The political metamorphosis of the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, tends to infinity. It expands like the gas in a rising balloon. There is no electoral crack that it has not colonized or tries to occupy to the astonishment of the opposition and a large part of its own hosts. Since he conquered the San Telmo Palace (Quirinale) in 2018, the update tactic of the president of the PP in the South has not stopped for an instant.
This singular navigation chart allowed him to reach an absolute majority nine months ago –getting rid of Vox and engulfing Cs– and, at the gates of 28-M, feeds the suspicion –which is less and less– that the strategy of amplifying his figure exceeds the limits of regional politics to project itself towards the state level.
Four years after reaching power and one year after becoming the primus inter pares of the barons of Genoa, the Moreno Bonilla phenomenon has become the dominant habitat of southern politics. Outside of this atmosphere, there is simply no life.
Its attraction operates in a similar way to a centrifuge: the Junta’s powerful marketing machine, in which institutional resources and partisan interest converge, aided by the non-existence of an opposition worthy of the name, accelerates the decantation of political elements within its reach –rivals, adversaries, causes, public positions, declarations– in such a way that its ingredients are broken down according to their density.
In this way, the president of the Junta has been able to govern for three and a half years with the support of Vox and not be contaminated with the ultramontane tar. Or lead a coalition government with Cs, which was formed based on electoral equivalence, but very soon mutated into tacit supremacy, surprisingly with the satisfaction of the orange party, which barely five years before had disputed the space of the political center.
Neither the arduous management of the pandemic –with deaths and the subsequent economic crisis– nor the (very pronounced) deterioration of public health seem to overshadow its good fortune. The (apparent) strength of his personal image – in the regional elections the PP brand was sacrificed in favor of his – is such that Moreno Bonilla has allowed himself to approve an order that makes it easier for private health companies to enter the public health system.
Before, during his first legislature, he gave the green light, without fail, to an urban law very favorable to urbanization and intensive real estate exploitation, in the same way that his fiscal policy (clearly asymmetric) has been oriented, without the political turbulence having reached the condition of storms, to favor above all high incomes, keeping the inheritance and gift tax frozen and eliminating the wealth tax.
The great economic magnitudes –foreign investment, employment, business modernization– refute a good part of its official story, but San Telmo compensates for this objective deficiency with a subjective and propaganda discourse that serves to give the impression that Andalusia is competing in the same division. than territories like Catalonia or Madrid.
His adaptation manual flees from reformism, which was the argument with which he ran for election. He also assumes the socialist heritage so as not to cause rejection either among the cadres of the old regional administration or the unions. And he relentlessly explores all the possible bags of votes within his reach. Both natural and artificial.
With Vox, he competes by making specific gestures to his electorate, who previously voted for the PP. He has co-opted the Andalusians, whose legacy no longer poses any danger to their hegemony, without having to pay more tolls than sentimental ones. The Andalusian conversion of the PP, a pragmatic decision whose purpose is to provide an autonomous discourse to a southern right that historically opposed self-government, has discrete electoral gains, but it helps to dress the monk in a habit that simulates devotion where there was none before faith.
In parallel, it helps to dislocate the PSOE, which four years ago renounced the regional flag – when Pedro Sánchez consolidated himself in Moncloa – due to the short vision first of Susana Díaz and later of Juan Espadas. Its absolute majority was reached in June thanks to a vote transfer of the order of 18%, which showed that a part of the socialist electorate votes without qualms for the president of the Junta even though they have not previously supported the PP.
San Telmo is now trying to build loyalty and increase this support in two ways. The first is the confrontation with Moncloa – sheltered by the general interest of self-government – ??on issues such as financing, drought or fiscal autonomy. The second is emulating the PSOE before Sánchez: oblivious to populist contagion and capable of making social banners such as feminism their own, of which the socialists mistakenly believed they had an absolute monopoly.
This week, before 8-M, while in Congress the PSOE and UP voted separately on the modification of the law of the only yes is yes, which went ahead with the votes of Feijóo’s PP, Moreno Bonilla made a speech -in a awards ceremony for women – focused on the victims of the released aggressors and proclaimed: “Andalusia leads in women”.
In January, the President of the Board received an award at Fitur granted by the LGTBI collective: “The first gay bar in Spain was opened in Torremolinos, Tony’s Bar, becoming since then the emblem of an open, inclusive Andalusia, opposed to retrograde behaviors and in which anyone can feel and love themselves freely”.
Moreno Bonilla’s centrifuge, thanks to sedimentation, helps him to seize all the political currents around him without taking risks and without stopping taking steps – as has been seen with the sanitation or legalization of illegal irrigation in the Parque de Doñana– in favor of the transfer of income and public resources for the benefit of private interests. His conservatism, which began as blue, later changed to a liberal light blue and later mutated into Andalusian white and green, now encompasses almost all the colors of the rainbow.
