If yesterday the PSOE presented as merit a letter signed by leaders such as the German Olaf Scholz, the Brazilian Lula or the Argentine Alberto Fernández supporting Pedro Sánchez, today the Popular Party can boast relevant support in the form of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

The North American financial daily analyzes the campaign of 23-J and affirms that it is “a Spanish lesson for Europe” in which “the PP demonstrates how the conservative centrists can win”.

Against the climate of tension and polarization that has been tried to install in the campaign at the national level, the Wall Street Journal assures that Spain votes this Sunday “in what promises to be refreshingly normal elections for Europe”. The newspaper reflects that the polls show that the country “will judge a center-left administration in which they have lost confidence by voting for a center-right party.”. And they add: “This is a surprise right now in Europe.”

The editorial analyzes that the “dissatisfaction” with Pedro Sánchez comes from “many angles” and recalls the confinements during the pandemic “among the strictest in Europe” and “unpopular”, while underlining a “slow” economic recovery, contrary to the data that the Government presumes.

“Mr. Sánchez has also crossed a multitude of cultural red lines in Spanish politics,” reports the Wall Street Journal, which underlines the “convenient alliances in Congress with regional separatist and communist parties.”. “It brings to light controversies related to the Franco dictatorship. Franco died in 1975”, he concludes on the management of the Government.

These ingredients, the WSJ editorial analyzes, lay the foundations for a possible victory for the Popular Party that would mean “a healthy development” by ensuring that “a center-right European party can succeed with a conservative political strategy that also appeals to centrist voters.”

The Wall Street Journal also removes weight from the expectation of a hypothetical pact with Vox. “If the Popular Party wins, it will be because it has managed to raise a large tent that can accommodate centrist liberals and some of the conservatives who defend national unity and who went to Vox in past elections,” he analyzes.. “Mr. Feijóo may need to form a coalition government with Vox, but with sufficient support he will be able to do so from a position of strength,” he says.

The editorial also ensures that the PP campaign should be “a lesson for conservatives” around the world: “It has not drifted to the left on economic or cultural issues as the British Tories or Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats in Germany have done.. Nor has it gone very far in the other direction with an all-out culture war of the sort called for by National Conservative voters, which would have alienated centrist voters.”

In this sense, the Wall Street Journal article on the 23-J elections praises that Feijóo does not promise a revolution in the style of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, but does offer a different model to “a right-wing version of the redistribution of the left”.

On cultural issues, the newspaper analyzes that the PP is fighting in areas where there are “great consensuses”, such as the fight against separatism and the retreat from “radical policies” carried out by Sánchez, such as the one referring to transgender policies, “at the same time that it ignores complaints from the right about homosexual marriage and other issues that society considers closed.”