The elections to the Andalusian Parliament have always been a very important test for the Spanish political system. With 8.4 million inhabitants and an area equivalent to that of Portugal, Andalusia continues to be the most populous region in Spain, the one that contributes the most deputies to Congress and the cornerstone of the so-called State of Autonomies, a federalism that does not dare to be federal. In Andalusia, coffee for everyone emerged.
The pull of Andalusia in 1980 against an asymmetric deployment of the autonomies modified a substantive aspect of the constitutional pact without breaking with legality. The current Andalusian Statute of Autonomy incorporated in 2007 part of the modifications introduced in the Statute of Catalonia of 2006, without any pitched battle taking place.
You have to be careful with pitched battles in Andalusia. All the command centers of Spanish politics know it. In Andalusia, Adolfo Suárez's UCD began to founder in February 1980, by opposing the acceleration of the autonomic process. In Andalusia, the absolute majority of the PSOE began to take shape a few months before the mythical victory of Felipe González on October 28, 1982.
Thirty years later, Mariano Rajoy failed in Andalusia (March 2012), when he wanted to prop up the second absolute majority of the Spanish right –derived from the economic crisis of 2008– with a strong territorial hegemony capable of absorbing all the tensions that Spain was going to suffer because of the austerity policy ordered by the European Directorate.
Andalusia was the safeguard of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party until Susana Díaz, daughter of the Socialist Youth, wanted to imitate Jordi Pujol in December 2018. Wrapped in the Andalusian flag, Díaz called elections at the wrong time, relying on inertia. The commitment to boredom failed in a society tired of the political dominance of the usual, a regional PSOE weighed down by the scandal of you are. The costalazo of the left was remarkable. Thousands of abstentionists went to the polls with the Vox ballot between their teeth.
The PSOE was the party with the most votes, but the three right-wing parties agreed. Spanish politics changed on December 3, 2018. After thirty-six years of uninterrupted political dominance, the Socialist Party lost control of the most populous region in Spain. As if the CSU had lost Bavaria. As if the heirs of the Italian Communist Party had lost Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna together. As if the PNV had lost the three Provincial Councils in one fell swoop.
The Popular Party did not expect it. Politics is sometimes a merry-go-round. From one day to the next, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, always smiling, found himself on the back of a white horse that turned gently in the courtyard of the San Telmo Palace in Seville, former residence of the Orleans family, under the command of Elías Bendodo from Malaga, chief plumber who now coordinates the executive committee of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in Madrid.
Andalusia is now once again a tough test for the Spanish left. A test perhaps deadly this time. After more than two years of epidemic and with a dirty war ahead in Eastern Europe, society is tired and scared. A country dominated by small businesses and self-employment is especially sensitive to bad omens, amplified by a very powerful media chorus. In a country with a very strong youth precariousness, boredom disputes the game to the stubborn confidence in the European Union.
Data. Spain is one of the European countries in which a greater social concern is detected due to the rise in inflation. Six out of ten people fear that they will not be able to continue buying the same products and will not be able to pay their gas and electricity bills, according to a recent European-wide Ipsos study. More data. The CIS for May sets records again in the indicators of political disaffection.
The right is very mobilized, but not the left. The socialist voter is unimpressed and that of United We Can, confused by the increasingly visible confrontation between Pablo Iglesias and Yolanda Díaz. UP is once again the PCE of the eighties: that place where people fight.
In the tables of the CIS, an appreciable transfer of votes from the most moderate fringe of the PSOE to the PP of Núñez Feijóo is detected. And Vox flies in Andalusia because Macarena Olona embodies with absolute self-confidence the thirst for revenge of those who repudiate the ruling left, now trapped in a moment of objective difficulty. Olona will be the central character of the Andalusian campaign.
The June 19 elections test the consistency of the social base of the left. There is a lot of concern in the PSOE. Sánchez has decided to go down to the sand. Yesterday he was in Almería. In UP you don't know who's in charge.
The most frightened region of a frightened country goes to the polls.
