Joseph Conrad, probably the novelist who wrote the best pages on the unfathomable tyranny of the sea, defined the strength of a man as a chance whose origin is due to the weakness of his adversaries. In the middle of the ocean, when a storm threatens to sink your ship, it doesn't make much sense to talk about heroes. Only from lucky survivors.
Moreno Bonilla, the president of the Junta de Andalucía, has become, after last 23J, the (involuntary) protagonist of a similar political metamorphosis. A little over a year ago, when the polls, and also a significant number of PSOE voters, granted him their absolute majority, it seemed like Jason. And the Quirinale of San Telmo, the golden fleece.
Fourteen months later, and despite having evicted the Socialists from the mayoralties of the eight southern capitals and conquering six of the eight provincial councils, it can be said without fear of being wrong that it has become the only survivor of the shipwreck in which it is immersed a PP that, if it does not manage to have Feijóo invested, is going to drown on the shore.
He is the only conservative baron, although he presents himself as a liberal regionalist, who can continue to govern alone until 2026. In 2022 he averted dependence on Vox, unlike the popular candidate for Moncloa and the presidents of the autonomies where the two rights have associated. Neither does he need internal backup conclaves like the one that the Genoa leadership organized a few days ago at the Soutomaior castle.
Is everything going well? Absolutely. The president of the Junta, who supported Feijóo with his presence in Pontevedra before the quinary of the negotiation, and who since the day after the bittersweet victory of the generals has not stopped repeating –in vain– that the interests of Spain cannot being sacrificed for the conquest of Moncloa (which goes through the Catalan and Basque separatists) knows that the victory interruptus of the Galician politician is the omen of a new era in the PP, even if, in the event of electoral repetition, it will once again be the candidate.
On your September agenda there are two political issues that worry you. A lot. The first: how long is Isabel Díaz Ayuso going to wait to try to take Genoa if Sánchez is sworn in as president? Second: what consequences would it have if, in the face of a hypothetical resignation of the president of the PP, he could be forced to compete with the president of Madrid?
What happens in the PP in the coming months is going to alter the political status quo in Andalusia. And, although appearances still do not show it, the internal crisis in Genoa would occur at a delicate moment for the Andalusian president. His parliamentary majority may have been diluted – the extrapolation of the results of 23J in Andalusia points precisely in this direction –, he has not designated a successor in San Telmo, and the (successful) work of the last five years in power depends entirely on his personal figure, rather than the organization.
The Andalusians granted an absolute majority to Moreno Bonilla. Not to the PP. Without his ascendant, the entire political chessboard of the South changes. The Socialists, being at the bottom of their own well, still maintain electoral ground that they can keep if Sánchez continues in Moncloa. The PP, on the other hand, despite having grown a lot at the polls, is experiencing a crisis of success.
His lack of momentum is perceived in his last movements before the investiture duel. What at the end of July was a belligerent opposition -in an institutional key- to the hypothesis of a PSOE pact with Junts, ERC and Bildu, in recent weeks, after the King granted the first turn for the investiture to Feijóo, has been transformed into a more comprehensive position. The San Telmo spokesman already defends in public that the PP president's conversations with Puigdemont, "if they are within the legal framework", are natural. Pure magic.
San Telmo, headquarters of the primitive Dizzying University of Seville, seems to be navigating without a compass. He does not dare to go out to sea to lead a united front with the autonomies governed by the PP for fear of the contamination that Vox means, which in Andalusia has been neutralized since June of last year but not in the rest of Spain. For now, he is limited to practicing the art of calm cabotage, waiting for the horizon to clear up.
Your browsing, however, cannot continue to be so fearful indefinitely. Whatever happens in Genoa, Moreno is going to have to decide what he wants to be, so to speak, when he grows up. Discounting his excellent forms and his lukewarm Andalusian conversion, both insufficient to give Feijóo the four deputies he needs, his management has not been
characterized by the reformist impulse, which is null, but by the emulation of the old PSOE. Andalusia, in terms of image, still represents the friendliest face of Genoa, but the voters did not grant it the absolute absolute to make it smile. They gave it to him to govern.
