The political explosion of the electoral map has reached Andalusia after an uninterrupted 40 years of PSOE governments and five presidents: Rafael Escuredo, José Rodríguez de la Borbolla, Manuel Chaves, José Antonio Griñán y Susana Díaz. And it's done so even more conclusively than expected, giving three main headlines: Susana Díaz, the "Sultana of the South", suffers an unmitigated disaster, losing 14 seats (from 47 in 2015, she's down to 33); the Spanish right could govern if the three parties representing it agree between themselves with the 59 seats of the 110 they hold between them in the chamber (PP, 26; Ciudadanos, 21 and Vox, 12); and Vox, the Francoist, xenophobic party comparable to the European far-right, breaks through into the institutions with a force that makes it clear that it's come to stay. The polls have failed again, something which isn't an exception, scandalously so those from Spain's Centre for Sociological Research, more manipulated than ever under its new president, José Félix Tezanos.
The appearance of Vox is a true earthquake. Their twelve seats, a true disaster which puts Andalusia on the same level as those countries where the far-right has made headway with rhetoric that calls on all fears and for a return to the past. I don't know if Pedro Sánchez will remove the dictator Francisco Franco from the Valle de los Caídos, but in the meantime he's helped Franco's cubs into the institutions on a playing field they wouldn't have had without the debate that he alone started and which he hasn't managed to conclude, since the dictator remains in the valley and the options for what to do with his body, like the Almudena cathedral in the centre of Madrid, are even worse. The Valle de los Caídos is a mausoleum which should have disappeared years ago, but only Sánchez's incompetence, thinking that he could weaken the PP, managed to achieve the opposite effect.
All the hypotheses about who Susana Díaz was going to govern with went up in smoke the moment the first results were released on election night. The Andalusian people have put their trust in the right and sent their president to the storage bin of history. How do you explain PSOE's defeat in their main electoral breadbasket? There are many reasons, but above all is Vox's emergence on the backs of that A por ellos ("go get 'em"), where "they" were the Catalans. In the end, as it couldn't be any other way, the "go get 'em" has been "go get everyone" and no one has been spared. Because, as the first studies have already started to show, Vox, despite being a clearing Francoist party, has taken votes from PSOE and communists. When it can be calmly analysed where they've captured votes from in the eight Andalusian provinces, it will be seen that not only has it found them from PP and Ciudadanos but also from PSOE and communist voters.
The negotiations for the new Andalusian government don't promise to be easy, especially for PSOE and Ciudadanos. Change is possible... but only with a PP president. It remains to be seen how Ciudadanos will swallow this situation and if they attempt other alliances like one with PSOE and Podemos abstaining. That is something which, today, seems implausible, but politics is full of twists and turns. The most logical thing would be for Cs to try for the presidency ??? but for the right-wing government to end up taking shape anyway, especially thinking that after this Sunday's election there are more for municipalities, autonomous communities and the European Parliament next May.
In terms of Spain, the PSOE collapse and the left-wing debacle dispels any hypothesis of an immediate general election. Both PSOE and Podemos are losing hundreds of thousands of votes and the magic of June's motion of no-confidence which removed Mariano Rajoy from the Moncloa government palace is, in part, dissolving. And a paradox: Pedro Sánchez eliminates at a stroke his main rival, Susana Díaz. That the only satisfaction for the Spanish prime minister from a tragic, very tragic day for PSOE. Will it prove true that with Sánchez at their head, PSOE never wins an election?