Sánchez risks his last card to stop the absolute majority of PP and Vox

“He who does not risk does not win”, they argue in Moncloa. Pedro Sánchez resorted at dawn on Monday, after the socialist electoral fiasco on the fateful night of 28-M, to his usual political strategy for when things get really ugly: bet everything on one last card. To one last play, “all or nothing”. To one last stroke of luck at roulette. “All in, all red.” Silver Bullet.

A strategy that sometimes worked for him, such as when he was resurrected in 2017 after being ousted by the PSOE or when in 2018 he presented a motion of no confidence against Mariano Rajoy that made him president of the government, but which at other times failed, as happened with the electoral repetition of 2019. The die is cast again, with the early general elections on July 23, which yesterday afternoon called for an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers after dissolving the Parliament. The legislature is over.

28-M doubled the pulse of Sánchez, who always opted to exhaust his term until his last breath, next December, after crowning him with the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union that starts on July 1. But the message from the polls this Sunday was final, and almost all the territorial power of the PSOE went down the drain. Sánchez could choose between prolonging six months of agony, until the general elections in December, or kicking the board and making all the pieces fly into the air. “Win or die, there are no other alternatives,” confirmed his faithful. And elections.

Already in the early hours of Monday, once confirmed in Ferraz the loss of the majority of the regional presidencies of the PSOE –Valencian Community, Aragon, Extremadura, the Balearic Islands, La Rioja, possibly the Canary Islands and also the vice presidency of Cantabria–, and of mayors such as those of Seville, Granada, Huelva, Toledo, Ciudad Real, Valladolid, Gijón or Castellón, Sánchez summoned his hard core in Moncloa to decide the electoral advance.

Yesterday morning, Sánchez did not celebrate the usual Monday matins meeting. In his place, he informed Felipe VI of the dissolution of the Cortes and, then, appeared in Moncloa to announce the call to the polls. Assuming full responsibility for the socialist defeat. “As President of the Government and as Secretary General of the PSOE, I assume the results firsthand and I believe it is necessary to give an answer and submit our democratic mandate to the popular will”, he affirmed.

Later he met in Ferraz with the federal executive of the PSOE to explain his decision. “This is the best time to mobilize the progressive vote,” they all agreed. “We have to take advantage of the scare as a reaction to group the left,” they resolved. The time is now, they say, because they see the sum of the Popular Party and the extreme right of Vox still “very far” from an absolute majority, and at the same time they think that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has no possibility or capacity to agree with any other group in the parliamentary arch.

“It is a very risky decision”, they assume everyone in Moncloa and Ferraz. “But brave, daring, daring and, above all, intelligent”, they highlight. “The objective is to stop the right and the extreme right, now we are going for everything,” they say. It is therefore not the result of a fever, they warn, but a “very calculated” strategic decision.

“That the PP and Vox add an absolute majority is much more complicated than it seems,” they allege. “We are three points away,” they highlight. And in fact they remember that, in the global calculation of the municipal elections, the PP (31% of the votes) barely won the PSOE (28%) by three points. That percentage difference, the socialist strategists point out, can be reversed if they achieve “a hypermobilization of the left.” Again, with the threat of a majority of the PP and the extreme right of Vox.

Sánchez, therefore, will continue his almost uninterrupted electoral campaign with “a stark appeal to the useful vote”, to concentrate the vote of the left. The PSOE leader will thus appeal directly to the progressive voter to stop the right. “Sánchez is the only one who can stop the right and the extreme right”, they settle.