Feijóo's PP stops Vox's advance and leaves the left knocked out

Legend has it that every night in the gardens of the Parque de María Luisa, which was once part of the Palacio de San Telmo – seat of the presidency of the Andalusian Government – ​​apparitions and strange phenomena take place that send shivers down the spine of those who see them. they perceive They are manifestations of the figure of a strange lady dressed in white who walks between sobs and tears and that some relate to the consort of Carlos II, Luisa Fernanda de Borbón and others, to Queen María Mercedes, first wife of Alfonso XII.

Since Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla summoned the Andalusians to the polls, her most feared vision every time she set foot in the presidential seat, was not that of the image of any sovereign of the past, but that of a far-rightist of the present, with a loose verb and sentencing epithets, who walked with a threatening step towards the seat of the Andalusian government to form part of it. The popular has managed this Sunday to clear completely the ghost of Macarena Olona by adding a historic absolute majority and not depending on Vox to continue in San Telmo. Situation or trend?

Moreno, and by extension Feijóo, who defends the same right-wing model as the Andalusian, has served him not to risk too much, to stand in profile before the extreme right and play moderation so that the electorate trusts a PP that with Pablo Casado he looked self-conscious at his main block competitor. The PP candidate, in fact, did not compete more than against the expectations generated from his own party, and he has won them on the street. Unquestionable success that the new leader of the PP also scores on the scoreboard and that greatly complicates the future of Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa and leaves the left knocked out.

The "Olona effect" with which the extreme right tried to sweep the south and overwhelm the popular, far from catapulting those of Abascal as a decisive political force, has ended up scaring the Andalusians in elections that clearly presented continuity because what was at stake was not so much who would govern, but with whom the PP would govern, and it will do so alone.

The cycle change is consolidated

The Andalusian right has its best victory before it and consolidates the change of cycle that began in 2018, when the sum of the left was below the block led by Moreno, who snatched institutional power from the PSOE for the first time in 37 years. The PP reaches an absolute majority, with 58 seats and 825,000 votes more than four years ago. This is the best result in Andalusia for the popular, higher than the 50 parliamentarians that Javier Arenas achieved in 2012, where until now the ceiling of the party was located. It wins in all the provinces at the cost of the death of Ciudadanos, which goes from 21 seats to zero and is now only waiting for a date for its incineration, while Vox achieves a slight but irrelevant improvement with only two more deputies compared to 2018 .

Moreno also leaves the left knocked out in all its versions. To the PSOE because it remains at 30 deputies, three less than the worst result in its history. For Andalucía, which is the sum of UP, IU and Más Madrid, because it was Yolanda Díaz's pilot experience and she is left with a pyrrhic result by obtaining only 5 seats while Adelante Andalucía, Teresa Rodríguez's brand, achieves 2. Both marks from the left to the left of the PSOE are very far from the 17 parliamentarians they obtained four years ago, before their coalition broke up.

Moreno unquestionably wins and Feijóo also wins in what was his first electoral test since he was elected national president. The PP thus consolidates a party model that moves, even if only in appearance, in centrality and moderation, and consolidates its upward trajectory with a result that, if not cornered, contains at least the upward trajectory of the extreme right.

In Genoa they will now be able to say that Castilla y León was just an accident as a result of Casado's mistakes, and not the symptom of a paradigm shift in the relationship between the popular ones and Vox that, with another result in Andalusia, no one doubts that he would have mortgaged the national strategy of the PP. A second coalition with Vox would have completely broken the transversality discourse with which Feijóo intends to reach La Moncloa.

Moreno vs. Ayuso

What happens on the national scene remains to be seen, but the pact with Vox would have served as ammunition for the left less than a year after the municipal ones and a year and a half after some general ones in which Pedro Sánchez risks his continuity at the helm of the Government of Spain. Nor should we underestimate the internal readings that will be held in Genoa starting tomorrow regarding the battle between the two souls of the PP – the moderate one represented by Feijóo and the Andalusian president and that of Ayuso's unapologetic tambourine liberalism – and the leaderships that can stand out in the middle horizon.

A coalition with Vox in Andalusia would have consolidated the Madrid leader as the only option of the PP capable of stopping the advance of the extreme right, after embracing its most ideological postulates and the complete catalog of its cultural battles. From now on, the party can see Moreno – who does not hide his national aspirations either – as a possible successor after the Feijóo stage, to whom many only grant a single bullet, that of the 2023 generals.

In any case, 19J will mark a before and after, not so much because of the change in cycle that the right has been shaking for months, but because the left has come out of the trance knocked out and Sánchez will have to show signs that he does not disdain the national impact of the Andalusians if you want to revalidate mandate.

As much as the socialists maintain that the result is not as convincing as the PP says, nor do they consider a change of cycle to be consolidated until the municipal and regional elections of 2023 are held, Sánchez will have to read well a defeat that has been unmitigated and that leaves socialism in a vegetative state in what until now was its main electoral bastion. Compared to 2018, Andalusian socialism lost 127,000 votes and almost 4 points in voting intention

Swords has not endured the result of Susana Díaz four years ago, which was the worst in the history of Andalusian socialism, and has been left with 883,700 votes, far from the million ballots where in Ferraz they had placed the psychological barrier to distinguish between a defeat acceptable and a worrying result.

The Socialists, knocked out even before the defeat

The foundations of the PSOE are creaking less than a year after municipal elections with which the party will have to test its organic muscle in the territories, after having even been knocked out before the coup came this Sunday.

In any case, Pedro Sánchez's strategy has his eyes fixed on September and goes through redoubling the presence in the territories and recovering the political initiative. At the moment, in La Moncloa they have instructed all his ministers so that this week they give the appearance of ultra activity with the celebration of multiple acts and with a notable presence in the media.

The Federal Executive, which was convened on Monday by the general secretary of the PSOE, promises to be intense, despite the fact that the Socialists already took the defeat in Andalusia for granted before the campaign even began. Although Sánchez has not given any sign that he foresees a change in the government, as he did after the debacle in Madrid a little over a year ago, no one rules out that the change in strategy that is being talked about will include some adjustments in the party that they could occur not so much now as with the entry of a new political course. The Socialists consider it essential to go on an offensive for which today they do not have indisputable referents in the party and for which they will also need the political project that Yolanda Díaz intends to build.

Bad premiere for Yolanda Díaz's project

For Andalusia, the brand led by Inma Nieto and sponsored by the second vice president of the Government is not a good start for the journey that Díaz begins for the construction of a broad left-wing front.

Autumn will be decisive to demonstrate the ability of Sánchez but also of the left to his left to repair what happened this Sunday. Otherwise, the bloc would go straight into a horrible time that would inexorably end with its passage into opposition in December 2023.

We will see…