Human beings, as T.S. Eliot, the American poet, we are unable to bear reality except in very limited doses. Our intolerance of the merciless principle of objectivity may be due to an idealized past: all children believe they are gods. Growing up consists of accepting our own deconsecration with resignation.
Not everyone can, knows or wants to do it. This especially happens to those politicians who, like Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, in less than five years have turned Andalusia into the great fishing ground for votes from the right after having been –almost four decades– the main electoral granary of the PSOE. His is one of those successes so enormous that they end up favoring the mirage of caprice and bordering on the wise virtue of prudence.
The political cycle of the president of the Board will be as long as he wants, the voters support him and, of course, allow Feijóo's ambiguous electoral expectations. The signore of Genoa went down to Seville this Holy Week – the pinnacle of itself, as Chaves Nogales wrote – to see the processions and, incidentally, try to help the PP candidate for mayor, José Luis Sanz, the last circumstantial casadista.
The polls say that he is winning in the polls (ma non troppo). Because they also add that, unlike Moreno Bonilla, in his case the absolute is still far away or passes through the tax control of the Vox legionnaires, experts in tables and petitions.
The PSOE has been feeding for months the (interested) thesis that the Galician politician may end up sinking on the shore, as happened to Javier Arenas in Andalusia. The Socialists also give air to Yolanda Díaz's kite so that it is possible to add (without her subtracting too many of her own votes).
Ayuso, one day in and another, remember that she is available to compete with Sánchez. Moreno Bonilla smiles and remains silent, but it is doubtful that he will grant: in internal circles of the PP there is open talk that he would be one of the alternative options to Ayuso in the event that Feijóo, a year after the ides of Casado, discovers that the Forum it is not a sacristy of Santiago de Compostela. It's never too late. Jesus of Great Power, they say, can do everything.
In the event of an insufficient victory in December, the Andalusian option, which is not frowned upon in Catalonia, where Moreno Bonilla is insistently seen, still requires some time. The definitive itinerary of him is not closed. It's too early to signify. And the 28M will inevitably cause changes to the route. It will alter the ideal travel guide.
It can do it in different ways, regardless of the extrapolation of local and regional elections in a state key. This is where surprises fit. The Socialists hope that their municipal and provincial coat of arms will withstand the attack of the Achaeans of San Telmo in Andalusia, to whom the gods (demoscopic) predict that on 28M they will show off the laurels of the chosen ones.
The unknown is the exact size of the crown. For Moreno Bonilla, after the victorious day in June, a discreet advance is no longer useful. He needs to conquer fortresses – town halls and councils – so as not to disappoint the enormous expectations generated by the triumphant autonomous communities. His institutional consolidation is, at the same time, his Achilles heel.
After having managed to escape Vox's parliamentary lock, continue in the Quirinale and see the PSOE sink, any other result that does not go in this direction can be read –and, without a doubt, will be amplified by its political adversaries– as a replica of the phrase of Felipe González in 1996: "Never has a defeat been so sweet and a victory so bitter".
The head of the Andalusian PP tries that the same thing does not happen to him. He tries to avert this danger by focusing the 28M on symbolic places, such as Granada or Seville. It is likely that the blue tide will penetrate as far as inland Andalusia, but its real extent is still a mystery.
If it were insufficient, the political scenario would be complicated for Feijóo and, secondly, for Moreno Bonilla himself. Especially if Ayuso managed to attract part of the Vox voters in Madrid. The greatest asset of the president of the Junta –in Andalusia and also in Genoa– for a leap into the state political arena is that, in his case, he is the only one who has demonstrated with facts that he can save the (military) toll of Santiago abascal.
In the event that the president of Madrid manages to do the same in two months, this differential factor will have vanished, forcing her to compete with Ayuso without guarantees of winning the game and in hostile territory, since the president of the Board lacks a media armada in his favor. The Andalusian media do not set the national political agenda. If this happens, it is most likely that he would let the train pass and remain in Andalusia.
A tactical withdrawal – the old formula of shuffling and waiting – however, is far from neutral. Southern politics, which in the last four years has been almost a living room bullfight for the president of the Board, is no longer an absolutely calm sea. Each time the waves are higher. And the law of gravity is infallible: what goes up very fast, sooner or later goes down.
San Telmo begins to feel the first serious political problems since December 2018. These months it is facing a (chronic) strike by primary care doctors and a probable sanction from Brussels for its law to legalize irregular irrigation in Doñana. He has a surprising lack of bench, which forces him to work with a very organic government council and distanced from society, and accuses the inevitable erosion of the calendar.
The transfer of votes obtained on 19J, largely caused by fear of the possibility that the ultramontanes would demand a coalition government in Andalusia, just as it happened in Castilla-León, seems something like the great chimera of the imminent 28M.
The polls do not go in this direction and Vox, at least in the South, seems to have been neutralized. Moreno Bonilla would like to continue installed in ecstasy and turn yesterday (of his victory) into a continuous present. He dreams of abolishing time and enjoying the metaphysical state of immobility. But, as Borges wrote on account of Plotinus' Enneads, this is an attribute of God. Dreaming of eternity is a vain game of weary hope.
