The PNV has finished hardening its discourse with respect to Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP candidate, and leaves the possibility of an eventual agreement after 23-J practically ruled out. The local and regional alliances of the popular with Vox throughout Spain cause aversion in the Basque Country, and have led the jeltzales to close a door that has been ajar since the arrival of the Galician politician in Madrid. “There will be no way to agree with Feijóo, who has crossed all lines,” said Aitor Esteban, PNV candidate, this morning.
The number one in the Congress of Basque nationalists for Bizkaia has expressed himself in these terms in an interview on Onda Vasca, asked about the possibility that his votes could be used to promote Núñez Feijóo to La Moncloa.
“He has crossed all the lines that have been and will be. Vox cannot be normalized, and it cannot be put into governments. That line has already passed, but by far. What are you going to do now? You are going to make the same play, you are very clear about it, and you are going to use those votes. What is your electoral program? He said it yesterday: everyone to jail, modification of the Penal Code, throw back some of the laws that have been approved now, with which we agree… He already warned about what he understood with respect to Euskadi and Catalonia. There is no margin ”, he has indicated.
In relation to the possibility of agreements with the PSOE, Aitor Esteban has shown himself to be much more prone; However, he has indicated that a possible new legislature agreement should be protected against possible breaches.
“With the PSOE we have an agreement at the local level, in the foral and we have a coalition government. We will talk, but we will have to speak very clearly, because what cannot be is what has happened constantly during this legislature, of having to try to save the balls that were thrown at us to score a goal on issues of self-government or on other matters that they wanted to regulate by forcing our positions. It cannot be, we must clarify it and fulfill the commitments. We are going to go with our program and we will tell them ‘if you want our vote, the priorities of Euskadi are these’, but you will not have it ‘gratis et amore'”, he warned.
The jeltzales, who had allowed themselves to be loved by the PP, thus clarified their position before Basque society and tried to remove an argument from EH Bildu. The nationalist coalition has been attacking them with the possibility that they could support Feijóo, alluding in parallel to the post-electoral pacts in which the jeltzales have needed popular votes.
The PNV arrives in a complicated position at the 23-J elections, after verifying in the municipal and regional elections in May that it had suffered an abstention from punishment. The jeltzales face a new battle with EH Bildu in the least propitious scenario: general elections, which always polarize the vote in favor of the two big parties at the state level. In the 2015-2016 electoral cycle, the difference between the best results of the PNV (2016 Basque Parliament elections, 398,168 votes) and the worst (2016 general elections, 287,014 support) was 111,000 votes; the jeltzales came to leave more than one in four votes. This trend, however, was reduced to a minimum in the 2019-2020 electoral cycle.
In any case, the PNV cannot allow a part of its electorate to stay at home given the possibility that their vote could be used to invest Feijóo. The ambivalent position that he had maintained lately is increasingly clear, especially after the PP’s pacts with Vox throughout the Spanish geography.
The possibility that EH Bildu will surpass the PNV in seats is real and probable. The polls give a tie to five seats in the Autonomous Community of Euskadi, although EH Bildu would get one more seat for Navarra, while Geroa Bai (a coalition in which the PNV participates in the foral community) would not get representation.
The PNV is trying to do pedagogy, emphasizing that it is not about presidential elections and pulling the enormous pull of Aitor Esteban, his man in Madrid.
“It seems that they are presidential elections and that the people’s vote runs out that day, as soon as it is defined what the government will be, period. In reality, what is at stake is who is going to be representing you, who is going to handle the issues that may interest you, who is going to handle the issues that most directly affect the Basque Country over the next four years… It is decided who is going to tell the Government this is not going to be like that, you have to move on this other, etc. For that, a close perspective is needed, and more so in our society, which has its own dynamics and a feeling of belonging and of being different. That is what we are playing for”, Esteban indicated.
The objective of the PNV is to revalidate its parliamentary group in Madrid, either with 6 or 5 parliamentarians, and hold the pulse of EH Bildu. A new check against the king of the Abertzale coalition, less than a year before some Basque elections, would be very problematic.
