The peaceful Zugazarte avenue, which connects the neighborhoods of Las Arenas and Neguri, in Getxo, is one of the few places in the Basque Country in which the Popular Party maintains its electoral muscle practically intact. In some of the sections of this residential area with an English feel, the popular ones exceed 65% of the votes, both in municipal and general votes, EH Bildu practically does not exist and the PNV is far from posing a threat at the polls. The electoral superiority of the PP is as insulting as it is unreal, if you look at the whole of Euskadi, which is why Alberto Núñez Feijóo paid so much attention to the PNV in his visit this Monday to this environment.
“There are parties that have lost their personality, like the Basque Nationalist Party. And it is not worth saying that their economic policy is different from that of the PSE because they always vote the same,” Feijóo said at his event in Las Arenas. The popular leader also expanded on his criticism of the PSOE, although he made it clear that his rival to beat is the PNV: “There are only two paths. The same old guy with the same old guys and with the same old noisemaker. That of the nationalists. Or take on new challenges, hand in hand with the PP.”
There is some concern among popular Basques about the trend indicated by the surveys. The majority gives them between five and seven seats, out of 75, a result similar to the one they achieved four years ago, in coalition with Ciudadanos. In this way, the popular parties would remain on their electoral soil, very far from the representation they achieved just a decade ago (in the 2009-2012 legislature they had 13 seats, and in the 2012-2016, with 10) and an abyss of their historic result in 2001, when they obtained 19 representatives.
The reasons that explain such a marked drop in such a short time are several, although among the popular there is a feeling that in post-terrorism Euskadi, in which speeches of total opposition to ETA and its political objectives do not mobilize, a moderate PNV, Far from the sovereign path, he fishes too easily in his electoral fishing grounds, especially in municipal elections or in elections to the Basque Parliament.
Bastions like Zugazarte have always been very exceptional in the Basque Country, but the popular ones have also lost steam in the capitals. In last year’s municipal elections they were fourth in Bilbao and San Sebastián, and third in Vitoria. They only maintain part of their electoral strength in general elections, although far from their best records, between 2000 and 2010.
The growing bipartisan perspective that Basque politics is acquiring also favors the anti-Bildu vote going to the PNV, something that forces the popular ones to measure the discourse of fear of the nationalist coalition. Feijóo, however, could not avoid appealing to this factor this Monday: “Bildu fears one vote from the PP more than ten votes from the PNV and 1,000 from the PSOE.”
For this reason, during his visit this Monday to the Basque Country, the second in four days, he considered that Basque citizens have the opportunity to “make history” on the 21st by betting on their training, “the only alternative to prevent EH Bildu reaches the institutions.”
