“We pick up the glove, we understand the message,” Minister Pilar AlegrÃa admitted at midnight, as spokesperson for the PSOE executive, after acknowledging a devastating electoral defeat. No palliatives. A severe blow at the polls, with which the PSOE loses a good part of its territorial power. A harsh corrective that also acts as a black preamble for Pedro Sánchez in the next general elections.
Electoral night began with absolute uncertainty in the Moncloa, where Sánchez followed the agonizing scrutiny, and in Ferraz, where the leadership of the PSOE and the Government met with their souls in suspense. “Most are in a fist, but we have good feelings and expectations,” they claimed, however, despite the fact that they already saw several regional governments on the air. “The important thing is not to win, but to govern,” they warned in the leadership of the PSOE. “And that will be in a seat above or below in several territories,” they admitted. Among the autonomous governments that they already saw in the air were the Valencian Community, Aragon and the Balearic Islands. “But you have to wait for the scrutiny,” they insisted.
Barely two hours after the polls closed, with the multiple counts advancing, the socialist tragedy began to take shape, which culminated in a disastrous “unmitigated†electoral result, they admitted.
First, the fall of the jewel in the crown of socialist municipal power was certified, Seville, the last great capital governed by the PSOE with mayor Antonio Muñoz, the successor of a Juan Espadas whose leadership of the Andalusian socialists is now even more precarious. . The Socialists also lost Huelva and Granada. The dramatic drip continued with the unexpected fall of the mayor’s office of Óscar Puente in Valladolid, who was never seen at risk in the PSOE.
Despite the momentum of the PSC, Jaume Collboni failed to beat Xavier Trias in Barcelona. Not even Sandra Gómez reached the mayoralty of Valencia, which was also on the electoral target of Pedro Sánchez. The Socialists also lost Castellón.
But the worst was still to come, and it was consummated with the loss of a good part of its regional power: the Valencian Community, Aragon, Extremadura, the Balearic Islands, La Rioja… The magnitude of the socialist tragedy is unprecedented, except for that of 2011.
In Ferraz, however, they warned that the PP also won the 2007 municipal elections, by a difference of 155,000 votes, and that in the 2008 general elections, José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero achieved his highest electoral record, with more than 11 million votes. “There are still six months left for the general elections,” they allege in the leadership of the PSOE. But the prognosis is very dark. The great argument that they will cling to, before the generals, is that the PP will embrace Vox in many communities and town halls.
Once Sánchez survived the pandemic politically, and an economic catastrophe that took him away, as happened to Zapatero, did not unleash either, the PP promoted a great “blue waveâ€, with early elections in three of the communities it governed and where the re-election of its presidents was guaranteed. In May 2021 in Madrid, where Isabel DÃaz Ayuso swept; in February 2022 in Castilla y León, where Alfonso Fernández Mañueco revalidated the position; and in June 2022 in Andalusia, where Juanma Moreno Bonilla already had an absolute majority.
The objective of the PP with this anticipated electoral calendar was to get rid of Cs, which it fully achieved, and to stop the rise of the extreme right of Vox, finally achieved in Andalusia. But the great underlying objective was to roll out a great red carpet that would take Pablo Casado to Moncloa and expel Sánchez into hyperspace. The PP ended up finally ousting Casado and replacing him with Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
But this 28-M could become an insurmountable wall into which the blue wave of the PP would crash, or a tragedy for the PSOE that would show Sánchez the exit door before the next general elections. And the final result last night pointed in this second direction.
