The PP has crashed against expectations. The narrative that the results were going to be a military parade was known to be false, but even so it was fed from the conservative gossip until scratching the paroxysm. Feijóo has won the elections, yes, but he has lost the government. He has not met the expectations that he himself and his family had raised. Neither with Vox nor without Vox have their ills remedied. The Galician sold the bear skin before hunting it. Pools were made about who would be the economy minister of the popular. Feijóo won the campaign, at least the first part of it. But that pyrrhic victory has ended up exploding in his face. The mood of the popular family last night was one of absolute despondency.
Feijóo has a nail to hold on to: blocking. That Pedro Sánchez cannot assemble a majority for the investiture. But that does not depend on the popular ones. If the definitive scrutiny alters the provisional results and Junts ceases to be decisive, Pedro Sánchez will be president. And if everything finally remains in the hands of Carles Puigdemont, who knows. Politics is the art of the possible, no matter how difficult it may seem. With Sánchez back at Moncloa, Feijóo would have a lot of trouble keeping calm in his game. The most shameless and self-conscious diva of the right is always warming up in the band. Ayuso waits.
The absolute majority in the PP Senate or the growth in votes and deputies are an insufficient consolation prize. Blocks were voted and Feijóo’s has lost. His speech last night was that of a loser, even though he won the elections.
He voluntarily forgot in his speech that in Spain the elections are not to choose a president, but the composition of a Congress that will later elect a president. In that loser’s speech, he did something else, delegitimized any investiture negotiation other than his own. He felt bad for Feijóo to lose winning. And he wanted to take advantage of his first words after the scrutiny to start the work of delegitimizing any government that is not presided over by him. It was a very unfortunate speech from the point of view of democratic conviction.
The PP has once again crossed Catalonia along the way. The right needs more gasoline in the rest of Spain if the Catalan community turns to the rescue of the Spanish left. The results of the popular ones in Catalonia were good, although insufficient. They didn’t meet expectations here either. But the real drama for Feijóo is that of the 48 deputies distributed by the Catalan community, 19 fell into the socialists’ bag and 7 into Sumar’s. Spain can be governed without Catalonia, but it is much more difficult and also more unlikely. Rajoy was thrown off the road in the form of a motion of censure by Catalan politics. And Feijóo has now crashed against the same wall. Sánchez took a risk with the pardons and the reform of the Penal Code. Paradoxically, it is what in the end has allowed him to endure and win without winning.
