Andalusia has consummated its historic turnaround. A profound socio-political transformation that closes the cycle opened in the Transition in the PSOE stronghold by granting Juanma Moreno’s PP an unprecedented and overwhelming absolute majority that will allow him not only to continue governing the most populous community in the country for another four years. The victory of the candidate for re-election has been so overwhelming -58 seats- as to condemn the left to cross the desert, get rid of the nuisance of a Vox far below its expectations and exponentially multiply the ‘Feijóo effect’ as a solid alternative and credible to the Executive of Pedro Sánchez.
The shock caused by the Andalusian electorate is going to be felt in concentric waves in the whole of a Spanish politics already overheated by the prospect of the wave of municipal and regional elections and forced to struggle in a new scenario of economic hardship. Sánchez continues to cling to his determination to exhaust the legislature until the end of 2023. But the objective of turning the page as soon as possible to a victory of the popular ones built on the padded moderation of Moreno as an insulator against Vox and three powerful catalysts: the noise in the coalition of the PSOE with United We Can, the impact of inflation on citizens’ pockets and the pacts for governability with the independentistas.
All the indicators of the night justified the uncorking of euphoria in the general headquarters of the popular Andalusians and in Genoa 13. For the absolute majority of 58 seats -three more than necessary-, for the percentage of votes -43%-, for having received no less than 800,000 more votes than in 2018 and for rising as the most voted party in the eight provinces, including that Seville whose magic the socialists continued to conspire to try to mitigate a blow that leaves them by the hair on the barrier morale of the 30 seats, but with the whole of the left suffering an unmitigated disaster – almost 300,000 ballots less among all the brands – in its old electoral granary.
This time and unlike 2018, when he took over the San Telmo palace thanks to the support of a Citizens who have gone from 21 seats to zero in another nightmarish journey towards total dilution, Moreno has won with all the stripes and the way he the one that Feijóo likes: with a preponderance that, as in Galicia, will avoid the PP having to agree with anyone or condescend to anyone. In the first test at the polls of their new leader, the popular ones trace the Galician model and get rid of Vox’s marking by limiting the field to the extreme right not from the unapologetic speech of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, but from temperance and centrism.
With pelagic nets
The incontestable victory of Moreno, added to the blunder of Macarena Olona’s ‘paratrooper’ candidacy, has a far-reaching reading for Spanish politics. It is the first time – in Madrid other nuances operated – that the electoral hook pennant of the Moncloa and the group of the left proclaiming ‘that the extreme right is coming’ becomes like a boomerang against its promoters. In these elections, the PP of Moreno and Feijóo has managed to activate in its favor a bag of voters to the right, but also in progressivism, which has preferred to prop up the center-right without fanfare and without dubious speeches on sensitive grounds such as sexist violence to restrain Abascal and his men. Thus, the popular ones have ended up tending pelagic nets that have fished in fishing grounds –Cádiz, for example– far from their traditional imaginary.
The collapse of the ‘red ecosystem’, once so deeply rooted in Andalusia, is projected on Sánchez –this 19-J confirms that the socialist leadership in Moncloa is not having a beneficial effect on the ambitions of the territorial barons–, but also on the left to the left of the PSOE and, singularly, on the still unborn platform of Yolanda Díaz. The vice president anticipates her ‘listening process’ with the voice of the Andalusians who have subtracted ten seats from the 17 they held before splitting For Andalusia and Forward Andalusia, leaving the former –Podemos, IU and Más País– in irrelevant five seats. This setback, together with the evaporation of Cs and the braking of Vox, lightens the map of Andalusia fragmented by the ‘new politics’ today in sharp decline and consolidates an unbalanced bipartisanship between a PP under the effervescence without fuss of Feijóo and a PSOE with the ‘Sanchista’ resistance in low hours.
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