The Galician election campaign started last night. Alfonso Rueda, the custodian of the longest conservative absolute majority on the Spanish political map, fights against sulking Galicia. Last night, Rueda posted the first poster of him in A Coruña together with the popular spokesperson Miguel Tellado, also Galician.
Nobody doubts that the PP will win the elections on February 18, but the key is whether it will manage to reach the 38 seats that would guarantee it continued in San Caetano, the seat of government in Santiago de Compostela.
As of today, the PP has 42 deputies, which Alberto Núñez Feijóo inherited two years ago before crossing the Ancares on his way to Moncloa, which he has not yet managed to reach.
Most polls are betting on 39-40 seats for Rueda. There is no prediction that can repeat the comfortable result that the current leader of the PP achieved in 2020 in an election marked by reasonable management of the pandemic and low participation. 52% of the electorate stayed at home four years ago.
The results of these elections transcend the Galician struggle, and are especially important for the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. If Rueda does not achieve an absolute majority, the formation of an alternative coalition government led by the second force in contention, the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), is foreseeable.
Its leader, Ana Pontón, is the highest-rated politician in the polls, and her party is the one that has achieved the best progress in local and regional elections. At the start of the campaign she said last night that it is necessary to “open a new era” with a government that “does not depend on what they say from Madrid.”
The BNG could join forces with the Galician Socialists Party of José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, to which perhaps the Sumar candidate, Marta Lois, could be added if it achieves representation – most polls rule it out.
This result, difficult but not impossible, would be a bad step for Feijóo, because in practice it would add another defeat like the one on July 23. He would win the elections, but lose the government, this time in his own fiefdom.
And something more relevant: the eviction of the PP from the San Caetano headquarters would be a challenge to its strategy, which now involves blocking any meeting point with parties that do not have their headquarters in Madrid and an unequivocal understanding of Spain.
On the contrary, Pedro Sánchez has a lot to gain and little to lose in these elections. His candidate, Gómez Besteiro, aspires at best to third place. With a somewhat better result than 2020 – it currently has 14 deputies – he gives the impression that he would already settle. Low expectations. But if Pontón achieves the presidency in a coalition, he would reinforce the PSOE strategy, his alliance with peripheral Spain on which Sánchez has built the majority of the investiture.
“Riquiña Galicia against sulking Galicia.” Last Tuesday, Alfonso Rueda, a calm man who finds it difficult to reach the vehemence of his predecessor, at an event in Pontevedra, where he lives – specifically on Perfecto Feijóo Street – described with these words the battle that begins today.
Riquiña is a Galician word that could be translated as kind, affectionate. The sulking Galicia is the Galicia of the mess. The PP wants to persuade Galicians that the coalition of the Galician Socialist Party and the Bloc, its main adversary, is the branch of Bildu, ERC, Puigdemont and, of course, Sánchez.
Rueda was, in this sense, explicit at the start of the campaign when he stated yesterday that an alternative government to the PP would be “watchful of people who do not look out for us and will only give us orders.” From a certain point of view, it is an interesting paradox to see the Popular Party become the guarantor of the self-determination of Galician politics.
Around with sulky Galicia. The weak point of the PP’s speech is that the whole world is sulking. And Galicia is no exception. Beyond the plausibility of the seat projections of the Center for Sociological Research, the pre-election survey of the public institute published last week on a sample of 11,000 interviews indicates that the main concerns of Galicians are about unemployment, health, deindustrialization , depopulation or aging.
A list of concerns of its own, in which the word amnesty does not even appear. Besteiro and, singularly, Ana Pontón are going to try to impose this agenda in the electoral story of the next fifteen days.
“We will talk about Galicia, there is a party,” the Block campaign team emphasizes with hope. Both the PSdG and the BNG are clear that, if they manage to increase participation above the 48% of 2020, there is a possibility of breaking the absolute majority of the PP. It is true that Feijóo’s first two victories occurred with electoral participations that were above 60%. And they were resounding.
Tomorrow, Alfonso Rueda and Alberto Núñez Feijóo will fill the Pontevedra bullring with supporters of their candidacy. The next day, SOS Sanidade Pública, an organization that apparently is not linked to the opposition, will try to fill the Plaza del Obradoiro in Santiago in support of the demands of the exhausted Galician public health workers. Pontón, Besteiro and Lois will be there supporting them. Galicia sulking.
