Grow in votes and seats by going it alone (in 2020 the PP ran in coalition with Citizens) and be influential. These were the three objectives that Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s executive set at the start of the regional election campaign in the Basque Country, and the polls have awarded it seven seats, one more than four years ago, and 96,000 votes, 9.2% of the votes cast. Two out of three
“We have managed to grow in votes and seats”, exclaimed Javier de Andrés during the appearance after learning the results, in which he spoke of the “recovery” and “repositioning” of the PP and offered the PNB his ” extended hand”, but, yes, “within the limits” of the Constitution.
However, the third challenge, that of being decisive in the Basque Parliament and conditioning government action, has been frustrated, because the PNB, despite the fall, and the PSE will be able to govern together again.
By province, the PP gets four seats in Álava, the territory where it traditionally achieves better results; two in Bizkaia and one in Gipuzkoa. But yesterday’s seven deputies are far from the historical mark in Euskadi, which was set by Jaime Mayor Oreja in 2001 with 19 seats.
The PP, with a candidate without stridency, in full harmony with Feijóo, has presented itself as the only representative of the “political center”, once the PNB has left it an “orphan”, according to Génova’s analysis, for its prolonged alliance with Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE and its “satellite parties”.
But the continuous appeals to stability, security and management by the PP, which has focused on accusing the PNB of “hugging” not only the socialists, but also formations such as EH Bildu and Podemos, far removed from what Basque nationalism represents, have not made an impact.
The PP has claimed itself as the alternative of a Basque Country where the discomfort with the deterioration of public services has been increasing and, despite the fact that it congratulated itself on the “upward trend” in Euskadi, which is already to show at the municipal elections in May and the general elections in July last year, the improvement is insufficient so that the road from Feijóo to la Moncloa will be flattened in the next general elections.
Faced with this bittersweet result, the leadership of the PP accuses the PSOE of having “whitewashed” EH Bildu, the formation that rises the most, and regrets that the controversy in the final stretch of the campaign, following the rejection of the candidate from the Abertzale left to qualify ETA as a terrorist group, has benefited the PNB as the receiver of the useful vote of the more moderate sectors of Basque society.
The rise of the PSE, which won two seats, and the resistance of Vox, which kept its own, did not allow Genoa, unlike the triumphant night of the Galician elections, to take the cava out of the fridge yesterday.
