If there are no subterranean shifts that the opinion polls do not detect, the People's Party (PP) is on its way to its ninth absolute majority in Galicia, after there having been held - since the first autonomous community elections, in 1981 - a total of 12 elections in the territory of the historical nationality of north-western Spain. Of the four Galician elections which it did not win by an absolute majority, in two of them it governed in minority and in the other two it was in opposition, with the last occasion that this happened being the now-distant legislature of 2005-2009, in which the late PP leader Manuel Fraga - founder of the party, and also a former Francoist minister - failed by one seat to achieve an absolute majority.
One might say, then, that Galicia belongs exclusively to the PP, but this statement is contradicted by the fact that it does not govern in any of the seven Galician cities, and of the four provincial authorities it only controls that of Ourense. Outside of this picture, in the rest of the territory, its dominance is overwhelming and the leaderships, of Fraga first and Alberto Núñez Feijóo later, have given it a breadth of appeal that jumps over the natural frontiers of voting support as seen from Madrid. Thus, it is more centrist and has mild Galician touches, the minimum for a very conservative society. But electorally, they work.
If there are no subterranean shifts that the opinion polls do not detect, the PP is on its way to its ninth absolute majority in Galicia
At present, of the 75 seats in the Galician Parliament, the PP has a solid advantage with 42, four above the absolute majority. And the fact of standing with a candidate as gray as Alfonso Rueda, elected as replacement to Feijóo when the latter assumed the presidency of the Spanish PP in 2022, does not seem to be a risk in the elections on February 18th. At least that's what all the polls are pointing to with less than four weeks to go. Even if the Galician nationalist BNG appears clearly on the rise, with options to reach 22 MPs, three more than it currently has.
If this were the final result, Feijóo would achieve a deserved victory at home, and the hard and anti-Catalan line of the PP would be reinforced. In fact, the conservatives are riding the wagon of this same discourse right across Spain: that is, none other than Pedro Sánchez's dependence on the Catalan pro-independence parties. This works for a Madrid that is increasingly right-wing and eager to politically eliminate Sánchez. But, at the same time, it leads the right to distance itself from day-to-day political reality and, even, to protect political operations of the past Rajoy government, which were clearly illegal, such as Operation Catalonia.
That has been making itself visible in recent weeks, and with the horizon of the parliamentary commission into Operation Catalonia, which, like an uncomfortable stone in one's shoe, could make it difficult for the PP to keep up the pace. Time will tell.