While waiting to understand what the declaration with which yesterday afternoon the President of the Spanish Government put an end to his five days of reflection translates into in practice, the Catalan electoral campaign returns to the point at which it was last Wednesday when with the unexpected letter Pedro Sánchez pressed the timeout horn.
In these interim days, the candidates of the Catalan campaign have been throwing in the basket without knowing very well which league they were playing in. They kept the rallies and the bus caravans, but in the stands almost no one paid attention. The threat of total collapse of the front of the allies of the investiture that would have meant the defection of Sánchez occupied all the political conversation. Five days of campaigning have been spent, for now, in the fog.
Salvador Illa, the candidate of the PSC and personal friend of Sánchez, was laughing yesterday after listening to the speech launched from Moncloa. Sanchez continues. There wasn’t a minister or mayor who didn’t post some cute meme to celebrate the leader’s return to the cockpit.
But it is not so clear that all voters, especially the less motivated ones, have the same perception. In Catalonia a good handful of them may be socialist votes. A detail from the last poll of the Center for Opinion Studies this week revealed that the potential socialist voters are the ones who are less clear about the date of the votes. More than 90% of Junts voters already had it fixed on the calendar. In fact, the PSC itself believes that this outcome of the five-day crisis probably does not favor them. They fear that it will play against their candidacy. If Sánchez’s implicit message is regeneration, it is urgent to explain it. Last night he started doing it on public television.
On Thursday of this week, Sánchez plans to participate in a rally in Sant Boi. His presence is not confirmed for now. But there it will be verified whether the Sancho enthusiasm that was breathed last Thursday at the meeting in Sabadell – to which the president no longer went during a period of reflection – survives now with the same intensity.
Curiously, the perspective of the Catalan PP is the reverse. They consider that the invitation of Pedro Sánchez, even if it was temporary, can stir up their more passive electorate attentive to the speeches of the state television channels where yesterday they questioned the president’s gesture in the political talk shows. This part of the Catalan electorate may have understood Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s speech yesterday afternoon much better than Sánchez’s.
Carles Puigdemont – whose mother died yesterday morning in Catalonia – is also convinced that he is strengthened by Sánchez’s gesture. I lose reasons. First of all, because they never gave credit to the resignation and the facts have proved them right. And secondly, because Puigdemont’s campaign has a clear presidentialist profile – pay attention to the detail of the Junts posters, with the ex-president sitting in the back of an official car. The irruption (not to say interruption) of Pedro Sánchez gives more presence to his staging. Puigdemont, who regularly pressures his electoral opponent, Salvador Illa, often describes him as a subordinate of Sánchez.
The Left also believe that they can take advantage of the Prime Minister’s gesture because they understand that, finally, their discomfort with certain ways of doing and exercising politics is what they have been complaining about for years. However, yesterday, all its leaders agreed that the Prime Minister’s invitation is closer to “comedy” than a real purpose to change the situation. Having said that, what Aragonès and his team want most is to focus on the campaign.
However, this did not prevent the Republicans from bringing a complaint to the Electoral Board yesterday against the Prime Minister’s role in the Catalan campaign, both for his intervention yesterday from the Moncloa steps and for the interview which Televisió Española broadcast yesterday.
Commons Sumar candidates celebrated Pedro Sánchez’s message and urged him to carry it through to the end. Now they have recovered the memory of the flogging that Pablo Iglesias and his family suffered for months in front of their house.
