The PP aspires to repeat Aznar's victory in 1996: from winning La Moncloa in the Andalusian capitals
Andalusia will once again play a crucial role in the municipal elections on May 28 due to the weight of its population in the country as a whole (61 of the 350 congressional deputies decide on Andalusian soil) and because it was in the 2022 regional elections where the PP was able to smell for the first time the aroma of a supposed change of cycle that brought Alberto Núñez Feijóo closer to La Moncloa.
But just as important as running a good campaign – and both the PP and the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez and his entire government are already working on it – is managing expectations intelligently. And the popular Andalusians have been trying to temper the heat of euphoria for a few weeks so as not to err in the calculations.
The question that is asked both in Ferraz and in Genoa -and in their respective regional headquarters of San Vicente and San Fernando- is whether or not the Andalusian elections marked a ceiling for the Juanma Moreno effect, if the Andalusian baron will once again burst the forecasts their favor or if the territorial power that the PSOE continues to have in Andalusia somehow manages to stop the blue tide, either due to the merit of its mayors and candidates or because, somehow, the management of the Junta has already generated some type of wear in the popular brand.
The uncertainty about the political panorama that will leave the scrutiny of 28-M extends with its regional peculiarities to the rest of the corners of Spain 50 days after the new appointment with the polls. In 2019, the Socialists achieved for the first time that their party was the majority in the municipal sphere (6,657,119 votes) against a PP (5,058,542) then weighed down by corruption and stalked by a thriving Citizens (1,876,906 ), while Vox (659,736) was still a newcomer to parliamentarism.
The PSOE managed to conquer, in addition, three regional governments -Navarra, the Canary Islands and La Rioja- and maintain the six that it already presided over -Aragón, Asturias, the Balearic Islands, Castilla-La Mancha, the Valencian Community and Extremadura-, in most cases sustained for Podemos and its coalitions. The resistance of these partners now entrusts Ferraz with the maintenance of the electoral flow achieved four years ago since, despite his loud disagreements with the purple ones in La Moncloa, they believe that his brand remains “strong” and even “on the rise”, as in Catalonia.
In the Socialist Federal Executive they do not contemplate that in Andalusia there could be a transfer to the municipal authorities of the autonomous vote of June last year, when they suffered an unprecedented debacle, despite the fact that at the beginning of this year their acronyms continued to deteriorate due to the concessions of the Government of Pedro Sánchez to the separatists of the procés, the internal tensions with Podemos or the legal errors of the law of only yes is yes while the Andalusian PP seemed then mounted on an unstoppable wave. The PSOE-A's general secretary, Juan Espadas, openly lamented the difficulty he found in posting an alternative message to the official argument of the Junta.
But, in the last month, for the first time, the opposition has marked the political agenda and has forced the Andalusian government to defend itself over and over again against those who accuse it of privatizing public health or point out the collapse of services as a failure of management despite the undeniable increase in investment. Have the tables turned? It is still too early to answer this question.
In an interview with EL MUNDO, the general secretary of the Andalusian PP, Antonio Repullo, pointed last Thursday to the weakness of the leader of the Andalusian socialists and put as proof of this the landing in Andalusia of several members of the Council of Ministers to prop up the opposition work of Juan Espadas. “The ministers have to come to do their job”. and so it is. Sánchez is aware that the PSOE is at risk in Andalusia and has increased the pressure by increasing the presence of its Executive in the community and especially in Seville, which he has recently graced with its designation as the headquarters of the future Spanish Space Agency.
Pedro Sanchez, in Malaga. . EFE SHOE
It is true that, in parallel, the Government has clamorously screwed up in Granada, despising its candidacy to be the headquarters of the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence in favor of La Coruña, which forces one to think that for Ferraz losing Granada would be a lesser evil in terms of electoral calculation, while Seville is a strategic objective.
Granada, governed since 2021 by the socialist Francisco Cuenca after a convulsed legislature and after the rupture of the PP-Cs pact, is one of the conquerable places for the popular. In fact, Moreno has placed one of the heavyweights of his team as a candidate, the former Minister of Development Marifrán Carazo, whose campaign he launched with honors from a Government Council transferred expressly to Sierra Nevada.
Until the beginning of 2023, the polls predicted an indisputable success for the Andalusian PP that left it one step away from achieving the plenary session of eight in the capitals, which it only achieved in 1995.. That victory was the prelude to the triumph of José María Aznar in 1996. And the PP is convinced that, if the same scenario were to occur again, the consequence would be similar.
The poll of the Center for Andalusian Studies (Centra), dependent on the Junta, pointed on January 30 to a victory for the PP in the eight capitals, although in both Seville and Cádiz victory does not guarantee that it can govern. It is very significant how almost all the published surveys speak of a situation of a technical draw in Seville, including the one prepared by Sigma Dos for EL MUNDO in February.
Seville could become the court in which a kind of match point (match point) will be resolved on May 28. Curiously, the popular candidate for the Andalusian capital, José Luis Sanz, former mayor Tomares, is the only one who has not directly appointed Moreno, since it was an imposition of Genoa in the times of Pablo Casado. But today the PP of Seville, after many internal battles that bled it dry electorally, is once again rowing in one direction and is not willing to hand over the position without a fight.
For the PSOE, in turn, surrendering Seville would be confirming the absolute failure of the operation that Sánchez activated to definitively remove Susana Díaz from control of the party. Losing the mayoralty, today in the hands of the socialist Antonio Muñoz, would be a personal failure for the president.
In Catalonia, the second barn of votes for the Socialists in the municipal elections, the latest barometer from the Center for Opinion Studies of the Generalitat places them as the majority force for the general elections for the first time since 2008. Ferraz clings to this data to trust that, once “the pro-independence soufflé has dropped” due, among other factors, to Sánchez's concessions to those convicted of the process, the vote will be based on “the things of the eat” and they even trust that their candidate for the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, can recover a position that they have not controlled since 2011.
In general terms, the PSOE has raised the campaign to try to preserve its leadership of four years ago and extend it -in the face of the attempt to overturn the PP- with a multiplication of acts that are not necessarily populous -only last week 182 were called-. From this strategy started in September, they extract the analysis that they also have the possibility of placing their current deputy mayor of Valencia, Sandra Gómez, ahead of Compromís in the City Council of the capital of Turia and that the popular José Luis Martínez-Almeida is “a candidate vulnerable” in Madrid who can get “a scare” if all the options on the left “do it well”.
Beyond the specific result in each territory, the next municipal elections in Andalusia will also serve as a thermometer on the eve of the general elections in December and will also allow the parties to take positions. If Juanma Moreno manages to show that he is still in a state of grace, his internal influence will grow as would his options in Feijóo's line of succession, if the Galician leader does not achieve his goal of reaching La Moncloa. Because that too will be decided on May 28, even if no one wants to talk about it.
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