The Galician left has seen in the pellet crisis a window of opportunity before an election that the PP considered won. With two weeks left until the campaign begins, thousands of people took to the streets of Santiago de Compostela at the weekend to denounce the management of the crisis by the different administrations. The left as a bloc – although separately – seconded the call.
The one who was spokesperson for Nunca Máis, Uxía Senlle, went to the march and remembers what happened more than 20 years ago with the Prestige crisis. “We have learned nothing in terms of maritime security, what has happened with the pellets is discouraging and gives the feeling that the administrations have acted the same and have looked the other way instead of acting”, he points out to La Vanguard
Senlle admits that the images of volunteers picking up these tiny particles of plastic are a far cry from the stark images from November 2002 of people in white frogs piling up tar after the Prestige tragedy. Despite this, left-wing parties did not take long to draw a parallel between the two disasters.
A comparison that the Galician PP despises. Sources of the formation emphasize that “the dimensions of the situation are incomparable; what is comparable is the will of the opposition to try to get electoral income from an episode of marine pollution”, they criticize. More so when “the powers to stop it belong to the central government”, now in the hands of the PSOE, they point out.
But what repercussions did the Prestige environmental catastrophe have on the Galician political scene? The results of the elections held in the months following the spill indicate that the stains that flooded the coast did not have an immediate electoral impact. The PP achieved indisputable absolute majorities in Muxía, Fisterra and Arteixo, three of the municipalities in the so-called zero zone. The popular ones won mayorships like Cee, where the PSdG had been the most voted force in 1999, and they got the baton in Cabana de Bergantiños. In fact, of the municipalities on the Costa da Morte, only one switched from the PP to the left: Carballo, which became governed by a BNG mayor.
The professor of Political Science and Administration at the University of Vigo, Enrique José Varela, explains that in the face of the slow reaction of the central and regional administrations, there was a very quick response from the mayors, who saw how the neighbors and the confraternities demanded that they act for the arrival of tar on the coasts.
This explains, in part, that there was no catharsis in the vote: “The mayors who were in charge of the town halls repeated, there was more of an identification with the mayor than with the brand”. The professor also indicates that since the 1990s the Galician political system has proven to be “very stable”, and the changes, “very slow”.
Uxía Senlle adds that it was “very difficult to dismantle the cacique network” that controlled the vote in the villages. The Galician singer points out that a lot of aid was promised and that “a network was created to buy wills with economic promises” that neither the social movements nor the parties managed to dismantle. Despite everything, in these municipal elections, the populists fell back and got 42.2% of the votes, compared to 46.1% in 1999.
Despite this, Senlle explains that “little by little the cards started to fall and citizens demanded responsibility from the rulers at the polls: underground currents began to move that led to the change of 2005”. Earlier, in 2004, Rajoy’s PP already lost the general elections and, in the following year’s regional elections, the popular Galicians lost the absolute majority they had had in the Xunta since 1989.
Varela is reluctant to speculate on how the current crisis, of lesser environmental magnitude, will affect the 18-F. “The opposition has taken advantage of the environmental crisis to launch the campaign and has taken the rulers by the foot,” he admits. However, it is not clear that it is enough, since “surveys indicate that the Galicians have other priorities that can decide the vote”.
However, the Galician political board is open, because, as the professor points out, issues such as the pellet crisis can “quickly activate participation in a low-profile political system” characterized by high abstention. And this activation can indeed be decisive in the votes on February 18.
