After the victory in Galicia, the People’s Party is strengthened and Pedro Sánchez needs the PSOE to regain presence in the rest of Spain

The victory of the People’s Party (PP) in Sunday’s regional elections in Galicia This further puts a strain on the political situation in Spain.

To the wear and tear that Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE-Sumar coalition government is undergoing since he proposed an amnesty law to “cancel” the crimes committed by the Catalan independence movement, Added to this is the worst socialist defeat in Galicia: Of the 14 deputies they had in the Galician Parliament, they only managed to retain 9.

His governing partner, Sumar, fared no better. Galicians didn’t even appreciate the fact that the leader of that left-wing PSOE coalition, Vice President and Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz, was one of them. The feast of Díaz, daughter of Fene, citizen of Coruña, did not reach 5% of the votes that Galicia’s electoral system requires having a deputy in its Parliament and he failed to enter it.

“Those who wanted the Galician elections to be a plebiscite on my leadership, here is the result of the plebiscite, Here is the complete failure of the Sanchista model.”boasted the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the day after his candidate and current president of Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, obtained 47% of the vote.

This is the fifth absolute majority obtained by the PP in Galicia and the first without Núñez Feijóo as a candidate.

The Galician leader governed from 2009 to 2022when he left the Xunta to preside over his Madrid party, mired in an internal crisis.

First blow for Sanchez

The Galician elections were also the first since Pedro Sánchez was re-elected. It is the third mandate of the general secretary of the PSOE who, after complicated maneuvers of political contortionism, managed to form a government in November last year, with the various support of the independence movement -from right and left- Catalan and Basque.

The “investment bloc”, as the contingent of seven parties that voted yes to Sánchez to stay in La Moncloa is known, did not do it for free. The Catalans are calling for an amnesty law so that no pro-independence activist will be prosecuted or convicted for attempting to declare the republic of Catalonia in 2017. The measure aims to protect above all the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemontrefugee in Belgium after the unilateral declaration of independence and who Spain considers a fugitive from justice.

Sánchez has been defending this amnesty for months which, according to him, will harmonize coexistence between Catalans. It is not yet known what the true political cost of this controversial initiative will be for the head of government.

However, Puigdemont’s party, Junts per Catalunya, blocked the bill in Congress because they consider it insufficient. The deadline to resubmit it expired on Wednesday, but the PSOE obtained a two-week extension while continuing to try to tame Junts’ voracity.

The conditions of Núñez Feijóo in Puigdemont

Meanwhile, Núñez Feijóo, who received the most votes in the national elections in July last year but failed to muster the necessary will from other political parties to form a government, He became a fierce opponent of the amnesty.

His party organized four massive demonstrations in Madrid against this future law but, during the electoral campaign in Galicia, he allowed himself to admit that they were studying whether an amnesty for the Spanish legislation was possible. Nuñez Feijóo could have been appointed president of the government with the support or abstention of Puigdemont’s party.

The PP leader himself has leaked that he is considering a possible pardon for the former Catalan president. But with conditions: that he returns to Spain from his Belgian self-exile, that he be put on trial, that he repents and that he promises that he will no longer try to make Catalonia independent from the rest of Spain.

The confession risks complicating the electoral result in Galicia, home of Núñez Feijóo. But the Galicians did not disappoint him and once again gave the PP an absolute majority for the next four years.

Today, The People’s Party governs in 11 autonomous communitiesin addition to Ceuta and Melilla, the two Spanish cities on African territory.

Early elections

The last blow for Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE dates back to May 28 last year, when in the municipal and regional elections of some autonomies lost territorial power.

Of the nine autonomous communities where the socialists ruled, There were only three left: Castile-La Mancha, Asturias and Navarra. To which is added a co-government with the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) in Euskadi.

That electoral result fell like a bucket of cold water on Sánchez who, with a reflex between the audacious and the kamikaze, announced the following day the dissolution of the Cortes and the new early call of the polls for 23 July 2023.

The PSOE came second, behind the PP, but Sánchez He achieved what Núñez Feijóo could not: form a government.

Applause for the PP

This Wednesday, the day of the government control session, the PP leader and head of the opposition took his place in Congress amidst the applause of his 136 deputies. They are still celebrating the victory on Sunday 18th in Galicia.

“The president of the government today is Pedro Sánchez. The opposition leader is Núñez Feijóo. And this has not changed nor will it change,” said government spokeswoman Pilar Alegría, when asked about the projection of the Galician elections at the national level.

Sánchez must regain territorial presence. The next regional elections will be held in April in the Basque Country, a land where local nationalism will have little air to mark the field.

Our gaze is turned to June, when elections for the European Parliament will take place.