In less than three years, the Galicians have gone to the polls for the second time in the middle of July and have filled them with votes. This Sunday's participation in the community stood at 73.14%, 17.29% more than four years ago out of a census of 2.2 million voters. In the regional elections of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, it was 48.9%. The PP was the great winner of the night with 13 deputies and a percentage of the vote of 43.54%, the highest in all of Spain. After the popular ones, the PSOE obtained seven, Sumar, 2 and the BNG, 1. These are the results (and the keys) that the Galician vote leaves us.

PP barn

The first is overwhelming support for Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The predominance of PP blue is indisputable throughout the community, even in socialist strongholds with the exception of the Vigo area. More than 699,000 votes (43.5) 220,000 away from the second force, the PSdeG (29.8).

The PP that Feijóo left in the hands of his deputy after moving to Genoa, Alfonso Rueda, obtained spectacular results in the four provinces after 12 years of consecutive governments from 2009 to 2022. He clearly won in all except Pontevedra, where he tied seats with the Socialists. He was close to the best results of Feijóo in 2009, although still far from the unbeatable percentages of his mentor, Manuel Fraga, who passed 52%, at another time and in another context..

With the bittersweet taste of an insufficient victory, Pedro Puy, who is changing the Galician Parliament for Congress, appealed today to the “sense of State” so that “minorities that fell in votes” do not condition the future Government and avoided talking about the possible advance of the Galician elections.

Forbidden address for Vox

The second, a Vox -and on the decline- played again in Galicia where it has not managed to penetrate minimally in any call. The community cuts off those of Abascal who only got 4.7% with 77,014 votes, falling three points compared to the previous ones in 2019.

The representation of Vox in Galicia is limited to a single opposition mayor in Avión (Ourense) since last 28-M, an inland and rural mountain municipality. Many of his neighbors are wealthy returned emigrants. The deputy secretary, Javier Ortega Smith, did not allow the past children to enter Sampaio, a bar in the neighborhood of A Coruña, where a cafe with militants had been announced. The management of the establishments opposed it and did not allow it.

A headless PSdeG that does not take off

The third key is a PSdeG without a bellows and without a defined leader for the next Galician regional elections, which are just around the corner (or in autumn).. The lack of definition of the Galician socialists between their general secretary, Valentín G. Formoso, or the recovered José Ramón Gómez Besteiro -after the file of Operation Octopus, the last legal case that was pending- has weighed down the Galician socialists. Curiously, the Socialists got more votes than in 2019: 14,329 more ballots (479,355 votes) but they gave up three deputies to the PP (they go from 10 to 7) and 1.40% points.

They also compete in the same space to the left as the BNG and Sumar against a right without competition with Vox canceled. For the PSdeG parliamentary spokesman, Luis Álvarez, today the important thing was to point out that yesterday “was the worst night” for Alberto Núñez Feijóo. “He will not be president,” he predicted.

Adding resists but does not add that much

The fifth key is in Sumar, who was the third force after the PP and PSOE with the Galician Yolanda Díaz (Fene, 1971) as a banner. With 175,813 votes and almost 11% of the vote in his first appointment with the brand rushed to the extreme. He managed to keep the two seats that he had already achieved with Galicia En Común, but he left another three since 2016. Marta Lois, president of Sumar and Verónica Martínez Barbero, General Director of Labor, both from the close circle of the vice president, will be the two Galician representatives of the brand in Congress. Lois congratulated herself after election night for having “defeated Feijóo” with “the mobilization of the progressive vote”.

In Ferrol, where Yolanda Díaz began her political career as an IU councilor, support for Sumar reached 17%, with 6,291 ballots, although the PP exhibited its majority in the only city -and the smallest- that governs Galicia.

The nationalism of the BNG does not work

The fourth key is that Galicia does not follow the path of Catalonia or the Basque Country as far as independence is concerned.. While they widen, the Block contracts. Poor results for the nationalists who admitted that they did not meet their objective. With 152,327 supports (9.48%) they were fourth behind Sumar.

The BNG has punctured its expectations of achieving its own group in Congress and once again has to settle for a single seat for A Coruña, which will once again be occupied by parliamentarian Néstor Rego, who, despite the progressive nature of the formation, came to settle several times in it, not voting the same as PP or Vox, contrary to what happened with EH Bildu or Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC).. However, the leader of the BNG, Ana Pontón, already anticipated making the BNG seat available to a Progress Executive against the right-wing bloc. There will be no “blank check to anyone”, Pontón warned today, although they will negotiate with Pedro Sánchez “with the best of wills” to enforce “the Galician agenda”.