Pedro Sánchez has a big exam tomorrow in Catalonia. If the PSC wins and manages to govern, the president will receive a major boost that will allow him to boost a practically paralyzed legislature. The leader of the Executive would see his policy of appeasement in Catalonia endorsed with the reunion agenda, an affable way to overcome the process not exempt from costly decisions such as pardons, penal reform and amnesty. It is the bear hug, which Illa has also cultivated in Catalonia with ERC and Junts, through agreements that have allowed the blocks to be knocked down.
In these elections, therefore, it is played on two courts. The President of the Government seeks social endorsement for his investiture agreements with the pro-independence parties, especially for the amnesty that is about to be approved, and to shelve the process in Catalonia with Illa, which if he governs, will prevent a return to 2017. Thus it is understood that in his rallies the head of the Executive has reduced the contest to a dilemma: “Illa or the mud of the right and the extreme right”, and that the PSC candidate has done the same exercise in a local key: “More than the same or a new stage.”
If Illa governs, Sánchez will not be spared having to deal with ERC and Junts for the stability of his legislature and the votes in Congress will be tough, but with Illa as baron, many of the measures that Catalonia can benefit from will be owned by him. socialist.
In Spanish terms, a comfortable victory for Illa would also give a boost to the PSOE before the next screen, the European elections. Not so long ago the polls placed the PSOE 12 or 13 points behind the PP, in a dangerous drift since the results of 23-J. The elections can serve the PSOE to overcome the costs of the Catalan agenda and try to start the comeback.
In Catalonia, Illa can return the PSC to the Generalitat 14 years after José Montilla handed over the baton to Artur Mas. The candidate leads the polls after a policy of reaching out to the ERC Government and an electoral campaign focused on management. Illa denounces “a lost decade” because of the process, in which Catalonia “has run aground,” he laments, in almost all matters (health, education, drought, infrastructure, security…) The appeal to recover “the excellence of public services” goes along those lines and has the advantage of being purposeful. “People want things to be done,” they stated in the PSC these days.
But if she wants to govern, Illa must win, prevail with some ease and count on the independence movement not gaining a majority. Sánchez’s assiduous presence in the campaign, despite the initial break for his reflective week, was intended to mobilize the traditionally abstentionist electorate, while Illa has appealed to the useful vote, encouraging “those who have never voted for us, for whatever reason.” ”. Transversalism has been the slogan of the PSC in the campaign to invoke the “strength to govern” that its motto says.
To achieve this, the focus will be on the commons and ERC. Although Illa would like a government alone, those of Jéssica Albiach will demand that she form a coalition and it will be necessary to see if those of Pere Aragonès are willing to agree.
At yesterday’s campaign closing rally, in Barcelona’s Vall d’Hebron, before almost 4,000 enthusiastic people, Sánchez waved “the flag of coexistence to overcome the crisis raised by two right-wing presidents” in Catalonia, in reference to Rajoy. and Puigdemont and appealed to a “broad victory for Illa to govern on May 13.” And the candidate placed two alternatives before the polls: “Whoever wants more of the same has many ballots, including abstention, but whoever wants a new stage only has one, that of the PSC.”
