Bad times for breads in the Spanish electoral bakery. The non-state action parties (PANE), which is what political science calls nationalists and regionalists, are announced in the polls a bump. It would arrive after its historical record in the last generals when they obtained 39 deputies from nine different parties. Now, according to the La Vanguardia survey, there could be seven, with 29 deputies. With nuances and variations by party, there is a demographic consensus in placing them around thirty seats. The drop would be explained by the very different political moment that Catalonia is experiencing and by the polarization between the large blocks.
The nationalists, who are the fundamental part, and the regionalists can be seen as a heterogeneous third block of Spanish politics. Without counting formations that had alliances at the state level, of the 39 deputies elected in 2019, 35 were nationalists.
This internal composition leads to their great common denominator, the rejection of an eventual investiture of the PP with Vox, which, in that block, would only support UPN, if it enters, and perhaps the Canary Coalition. On the contrary, to a very different degree, there is a predisposition to agree with Pedro Sánchez.
The April 2019 elections were an exceptional moment for this bloc. From the breach opened by the Regionalist Party of Cantabria (PRC) of Miguel Ángel Revilla, in the November revolution of the territorial vote, it was very close to taking place an even more spectacular event than the entry into the Teruel Congress It exists. A moderate Muslim party, the Coalition for Melilla (CPM), now sunk after the mail-in vote scandal in May, almost erupted for the first time. Until well advanced in the recount, the only deputy from this African city was obtained, which in the end won the PP for a little less than 200 ballots.
The regional elections of Castilla y León in 2021 were the second knock on the provincial forces. As Teruel Existe had already done, Soria already defeated the PP and PSOE in its marginalized territory. Under the brand of Empty Spain, the Soriano party, which emerged from a social platform also inspired by Teruel, knocked on the doors of Congress, just as, with less power, did the Union of the Leonese People (UPL). With the banner of Lexit, that of creating autonomy for the kingdom of León, it reached 21% in the province in the autonomous elections and won in the capital.
The aggravation of the strong territorial inequalities, in favor of the Mediterranean and Madrid that sucks everything, fed all these forces. At the same time, the decline of Podemos prompted the recovery of the parties from which it had been nurtured, such as the BNG, which managed to return to Congress, and Bildu, which grew to have its own group, while the PNV maintained its stable strength. But the essential factor in that historical record of non-state action parties in November 2019 was in Catalonia, just after the Estatut sentence and with the prisoners leading the lists. With the entry of the two deputies from the CUP and the eight from Junts, plus the 13 from ERC, they added 23, the all-time high, as also happened with 6.8% of the votes, almost two points above the average since 1977.
With the notable reduction in tension after the pardons, the sharpening of the independence divisions and the crash in the ERC municipal elections, the perspectives are very different. In his survey for La Vanguardia, Ipsos points to a sharp drop, as the Republicans would lose six seats, the CUP another and only Junts could go up one and would be the first force. In other polls, different distributions appear, especially in the fight between ERC and Junts, but with some coincidence in estimating the total out of 17 deputies, which is equivalent to the historical average.
After 37 years in Congress, first as the Independent Groups of the Canary Islands and since 1993 already as the Canary Islands Coalition (CC), this force is threatened with being left out. according to polls, in which he frequently appears with his seat in the air or without it. Teruel would also be threatened. It exists and the Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN) is considered amortized, while, after the fall of Revilla, the PRC does not even show up. In any case, the precautions that experience advises against polls in general should be redoubled in the case of these forces.
Throughout the present democratic stage there were, in proportion to their size, marked oscillations in the strength of the nationalist and regionalist parties: from 24 deputies in 1977 and 2008 to 38 in 2011 and 39 in 2019, while the percentage of the vote fluctuated between 6.9% and 11.4%. In the era of the blocks, the minimum occurred in 2016, just when one of them got closer to an absolute majority, which could be cause and effect.
