. In fact, two weeks have passed since the call and it is not known who directs that campaign. For the government party, bringing together more than 1,000 people in a city of three million like Madrid has become a Herculean task.. Tiny premises are sought out, the exposure to the sun of a candidate burned by so much showing off in vain is administered to the maximum and, to hide it, a vice-president who is only waiting for the moment to sign the settlement and return to Brussels is taken for a walk.. You have to know a large organization of this type from the inside to take charge of the dimension of the tragedy: there is no Grupo Prisa to replace it.

In the case of the Popular Party, the problem is more political. It was not difficult to foresee that, after 28-M, it would find itself with a handful of regional governments and a multitude of town halls within easy reach, with two determining factors. On the one hand, orderly managing the complex operation of occupying the new positions of institutional power: negotiations, investitures, formation of government teams, inaugurations, first measures… Something that absorbs the time and attention of several thousand political cadres, that while they are dedicated to that they are not dedicated to the electoral campaign. On the other – and this is the most important thing – overcoming the pitfall of the pacts with Vox, as essential in general as they are potentially explosive to shape the party before the general elections.

It was assumed that both operations could be carried out calmly in the pre-vacation period to return in September, with the new map of territorial power already established and the pacts metabolized, and finish off the task of “repealing sanchismo” at will.. But Sánchez's convulsive reaction with his troubled conscience caught his own party and also that of the opposition —not to mention his allies— in the panties..

In terms of government alliances, today the PP is more like Pancho Villa's army than an ordered troop with a staff controlling the situation based on previously studied plans.. The run over Valencia agreement opened the floodgates prematurely, Abascal's party was emboldened and today no one in Genoa is capable of pointing out on the map how many places will end up sharing governments with the extreme right.

During the crucial months of June and July, PP leaders in most territories will be busier with their transitions of power than attending to Feijóo's national campaign.. And what will ultimately be the electoral impact of a map probably full of coalition governments with Vox not foreseen in advance is unknown.

Many are convinced that this has already been amortized by public opinion and others dream that this will derail the train that leads Feijóo to Moncloa: but both speak more from desire than from certainty. The truth is that the dystopian hypothesis of seeing Santiago Abascal as Vice President of the Government or Ortega Smith in the Ministry of Justice has suddenly acquired a plausibility that it did not have 15 days ago. Surely that was not Feijóo's plan before his victory on 28-M, as overwhelming as it was glassy.

It is still highly probable that Alberto Núñez Feijóo will spend the end of the year at Moncloa, but not even he himself knows at this moment in what conditions and, above all, with which companies he will do it. When things seemed clearer than ever, the chocolate began to thicken..