Never has an electoral setback tasted as sweet as the one ingested this Sunday night in Galicia by the People's Party (PP). With the swords raised high, the Aznar-ist sector sharpening its knives and Pedro Sánchez getting his hopes up based on the polls of Tezanos's CIS agency, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has come out alive. And more than that: he has come out victorious. Whichever way you look at it, the PP has repeated its absolute majority, with two seats more than the 38 required. It is true that they lost two MPs, but that is more of an anecdote than an issue. The unknown Alfonso Rueda will continue as president; the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), with its candidate Ana Pontón, has laid the foundations for a possible future victory by emerging as the only alternative in Galicia to the absolute majorities of the PP; and the Socialists (PSOE) have suffered a colossal, irrevocable blow, with a percentage of votes lower than 15%.
Election night in Galicia, in the end, was not very different from what usually happens, given the fact that since 1989 there has only been one occasion when the PP failed to win by an absolute majority. The suspense was rather short-lived, since neither the first polls when the polling stations closed, nor the trickle of advance results that followed gave a shred of a chance to a change of government. Even the spokespeople for the left lacked the thrust of other nights, such as that of July 23rd last year, when the ballot box results completely overturned the survey pundits' expectations. From that evening, a weakened Feijóo emerged, under a question mark, and many believed that he was done. This Sunday, 18th February, was to be the day of his execution, said the Aznarato. The ink is not long dry on the Zarzalejos article which gave him up for dead.
Now, he has realigned his forces in relation to the all-powerful president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Feijóo has a positive electoral cycle ahead of him that will start with the European elections, where a narrow victory over the PSOE awaits him, and will continue with the Catalan elections, where the polls are already showing a significant increase for the PP. In the Basque autonomous elections, which will be around June, there is not much to gain but it will also be positive. A context in which the wind will be in his favour while Pedro Sánchez's PSOE will have everything against them, as has already seen in the first months of the legislature. The hyper-leadership of the Spanish prime minister will surely prevent a thorough debate about the Socialist electoral defeat, but the numbers are beginning to be very worrying for them, displaced from power in almost all of Spain except in Castilla-La Mancha, Asturias and Navarre and 10 provincial capitals, three of which are Catalan: Barcelona, Tarragona and Lleida.
Sánchez's hyper-leadership will prevent an in-depth debate on the Socialist electoral defeat in Galicia, but the numbers are starting to be very worrying for the PSOE
The work of the Galician Nationalist Bloc and its leader Ana Pontón deserves a significant mention. The party founded by Xosé Manuel Beiras in the eighties has had multiple vicissitudes, disagreements and divisions. But from 1985, when Beiras won a single seat in the Galician elections and 52,000 votes, to the 25 representatives elected this Sunday, with more than 30% of the votes, there is an abyss. It did not achieve its purpose, certainly, but it has established itself as the real alternative to the right and if it continues in the same direction maintaining its political course, it will have real options to govern in four years. The turning of the Galician electorate towards a nationalist party is an important paradigm shift.
Little will be said about the electoral selfishness of Sumar and Podemos, who could have overturned the final result if they had withdrawn their lists in a couple of constituencies. The votes they received were not good for anything except to help the PP. In politics one must be take advantage of the moment, and this was the case, for example, in 2003 in Catalonia, when Pasqual Maragall managed to prevent Iniciativa per Catalunya from standing in Lleida and Girona, which in the end gave him election victory and the possibility of being president. It's not usually normal, but one's own mistakes sometimes have more effect than other people's successes.