‘Treboada’ is one of the many words that Galicians use to talk about the weather. It means intense storm.
In these Galician elections, not even the most insightful meteorologists dare to predict the extent of the political storm that pushes the Galician Nationalist Bloc led by Ana Pontón.
Nobody doubts that these elections will be won by the PP, but nobody is sure that it will win by an absolute majority. And if he does not succeed, a change of government could occur with a coalition of left-wing parties led by the Galician Nationalist Bloc, led by Ana Pontón, the second electoral force in Galicia.
On Friday night, in Lalín, an irreducible bastion of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, tireless cheerleader of the campaign of Alfonso Rueda, his successor, complained bitterly that the novelty of these elections is “Mrs. Pontón. But what joke is that? If she has been in Parliament all her life!”
And he is right. Ana Pontón has been a tenant of the Pazo do Hórreo, the headquarters of the Galician Parliament, since 2004. And she has led the Bloc’s candidacy since 2016.
That perseverance may be the main virtue that voters who now declare themselves willing to vote for her and even those who will not.
Pontón has the best rating among Galician politicians, he also gets a good rating among PP voters and among the socialists he is almost equal to that of his own candidate, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro.
The history of the Galician left is the history of instability. The Socialist Party of Galicia has had nine different candidates in the twelve elections held so far compared to the four that the Galician Popular Party has had.
Even worse is the balance of the territory that Sumar and Podemos now occupy, separately. They have had a different candidate and a different name since their creation in 2012, as journalist Anxo Luguilde remembers well.
In the middle of this mess, Pontón is still there. The BNG candidate, a graduate in politics and with a clearly urban profile, began this campaign in the kitchen of her parents’ house, in the village of Chorente. Without giving up her program, with her friendly profile, she tries to escape the great divisive issues of Galician society to which the national question is no stranger.
The BNG, which in its program claims the right to self-determination, is campaigning very focused on its progressive agenda. For the moment, its national program has been limited to claiming more powers from a Statute, the Galician one, which is far from reaching its limits.
Will its momentum – polls show a gradual increase in support – be enough to unseat the PP? Alfonso Rueda, the current president of the Xunta – who yesterday had the president of the Andalusian Regional Government at his side in Santiago – is making his debut as a candidate in these elections. His campaign is not going as well as they would like. In the PP they already assume that it will be very difficult to reach the 42 deputies that Alberto Núñez Feijóo left sitting in the Galician Parliament when, two years ago, he began his career towards Moncloa and left Rueda at the head of the Xunta.
Feijóo took the toughest members of his team with him to Madrid and possibly this is one of the difficulties that the candidate has encountered.
Rueda’s intervention in the golden minute of the only television debate held so far in that campaign will go down in the small history of electoral campaigns: “If you want a president who deceives you, don’t vote for me.” Don’t vote for me has become a meme of this campaign.
Feijóo – “the most disciplined militant who does everything we ask of him”, in Rueda’s words – has carried the weight of the battle on his back and travels throughout Galicia from rally to rally. The loss of the absolute majority, and consequently, the loss of the Xunta would also mean a serious setback for him. That’s right. Because for the second time, and this time in his own house, he would win the elections, but he would be left out of the government. Another defeat at the hands of the alliance of sanchismo and independence – in this case the BNG, which the inveterate media Brunete already describes as Bildugal – would be very difficult to sustain in front of their own.
In his temporary return to the Galician arena, Feijóo carries out a combined attack against Sánchez on the one hand and against the independence movement, while establishing the PP as the “party of the land”, the Galician one, of course.
Perhaps one of the few reliefs for the PP is that expectations for the Socialist Party of Galicia are not good either. They are actually worse. The candidate, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, is also making his debut in this campaign and, like Rueda, is also having a hard time starting the electoral machinery. The Galician socialists have 14 deputies and no survey assures them today that they can keep them. Reaching the 30% of the votes that the socialists obtained on June 23 seems impossible now. In Galicia there is also dual voting.
A mediocre result, with a Block strong enough to overthrow the absolute majority of the PP would be consoling for the socialists, but a catastrophic defeat that prevented the assault on the San Caetano palace, headquarters of the Xunta, would put Besteiro and such in a bind. Maybe it would have consequences on Ferraz Street.
Between now and Friday, Pedro Sánchez will disembark for several days in the Galician campaign. Yesterday he was in Vigo and as usual at his campaign rallies, he announced a social measure, in this case, he announced that the Council of Ministers on Tuesday will approve the aid package of 2.5 billion so that young people can acquire their first home. Sánchez’s presence in the campaign will be important. But it remains to be seen if it will be enough.