Euskadi - that's the Basque Country - and Galicia are both to hold elections on April 5th, now that their respective presidents, Iñigo Urkullu and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, have decided to cut their legislatures short to keep away from the Catalan electoral date and so that debates on the independence movement and referendums do not contaminate their respective campaigns.
Both leaders are convoking elections in their autonomous Spanish regions in a situation that allows them to have serious options of winning a new term, much more, of course, the Basque Nationalist (PNV) candidate Urkullo than the Galician Popular Party leader Núñez Feijoo. In the case of the former, no one doubts that the PNV will be the largest political force and will retain the government, if necessary with the Basque Socialists (PSE), since the votes of Urkullu's group are crucial in enabling Pedro Sánchez to form any possible parliamentary majority in the Congress of Deputies.
Unlike in Catalonia, where there is a pro-independence government consisting of JxCat and ERC, in Euskadi the PNV's preferred partner has never been the left wing pro-independence party EH Bildu, even though the number of seats such an alliance would yield is much higher than the sum of PNV and PSE . Nothing suggests that this time will be any different, although the polls give as many as 50 seats out of 75 to a hypothetical alliance between the two Basque independence parties and the possibility of having a two-thirds majority in the chamber for any reform, a circumstance that has never occurred. It will also be interesting to see if the Basque electorate continues to put the brakes on Ciudadanos (Cs) and Vox, having up till now left these two parties without institutional representation either in Euskadi's Parliament or in any of its 251 municipalities. In any case, the poll ratings seems to be very clear in the Basque Country and only a political earthquake which there is no hint of at present would change the political chessboard.
The Galician case has different connotations since Núñez Feijóo has a good chance of losing power if his Galician PP does not retain an absolute majority. In 2016 it won 42 seats out of 75 and the polls now give it 37 to 38 parliamentarians, with 38 necessary to retain a majority in Galicia's Xunta. The campaign of Feijóo, one of the last of the PP barons along with Andalusian president Juanma Moreno, will consist of focusing on Pedro Sánchez's agreement with Podemos and the parliamentary support he has from Catalan independence. A classic conservative strategy: communists and separatists destroying Spain and Galicia as the only fortress that can hold back the tide. It is obvious that this is very far from reality but the PP has already shown that this strategy always works in Galicia because, except for very short periods, it has always retained the Xunta against the Socialists.
Feijóo will have to face up to an unknown quantity on which the polls do not give clear guidance: the offer from Ciudadanos and its leader Inés Arrimadas to form an electoral alliance. The choice is not straightforward, since the cost of adding on the Cs votes in this hypothetical deal could exact too high a price in the composition of the candidacies, as well as a reverse effect, as there could be voters from the PP who would not understand. The fact is that the PP in Galicia is closer to the political centre than Arrimadas' party.