If anything has changed in these last fifteen days of the campaign, it is that today there are many more Galicians who consider a political change plausible.
This does not mean by any means that the left bloc is assured of victory this Sunday. But it opens up an expectation that has not occurred for years and that can have a mobilizing effect among those voters who, convinced that the PP is unbeatable in Galicia, went from getting up on Sunday to go to vote.
That’s what has changed. That on the terraces of the bars, when the successive February showers allow it, people drink beer and talk, sometimes, about Galician politics.
One cannot help but remember the electoral atmosphere in Catalonia in 1999, the Pujol campaign against Maragall – on his team was, by the way, a certain Toni Comín who today lives as an expatriate in Belgium. Ciutadans pel Canvi was the name of that political project that generated an enormous wave of enthusiasm.
It didn’t go from there. On election night Maragall won in votes, but lost in seats. That defeat saved four more years of a pujolismo that was already showing signs of deep exhaustion, but left a trail of inconsolable frustration. Some things that still happen today in Catalonia began that night.
Perhaps this is not the scenario we see today, Sunday, in Galicia. Or maybe yes, but if someone deserves to take the credit for this expectation of change, it is Ana Pontón, the leader of the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) who has been shaping this project for eight years.
In the 2020 elections, he already managed to prevail over the Socialist Party of Galicia as the second force with a pragmatic and transversal discourse in which he has persevered.
This campaign ends with an unbeatable level of acceptance among the rest of the leaders of the left and considerable even among the voters of the PP despite the campaign launched by the conservatives who link it for a few days to the Catalan independence movement – here in Galicia it is the antagonistic to the mere common sense – and others, directly with ETA.
Not even in the best of cases will Pontón manage to surpass the PP in votes. But it can be achieved with a result large enough so that, together with other forces on the left – if they resist –, they manage to break the absolute majority of the PP that has lasted since 2009 when Alberto Núñez Feijóo achieved it.
In that year, his campaign manager was the one who today aspires to revalidate the presidency of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda. This man from Pontevedra has the character of municipal secretaries – he has a place in this administrative body – correct, thorough and affable in short dealings.
Rueda has designed an extraordinarily conservative campaign for himself with the clearly mistaken prediction that there was no room for change.
He called the elections before Christmas knowing that the electoral calendar led him to celebrate the mid-campaign weekend at the beginning of February coinciding with the Entroido, the Galician carnival, a social phenomenon that for a few days brings thousands to the streets. of Galicians little or not at all willing to listen to political sermons.
Perhaps he was hoping to lower the electoral pitch. The PP has many guaranteed votes in Galicia where the opposition has to earn them hard. If that was the purpose, it has failed miserably.
Partly due to the ability of the left to place on the electoral agenda evidence of the wear and tear – it all started with the now-forgotten pellets and continued with healthcare – of a party that has been governing in Galicia with an absolute majority for fifteen years. And then he continued in the heat of battle when controversy arose over the PP’s talks with the Catalan independentists. This other crisis is, and will be, especially if the PP loses its majority, much more lethal for Feijóo than for his successor Alfonso Rueda. Even if they do not lose the majority, it could be lethal for the current leader of the Popular Party.
Added to all this is a third factor that comes from way back in the history of the Galician Popular Party. The Power Ranger factor, the candidacy of Democracia Ourensana, a local formation led by the mayor of this city, Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, which can snatch at least one deputy from the PP in this province. There are those who see behind this candidacy the hand of the Baltaristas willing to break the back of the PP of Rueda and Feijóo.
And finally, there is still a fourth, more hypothetical factor. Vox, the unexpected adversary. It is not impossible for him to obtain a deputy for A Coruña.
In short, the PP is living with too many uncertainties in this campaign that it believed it had won in advance.
For Pontón, on the other hand, failure, if it occurs, will be a multi-organ failure. It is likely that the one who turns out to be the weak link in the alliance of change in Galicia will be the Socialists Party, which reaches the end of the campaign exhausted. Not even the encouragement of Pedro Sánchez, who has led those compliance rallies in which the militancy begins to put on their jackets when the boss is already finishing his speech, has managed to encourage José Manuel Gómez Besteiro.
Nothing better awaits Sumar and Podemos. The candidacy of Yolanda Díaz’s party, which at the end of the campaign had the support of Ada Colau, has been deflating as the campaign has progressed. For Díaz, this will not be a good night. It remains to be seen what costs the uncertain Galician outcome will also have for the central government.