there is party. Héctor Gómez, former spokesperson for the socialist parliamentary group and Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, never stopped believing. There is a party —Gómez repeated to me, over and over again before the campaign, and during, both in telephone conversations and through WhatsApp—. There is a party, he insisted without ceasing to believe. Now, with the outcome on the table, it can be concluded that he was right, yes, but that he failed to say that the party he was referring to was the PSOE, with an organization capable of overcoming months of swimming against the current and with the bookmakers turning their backs on them.. The Socialists have a well-muscled party, without a doubt, but above all they have a general secretary made of unsinkable material. Sánchez is made of cork, which is why he floats with such skill over troubled waters, apocalyptic soundings or cycles that seem to have reached the end point.

The president rises again and again because there is always someone who rescues him. Years ago it was the militants. This time it was Vox. Only Vox and Feijóo's strategic low back pain, in the final stretch of the campaign, could shape Sánchez's penultimate resurrection. Saying. And done. However, the PSOE will not have it easy. The Sunday euphoria of the Minister of Finance (gesticulating without limit in Ferraz, to the point of distracting and taking away the prominence of the candidate's intervention) confirms that the Socialists feared a bump as big as Montero's agitation. Of course, the minister's birthday choreography does not match the smell of blockade that permeates the atmosphere, nor with the problem that such toxic arithmetic clearly draws.

The Socialists have also responded well in the Canary Islands, tying six deputies with the hypothetical favourite, the PP, and improving it with an army of senators. In May they won but lost. In July, barely two months later, the PSOE from the Canary Islands tied but won. Boards. Socialists and popular equal to six their contribution to the board of a country that awakens to the threat of falling back into the loop of electoral repetition. Except for Nueva Canarias (which had a presence and weight in Congress, and not anymore) everyone in the Islands has been reasonably happy. Sumar and Vox add an act to their respective groups and Coalition, even with only one parliamentarian, dreams of having a more or less visible role in the film that began shooting on the night of the twenty-third.

The Coalition promised not to participate in any agreement that has Vox as a necessary collaborator. Both in the regional and local ones, as well as in the general ones, that red line (or green, in this case) has been their mantra. With Vox not even in the corner. With Vox nothing. Hardened in a thousand battles, the writers of Coalition are good at being water. They always find a way. Officially, they will keep that commitment, but if circumstances knock on CC's door, they will always find a loophole to avoid the prophecy of not sharing a wagon with Vox. Perhaps they will do so by explaining that they meant that they would never reach an investiture agreement with the PP if the popular have Vox sitting on the Council of Ministers.

Not that way. Never. Never. Something different is that those of Santiago Abascal participate from outside, as a parliamentary support group. So yes, perhaps, perhaps, in the inauguration attempt of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Coalition could add its seat to facilitate the governability of the country without skipping the promised line —or not completely, at least—. Nor do the nationalists rule out aligning their vote with the PSOE in a hypothetical investiture of Sánchez.

In the mouth of the imminent CC deputy, Cristina Valido, the possibility of negotiating and agreeing on a favorable vote for the socialist candidate is equally solid. Of course, yes —Valido literally said—. It is one thing to govern with the PP in the Canary Islands and another different thing is to give up scratching something in the scenarios that have been opened; to which a third party could be added, the blockade, what a damn grace it would do to the Coalition —which this time added 114,718 votes—. This time Nueva Canarias (the Pedro Quevedo party, remembered as the one hundred and seventy-sixth deputy, with the permission of Ana Oramas) has been left out, opening for the thousandth time the debate in the planets of local nationalism on the opportunity to go hand in hand to Congress and the Senate.

An electoral repetition would delay (and in what way) the effective start of the legislature at the regional level. If a blockade scenario finally occurs in the ministries, cruising speed will not be reached until 2024, drawing the worst possible calendar. With the central Administration in minimal services, there is no way to pick up pace in the autonomous areas that depend for so many things on the General State Budget. It is a bad thing for the Canarian government that the country is submerged in months of interim, and as bad or worse for the pact that unites the CC and PP in the Islands would be that, breaking the forecasts, President Sánchez manages to tie up as many years in Moncloa, opening —if the re-election is consummated— a scenario of permanent tension in the Canary-State relations.

had departed. Sánchez has momentarily saved another match point —another one—. With the labyrinth that the polls have left, there is no autonomous community that is not waiting for a convulsed legislature to start or, where appropriate, to suffer the consequences of a blockade that leads to paralysis until next year. In the Canary Islands, one and the other, the Government and the opposition, the Coalition and the PP, along with the Socialists, take stock, aware that Sunday's results add difficulty to the difficulties that the four-year period that has begun to roll in the Islands brought in the backpack, yes, with four of the five senses pending how things are moving in Madrid now that the key to the legislature is in the hands of Carles Puigdemont —something like leaving the keys to your house and the alarm combination to the neighbor who cracked your car wheels or dumped their garbage bags on your landing—. It smells like a blockade, but the president, candidate and general secretary of the PSOE is made of cork. It floats, it resists, it sinks, but it returns to the surface, it rises again, once, and again, and again.