In a prodigious poem for its simplicity, Charles Bukowski writes that if a humble spark is conserved, an entire forest can be set on fire. A tiny fire is enough to light up hell. One of the certainties that the 28-M has left in Andalusia is that, despite maintaining an electoral ground that is absolutely negligible, although it is far from the hegemony achieved in its best times, the institutional power that the socialists treasured after losing San Telmo, five years ago, concentrated in many town halls and in six councils, it has sunk. In some cases for a time that will be prolonged. In others, perhaps, forever.
The municipal elections have thus precipitated the PSOE del Sur to the bottom of its own well. The feeling of defeat is, of course, psychic, but it also presents material profiles. This is evidenced by what has happened in quite a few towns with less than 60,000 inhabitants, some of them with a notable political wealth of a symbolic order.
Andalusia has definitely ceased to be a cultural condominium of the PSOE. The electoral results in places like Puerto Real (Cádiz) or Utrera (Seville), in whose town halls until fifteen days ago there was not a single PP councilor, show the entity of the change.
The first, a town of 41,995 inhabitants located in the Bay of Cádiz, has been for decades a bastion of the different communist brands, from the old PCA to IU. The second, with 51,718 inhabitants, capital of the Sevillian countryside and head of the judicial district, is one of the southern agro-cities where the Andalusian Party has had the most power.
Both illustrate well the change in the political paradigm that Andalusia has been experiencing since the end of 2018, when Moreno Bonilla agreed to the Quirinale thanks to a parliamentary agreement with Cs and Vox that three years later became a resounding absolute majority.
The political photo of the 28-M in both towns clearly shows the effects of the decline of the PSOE, the disunity of the left parties and the advance of the right, three of the factors that will condition the general elections brought forward to July 23 .
In Puerto Real, the right-wing went from being extra-plenary to obtaining three councilors, while the left, fragmented into different candidacies, managed to retain the Mayor’s office by the minimum. The most voted list is a confluence between IU and Equo. Podemos, who attended the elections alone, has been left out of the town hall.
Adelante AndalucÃa, the tiny party of Teresa RodrÃguez, has only retained one mayor of the eight it obtained in 2019. The Socialists, who governed, have fallen from seven to five councilors. The PP has obtained two minutes and Vox, which doubles the votes obtained four years ago, accesses for the first time one of the most left-wing consistories in Andalusia.
In Utrera, the effectiveness of Moreno Bonilla’s strategy to capture pockets of Andalusian votes was being resolved. It has been a success. Not having any councilor of its own, the PP candidacy, headed by Francisco Jiménez, in his day councilor with the PA, has obtained twelve councilors.
The Socialists fall from fourteen to eleven councilors and the key to the consistory remains in the hands of a local candidacy made up of former Cs: Utrera militants. Here the forced union of the left, who concurred in a common list, did not avoid bad forecasts.
The conclusion drawn by the results of the 28M in these two localities is that the advance of the PP in inland Andalusia is robust and that the deterioration of the socialists, without being terminal, leaves them out of the game, even if a only list of lefts.
The trend is clear and, barring a miracle, it seems to be sufficiently established for the PSOE to approach another defeat on 23J. Can the socialists reverse this critical situation in just fifty days? Do they have sparks left to make a fire?
Beyond the electoral strategies that are designed in the captaincies of the political parties in Madrid, be it Ferraz or Genoa, turning around the polls in Andalusia, something vital for the salvation of Pedro Sánchez, requires a high degree of involvement and resources that the PSOE has just lost. The PP fights the new game of 23J with the absolute control of the Junta and, once they are constituted, with six of the eight councils and almost all of them are large city councils.
In San Vicente, headquarters of the Andalusian socialists, they fear a sit-down campaign by the middle leaders and many socialist militants, disenchanted after the collapse of 28M. They have lost everything before the general polls open.
In Moncloa they have precipitated the electoral advance to ward off the risk of an internal revolt until after the elections. Nothing, however, guarantees that the conscious passivity of the socialist organization can turn the pulse of 23J into a war where a part of the troops decide not to appear or go out on the battlefield without any enthusiasm.
Reasons, of course, exist. The Socialists, whose territorial structure in the South depended on the control of the provincial corporations, have only kept the councils of Jaén and Seville. All the others have passed into the hands of the PP. The impact of this defeat, regardless of the overall vote numbers, is devastating for the PSOE.
All the provincial secretaries of the party, the organic heads of the Socialists in each territorial demarcation, were in turn the natural presidents of the councils, with whose budget they hired intermediate positions and nurtured the local clientele networks.
The Andalusian PSOE plans to mitigate the debacle of losing four councils by including the mayors and socialist politicians defeated in the municipal elections on the electoral lists. It is a palliative measure, but its importance does not solve, except in individual terms, the root of the problem. The fire seems to have gone out.
The Socialists have governed many of the provincial corporations in Andalusia, which have handled almost 2.7 billion euros each year since 1979. Their loss is like the death of a child. On 23J they face a life or death election without these institutional weapons.
Four years ago, when Susana DÃaz was expelled from San Telmo but the majority of the three right-wing groups together was still a circumstantial alliance, the provincial socialist patriarchs had to maintain their local shield of 2,041 million euros compared to the 630 million that the PP administered. in the territorial corporations of Málaga and AlmerÃa.
The 28M has turned this situation around. The six councils that will now be governed by the right will have at their disposal 1,841 million euros per year compared to the 830 that the PSOE will keep in Seville and, probably, also in Jaén.
The balance is devastating: the 1,211 million euros that the Socialists are going to stop controlling after the municipal elections make them an army with less weapons, plunged into a crisis of meaning, without a real leader and without the possibility of obtaining any loot after the new battle
That they present resistance to the right will be a miracle. For many socialists, the 23J war no longer makes any sense. They do not feel like the “happy chosen ones†of the battle of Agincourt. They are not a “band of brothers†either. The PSOE lacks a Shakespeare who turns his imminent ‘Saint Crispin’s Day’ into epic matter. And without a spark, there is no fire.
