Pedro Sánchez walked through Nou Barris on Friday with the socialist candidate for mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni. This Saturday, the conclave with which the Andalusian PSOE kicked off the local election race closed in Huelva. And already on April 16, he will star in the convention that the socialists from all over Spain will celebrate in Valencia before the appointment with the polls on May 28, singularly to promote the options of Ximo Puig for his re-election as regional president and of Sandra Gómez to achieve recover the mayoralty of the capital of the Turia.
The Prime Minister is thus focusing on three of the “big battles” that the PSOE leadership claims to be willing to fight, and warns that with “very real” chances of winning them, on 28-M. An electoral contest that will also be the prelude to the general elections scheduled for December, in which Sánchez will fight for his own re-election. Yesterday, from Huelva, the leader of the PSOE not only demanded the socialist victory on 28-M, but also in the general elections, to block the way for the change in the political cycle promoted by Alberto Núñez Feijóo at the head of the Popular Party. With the argument that he still has to finish dismantling all the work and the legacy of the mandates of Mariano Rajoy.
Sánchez assured that since he arrived at Moncloa, after winning the vote of no confidence that brought down Rajoy in 2018, his main objective is to reverse “the neoliberal response” that the PP gave to the “disastrous decade of the financial crisis”. He thus used the revaluation of pensions in accordance with the CPI, the labor reform, the increase in the minimum wage, equality and parity policies or investments in public health approved during his mandate. But the head of the Executive demanded another four more years to continue with his work.
“What we are doing is so important that a decade of cuts and a neoliberal response to the financial crisis require a decade of progress policies and advances in rights,” he justified. “That is why it is so important that next May 28 we have more governments than the ones we won in 2019, that defend what the majority thinks,” he said before the municipal and regional elections. “And of course in December we have a government that defends the interests of the majority, as we have been doing in the last four years,” he claimed.
“We have to strengthen the welfare state, and these cuts are not something we can reverse in four years. We need a decade of progressive policies and advances in rights to reverse everything that the right dismantled,” Sánchez insisted.
The President of the Government did not make any allusion to the reform of the law of the only yes is yes that maintains an open gap in the coalition between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos. But he added the pension reform already agreed with the purple formation to the “service record” of his mandate, incorporating it into his electoral discourse. “They told us that we were not going to be able to reform the pensions. And who said it were those who when they governed froze pensions and devalued salaries. When it is just the opposite: our public pension system is guaranteed with decent salaries. Because decent salaries today are decent pensions tomorrow, ”he defended.
The leader of the PSOE premiered in this act the motto of the electoral pre-campaign – “Defend what you think” – and raised the dilemma that will have to settle the polls. “The choice is very simple: either you bet on governments and mayors who defend what the majority thinks, or you bet on those who defend the privileges of a minority”, he stated. And he assured that a broad social majority will choose to “advance and not go back 10, 20, 30 or 50 years back.”
In the direction of Ferraz, however, they are very aware that all the projects of electoral victory and even a possible re-election of Sánchez as president of the government go through the resurrection of Andalusian socialism, after the loss of the Junta in 2019 and the debacle in the early regional elections in June of last year, which already granted an absolute majority to the popular Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla.
The PSOE entrusts this resurrection to the push of the local power that it still maintains in Andalusia. The leader of the Andalusian socialists, Juan Espadas, counted it again yesterday during the Huelva convention: 459 socialist mayors, out of a total of 785 municipalities, and more than 4,000 councilors, as a shock force. They also have the baton of command in four of the eight provincial capitals and in six councils.
In Ferraz they trust the re-election of Antonio Muñoz as mayor of Seville, Francisco Cuenca in Granada, Gabriel Cruz in Huelva and Julio Millán in Jaén. In addition, they harbor hopes that Daniel Pérez can wrest the mayoralty of Málaga from the veteran Francisco de la Torre. And they assure that, this time, Andalusian socialism will mobilize “to the fullest” before the 28-M. “The mayors are playing it on their own flesh,” PSOE leaders highlight as a great incentive.
Recovering the mayoralty of Barcelona, ??with Jaume Collboni, is also on the PSOE’s electoral target. And likewise the mayor of Valencia, with the candidacy of the current vice mayor, Sandra Gómez, in addition to retaining the Valencian Community, with Ximo Puig. Precisely the Valencian president will head this time the socialist electoral list for the autonomous elections of 28-M for the Valencia constituency, after having done so in the last two legislatures for Castellón.
