The triumph of Salvador Illa in the Catalan elections on May 12 is “a boost” for the PSOE in the face of the European election campaign that begins next Thursday night. And the great event that the far-right Vox held in Madrid last Sunday – which also opened a diplomatic crisis between the governments of Spain and Argentina, due to Javier Milei accusing the wife of the President of the Government, Begoña Gómez, of “corruption” -, “it should be a stimulus for all Democrats to put their foot down” and shake off their “laziness” to go vote, according to sources from the socialist campaign for next June 9. “We have to stop this at the polls,” they encourage.
The image of the “global far right” gathered at the Vistalegre palace by Santiago Abascal last Sunday, with Javier Milei as a great guest star, is “enormously worrying,” the socialists point out. “They come to Madrid, to Spain, because it is the bastion they want to defeat,” they say, given the progressive leadership they attribute to Pedro Sánchez throughout Europe. In this Vox event, they also point out that “real threat messages” were sent. Sánchez himself accused Abascal of inciting “political violence” with his harangues. And in the PSOE they emphasize that this far-right event should be interpreted as “a warning” that nothing should be taken for granted in Europe, as a space of peace, security and social rights. “Even the Roman Empire fell,” they warn.
“We have a lot at stake,” they warn in Ferraz. Sánchez and the entire leadership of the PSOE will thus seek a mobilization of the progressive electorate that can stop the rise of the right and the extreme right that the polls predict, in Spain and throughout Europe. It already happened, as they remember, in the general elections of July 2023, when the demoscopic threat of a Government of the Popular Party and the extreme right of Vox promoted an extra mobilization of the progressive voter that managed to get Sánchez to add almost a million more votes than in the 2019 elections. Alberto Núñez Feijóo won those last general elections, but he could not reach Moncloa and the leader of the PSOE managed to revalidate his position as President of the Government.
“There is a real risk,” they now warn again in the leadership of the PSOE before the European elections of 9-J, due to the growth of “extreme right-wing populism”, and the “increasing normalization” of this ultra agenda by the traditional right, which in his opinion could plunge the European institutions into a “process of regression” in their fundamental pillars. “The right is inclined to surrender to the extreme right,” they denounce, and enters into their frameworks of “xenophobic speeches,” as they highlight that Feijóo already did in the recent Catalan campaign.
“The dilemma is relevant,” they point out in Ferraz, “and people are still not fully aware of it.” This “alert” message will, therefore, be one of the main axes on which the campaign of the socialists and their leader, the third vice president Teresa Ribera, will pivot. “We cannot allow ourselves to be carried away by reactionary and denialist forces,” she warns. Their “quite aggressive cultural battle,” they emphasize, “must be stopped at the polls.”
“More Europe” is the campaign slogan of the socialists, which they translate into “a modern economy that generates quality employment”, based on the green and digital agenda, and “a powerful social agenda”, which reaffirms “classical” values. Europeans of the welfare state, “in the face of austericide, the curtailment of rights and every man for himself” that they attribute to the right and the extreme right. “Less Europe, more chaos,” they denounce.
Pedro Sánchez, who last Saturday already began to warm up his engines with a rally in Barcelona together with Salvador Illa and Teresa Ribera, has five other appointments reserved for now on his campaign agenda. This Thursday he will start his journey, at the start of the campaign, in Valencia. He will also stop in Seville -May 25-, in Valladolid -June 1- and in Malaga -June 5-, before closing the campaign in Madrid on June 7. Campaign sources point out that the President of the Government will thus target some of the most important population centers in Spain as his electoral target, as these are single-constituency elections.
After the succession of electoral calls held since the general elections of July 2023 – with regional elections this year in Galicia, Euskadi and Catalonia, and now the European ones – Ferraz assures that the party is “super activated.” But, to achieve the mobilization effort of the progressive electorate that they intend, they will organize up to 800 events in this new campaign throughout Spain. Teresa Ribera alone has already scheduled 25 campaign and sector events until election day.
In addition to Pedro Sánchez, who Ferraz assures is always their best “electoral asset”, former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will also put on his campaign boots again. After the event that he already starred in in Cádiz last Sunday with Ribera, the former president will also speak with Sánchez this Thursday in Valencia at the campaign kick-off rally. And then he will tour León, the Valencian Community, Granada and will also participate alongside the president and the electoral candidate in the campaign closing rally in Madrid.
Also the current high representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, former minister Josep Borrell, will join the final stretch of the socialist electoral campaign, starting on June 3, according to socialist sources. And other ministers and leaders of the PSOE, especially the vice president María Jesús Montero, will also have a very active participation in this campaign. And everyone is crossing their fingers: “We can be the force with the most votes and with the most seats,” they trust.