There can't be much gas left in the tank for the PSOE in its campaign for the Andalusian elections coming up this Sunday, June 19th, when even the CIS public research agency - run by the Socialist, José Félix Tezanos, whose survey 'cooking' tends to cater to the tastes of his own - has released a flash survey this Monday writing off the party's candidate, former Seville mayor Juan Espadas. The autonomous community that was the great reserve of the Socialists (PSOE) for several decades, yielding permanent regional governments under Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán, both of whom were later convicted of corruption, comes disoriented to take on a People's Party (PP) that has literally stolen its shirt, applying the same assistance-based policies it once did and thus cannibalizing the electorate. The new Andalusian viceroy, Juanma Moreno, will achieve a historic victory, if there is truth in the predictions, which already estimate that he will be within a few seats of an absolute majority and, in any case, will sum more votes than all the parties of the left together and reduce Vox to a position well below what was expected at the beginning of the campaign.
It is not only the CIS that presages the Socialist collapse. On Monday, the last day allowed by the legislation for the publication of surveys, half a dozen have appeared, all pointing in the same direction. In fact, the only question left is whether Ciudadanos will end up entering parliament or if the party of Inés Arrimadas will take another step towards its predicted disappearance. The victory of the PP seems so resounding and the defeat of the PSOE so humiliating that the epicentre of Sunday's result will set off a shock wave that will reach Madrid. And roll directly into the Moncloa government palace, where there is already open talk of a deep crisis in cabinet before the summer holidays.
Be that as it may, it seems that luck has deserted Pedro Sánchez. Not so long ago, at the end of February, Pablo Casado resigned from the presidency of the PP and opened a crisis with unforeseeable consequences in the conservative party, which suddenly lost its main reference point. Less than four months later, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who abandoned the presidency of Galicia because he had no choice, is preparing to star with Sánchez in an electoral fight in which he has more chance of emerging victorious than defeated. If there is a Socialist defeat and the expected cabinet reshuffle, Sánchez's new ministerial team will have lasted about a year. All the changes will have been unsuccessful and what was presented as a government with more political strength than the previous one, considered more technocratic, will be left as another tactical error by the prime minister.
The most worrying thing for the PSOE is that the expected Andalusian disaster will take place a few months before the municipal and regional elections scheduled for the end of May next year. With the barons in a state of absolute panic, little room will be left for the Socialists to retake the upper hand in a Spanish legislature against an emboldened PP now occupying the centre of the political playing field. A government consisting exclusively of the PSOE cannot ruled out, nor can it be excluded that the poor relationship between the Socialists and ERC will not become chronic after so many promises breached with the Catalan party. If up till now there has been neither negotiation nor dialogue on Catalonia, little can be expected in the future, when the territorial organizations will be demanding Socialist politicians who are closer to the PP than to Podemos.