“The right wins the Mediterranean”. That was the main headline of the Politics section of La Vanguardia on May 29, leading the information on the municipal and regional elections. He might seem like an incomplete headline, but he pointed out a substantive fact: the reconquest of Eastern Spain, which José María Aznar has always considered crucial for the establishment of a lasting political hegemony of the right.
Maps. After the absolute majority in Andalusia and assured Murcia, the victory of the PP in the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands and Aragon paints all of Spain bathed or influenced by the Mediterranean Sea blue, with the sole and lasting exception of Catalonia.
The conquest of the Mediterranean is the great qualitative leap of the Spanish right on May 28. The PP currently has the largest territorial power base it has ever had, since neither Aznar nor Mariano Rajoy managed to gain control of Andalusia. Rajoy was ready in March 2012, but Javier Arenas punctured at the last moment. As we have been stressing for weeks, the Valencian Community is today the political epicenter of Spain.
In Murcia, the PP is missing two deputies to reach an absolute majority. He needs Vox, but his negotiating position is not fragile. In the Balearic Islands, the popular ones have one more deputy than the entire left (26 to 25) and can negotiate with Vox with a certain margin. They have been given the presidency of the Balearic Parliament, a position that has fallen to the deputy Gabriel Le Senne, a name that could appear in a random novel by Patrick Modiano, but which actually corresponds to an archetypal character of old Spanish reactionaryism. "Women are more belligerent because they lack a penis," he has written on social networks. While waiting to see how the Balearic government is formed, Vox has imposed a programmatic framework that can cause tensions in the linguistic field.
In Aragon, the popular ones could count on the support of the only deputy from the Aragonese Regionalist Party, reducing the pressure of Vox. In order to govern the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón has to go through the box office of the extreme right. It is in the Valencian Community where Vox has the greatest pressure capacity and all of Spain already has news of it. The PP has won the Mediterranean, but it must pay a price, giving Vox a strong role in Valencia and the Balearic Islands, communities where Catalan is spoken in the Valencian and Balearic variants. Linguistic unit that centuries ago received the name of Limousin.
Last week, the Valencia pact got out of hand. They balanced it on Saturday by voting for the socialist Jaume Collboni as mayor of Barcelona and now they are threatening Vox with repeating the elections in Extremadura if it does not facilitate the enthronement of María Guardiola, who came second behind the PSOE, by a narrow margin. The PP gives in to the extreme right in the Mediterranean and tries to make up for it in Extremadura with a vivacious candidate who attracts the attention of the press: a right-wing lady who speaks as if she were from the left. María Guardiola's speech highlights the surrender of Carlos Mazón and Marga Prohens.
Are we facing a subtle Machiavellian game on Calle Génova or a sum of improvisations? Half and half.
