If something has changed these last fifteen days of campaigning, it is that today there are many more Galicians who consider political change possible than there were two weeks ago.
This does not mean that the left-wing bloc is guaranteed a victory on Sunday. But it opens up an expectation that hasn’t been there for years and that can have a mobilizing effect among voters who, convinced that the PP is unbeatable in Galicia, didn’t expect to go to vote on Sunday.
This is what has changed. That on the terraces of the bars, when the constant February showers allow it, people drink beer and talk, sometimes, about Galician politics.
One cannot help but remember the electoral atmosphere in Catalonia in 1999, the Pujol campaign against Maragall – in his team there was, by the way, a certain Toni Comín, who today lives as an expatriate in Belgium. Ciutadans pel Canvi was the name of that political project that generated an enormous wave of enthusiasm.
It didn’t happen here. On election night, Maragall won in votes, but lost in seats. That defeat saved another four years of Pujolsism that was already showing signs of deep exhaustion, but it left a trail of inconsolable frustration. Some things that still happen today in Catalonia started that night.
Perhaps this is not the scenario we will see today in Galicia. Or maybe yes, but if anyone deserves to take the credit for this expectation of change, it is Ana Pontón, the leader of the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) who has been shaping this project for eight years.
In the 2020 elections, he already managed to impose himself on the Socialist Party of Galicia as the second force with a pragmatic and transversal discourse in which he has persevered.
This campaign ends with an unbeatable level of acceptance among the rest of the leaders of the left, and considerable even among the voters of the PP despite the campaign orchestrated by the conservatives who link it for a few days to Catalan independence – here in Galicia Catalan independence is simply antagonistic to common sense – and others, directly to ETA.
Not even in the best of cases will Pontón succeed in surpassing the PP in votes. But it can achieve a result that is broad enough so that, with the support of other forces on the left – if they resist -, they will manage to overcome the PP’s absolute majority, which has lasted since 2009, when Alberto Núñez Feijóo won it.
That year, his campaign manager was the one who today aspires to revalidate the presidency of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda.
Rueda, who has the character of municipal secretaries – has a place in this body of administration -; correct, thorough and affable in short dealing, he has designed an extraordinarily conservative campaign for himself on the plainly wrong assumption that there was no room for change.
He called the elections before Christmas knowing that the electoral calendar led him to celebrate the mid-campaign weekend at the beginning of February, coinciding with Entroido, the Galician carnival, a social phenomenon that for a few days brings thousands of Galicians little or not willing to listen to political sermons.
Maybe he was hoping to lower the electoral tuning fork. The PP has secured many votes in Galicia, where the opposition has to work hard to win them. If that was the purpose, it has failed miserably.
Partly because of the ability of the left to put on the electoral agenda evidence of the wear and tear – it all started with the pellets, now forgotten, and continued with healthcare – of a party that fifteen years ago governs Galicia with an absolute majority and followed when, in the heat of the battle, the controversy emerged over the PP’s talks with the Catalan separatists. This other crisis is, and will be, especially if the PP loses the majority, much more lethal for Feijóo than for his successor, Alfonso Rueda. Even if they do not lose the majority, it can be lethal for the current leader of the Popular Party.
To all this is added a third factor that comes from the past of the Galician Popular Party. The Power factor, the candidacy of Democràcia d’Ourense, a local formation led by the mayor of this city, Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, which can snatch a deputy by the head from the PP in this province. There are those who see behind this candidacy the hand of the Baltaristas, ready to make Rueda and Feijóo’s PP suffer.
And finally, there is still a fourth, more hypothetical factor. Vox, the unexpected opponent. It is not impossible for him to get a deputy for A Coruña. In short, the PP lives with too many uncertainties in this campaign that it thought was won in advance.
For Pontón, on the other hand, the failure, if it happens, will be a multi-organ failure. It is likely that the weak link in the alliance of change in Galicia will be the Socialist Party, which is reaching the end of the exhausted campaign. Not even the breath of Pedro Sánchez, who has starred in those compliance meetings in which militancy begins to put on their jackets when the boss is already finishing his harangue, has not managed to boost José Manuel Gómez Besteiro.
Sumar and Podemos do not expect anything much more hopeful. The candidacy of Yolanda Díaz’s party, which at the end of the campaign had the support of Ada Colau, has deflated as the campaign has progressed. For Díaz, this will not be a good night. It remains to be seen what costs the uncertain Galician outcome will also have for the central government.
