First it was the 28-M with the celebration of the municipal and autonomic elections. Then on 17-J with the constitution of the town halls and the verification of the municipal power of the PP, on many occasions, yes, in the company of Vox. And the next thing is 23-J with the general elections. The Spanish political map and the state of mind of the formations is measured through these key dates, which could rather seem like coordinates. With the political leaders already launched in the electoral campaign, the popular ones consider that Spain dyed blue is one more tile, important, yes, on the path they want to travel towards La Moncloa.

A euphoria in the ranks of the PP that was consummated not only because of the access to emblematic mayoralties for the PSOE such as those of Seville, Valladolid or Toledo, but also because in Barcelona, where the socialists achieved the command rod in the figure of Jaume Collboni , the popular vote was decisive, determining. “That even in order to achieve a Mayor's Office like Barcelona, the PSOE knows that it is in the hands of the PP must be hard for Pedro Sánchez,” they reflect from Genoa.

There were several milestones in the constitution of the municipalities. In addition to the tangible: the PSOE's loss of territorial power and, on the contrary, the PP's quota increase; The need for the popular to agree with Vox to reach power or unseat their socialists was also evidenced.. While the pacts between the right-wing formations have cooled down as a result of the controversy in the Valencian Community, at the municipal level that alliance was consolidated except in places such as, for example, the city of Valencia itself.

“Not even Puertollano has survived sanchismo”, they joke in the PP, along the lines that fiefdoms of an established tradition such as Morella or the aforementioned town of Ciudad Real that have not been able to be retained by the formation led by the President of the Government. “There is a PSOE that is dying to separate its initials from Pedro Sánchez,” they add.

The decisions made yesterday by the PP were intended not only to be read in terms of holding power, as the PSOE accuses them, but also to give up their votes for free in towns like Vitoria or Durango to prevent Bildu from having power, seeking to convey a message to their voters and to society. And, by the way, leave a message to the PSOE regarding the entry of Vox into the institutions. “The PP is a state party that works for national integrity from the Government but also from the opposition.”

“Not only do we have power where we govern, but we have shown that we also have it in some places where we do not, such as Barcelona or Vitoria,” sources from the PP leadership emphasize.

The verification of municipal power is seen in the PP as a checkpoint. «March 28 was Sánchez's humility cure; 23-J will be his reality check”, is the analysis of the situation made by the popular leadership. “We hope that on 23-J we will complete the electoral turnaround that we started on 28-M”.

Barcelona, in discount time

In the PSOE, for their part, they focused their message yesterday on congratulating themselves on obtaining practically in discount time the Mayor of Barcelona, where they remained as the second political force, after one of their priority objectives of the campaign of the municipal It would have been to stay in first position precisely to be able to authoritatively lead the formation of the new Government. After seizing the baton from Xavier Trias, they presented themselves as “the only alternative to independence.”

“The result obtained by the PSC in the whole of Catalonia in the last elections shows that the measures taken by Pedro Sánchez to normalize social and political life in this territory after the events experienced under the PP government are giving results and are recognized by the citizens and citizens “, stressed in Ferraz.

In addition, despite the support they obtained yesterday from Genoa, in the socialist leadership they censured “the doubts until the last minute” of the popular “between giving the mayoralty to a constitutionalist like Jaume Collboni or to Puigdemont's party” who, they stressed, “do not say nothing good” from its president. “The final decision, forced and reluctantly, will be good for Barcelona, and will avoid Mr. Feijóo a new ridicule in his policy of post-election pacts,” they added without thanking them for allowing them to recover a position that had resisted them since 2011.

Until the time trial negotiations that yesterday afternoon ended up leaving the Mayor of Barcelona in the hands of their candidate, the only one of the 10 most populated cities in Spain in which the PSOE had secured the government was Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The former Minister of Health Carolina Darias, Pedro Sánchez's own personal commitment to retain control of this municipality, was able to seize the mayor's rod after reaching an agreement to reissue the tripartite agreement with Nueva Canarias and Unidas Sí Podemos, which has been in charge of the town council in the last eight years.

Severe punishment for socialist acronyms

The officialization of the investitures that have covered the majority of the municipal map in blue have been the confirmation of the severe punishment that the citizens inflicted on the socialist acronyms in the elections of 28-M. In addition to the loss of a dozen provincial capitals -among them Seville, the symbol of hegemony that it maintained for four decades in Andalusia-, the party that won the 2019 polls has been evicted from some of its more traditional strongholds such as the Castellón town of Morella, where the still acting president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ximo Puig, was mayor for 17 years, and Puertollano, in Ciudad Real, which had not had a councilor under other acronyms since the beginning of the democracy.

Yesterday's meeting also showed the distancing that the PSOE now wants to mark with Bildu, who has been its most stable parliamentary partner in this legislature of the coalition government at the head of La Moncloa. The understanding reached with the PNV and the PP closed the path to the formation of Arnaldo Otegi in Vitoria and the Biscayan town of Durango, despite having been the list with the most votes, and cleared the ground for Cristina Ibarrola (UPN) to be the first mayor of Pamplona for the next four years. Instead, the popular ones consolidated their collaboration with Vox by needing their help to gain access to more than a hundred municipal governments.

Among the last-minute script twists that were recorded, the re-election of the mayor of Orense and winner of the elections stood out. The PP had offered the PSOE and the BNG a pact to evict Gonzalo Pérez Jácome after the publication of some audios about the alleged irregularities in his management, but in the absence of an agreement, the councilors of the Núñez Feijóo party chose to vote for themselves thus paving the way for the candidate from the most voted list to undertake his second term.

There were no surprises in Madrid, where the popular José Luis Martínez-Almeida premiered his absolute majority yesterday after four years of coalition with Ciudadanos and dependence on Vox supported by the president of the region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. His fellow ranks Francisco de la Torre revalidated his for the third time, which will allow him to continue holding command of the City Council of Malaga as he has done without interruption since 2000.

On the other side of the coin, the political reversal in Barcelona that displaced Ada Colau and in Cádiz – where the PP will govern again after the departure of José María González, Kichi – yesterday certified the end of the city councils of change. This was the name given to a generation of councilors that burst into force in 2015 in the heat of 15-M and that Podemos turned into its catapult for the following generals, in which Pablo Iglesias was close to managing to defeat Sánchez.

In Zamora, the only provincial capital with an IU mayor, Francisco Guarido will continue to lead the City Council although now he will need the support of the PSOE, with whom no agreement has yet been reached. And in Gijón Carmen Moriyón, from Foro Asturias, became the first non-socialist councilor thanks to the support of the PP and Vox, who enter the Government of the most populous city in Asturias for the first time.