If the vote had been based on local and regional criteria, the result of Sunday’s elections would have been different: the good mayors and good regional presidents would have won and only the bad ones would have lost. But something else happened: it happened that the “blue wave” flooded everything and the good guys were defeated just as much as the bad guys. Logical: if a national campaign was made, the vote was based on national criteria. Consequently, if Pedro Sánchez got involved personally, if he starred in the campaign and if he even governed from the rally, he was the defeated one. Those who gave victory to the PP or doubled the votes of Vox, did it against him and against Podemos, his government partner. It means that on Sunday Spain voted against the ruling coalition, that coalition suffered a strong vote of punishment and its leader, Pedro Sánchez, reacted with unexpected audacity.
The president may have wondered how that defeat was possible, if his economic management accumulated successes, if Catalonia was much better than in 2017, if the word stability dominated the atmosphere, if Joe Biden proclaimed his international leadership and if respected analysts noted the fall of the so-called “Feijóo effect”. What the polls said was something that did not enter his head: that a large part of Spanish society did not believe these wonders; that the good macroeconomic data were belied by inequality, by the difficulty of accessing housing, or by the deterioration of the middle classes; that the good territorial policy was not accompanied by an effective discourse on the idea of ​​Spain; that the action of Unides Podemos gave an image of two governments; that the most progressive laws seemed contrary to traditional morality without a leadership that assumed their pedagogy, and that the progressive revolution of the “most progressive Government in history” caused more discomfort than satisfaction.
It usually happens that, once social commitment has been expressed in an election, the electorate rectifies it. This is one of the hopes of the Socialist Party and is probably one of the arguments that pushed Pedro Sánchez to advance the general elections. Here is the resourceful author of the resistance handbook. With his bold initiative he aspires to achieve several goals. One, to reduce the impact of Sunday’s defeat: public and published opinions have less than 24 hours to recreate themselves and turn to the July polls. Two, to show a democratic temperament by their willingness to accept failure and demand that the national will be expressed. And third and more strategic, call to vote in the midst of negotiations for the new conservative majorities to evict the PSOE and hold elections under the impact of those pacts, which will be presented as the coming to power. In this way, Sánchez hopes that the July polls will be the elections of fear: “Either me or the extreme right”. And he hopes, above all, that they will be the plebiscite that the 28th of May could not be.
