Galicia is “a mythical country, much more than what the Galicians themselves imagine,” wrote Gabriel García Márquez. Today's elections have been placed at the height of the letters of the Colombian teacher, who claimed his status as Galician, more or less remote, through his grandmother from Aracataca. They are pure legend.
At stake is the maximum perpetuation of the PP in the Xunta, through Alfonso Rueda and the remote control of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, by surpassing its historical mark of 15 consecutive years, those of Manuel Fraga and those of Feijóo in person and by delegation . Or nationalist science fiction, the conquest of the presidency by a sovereigntist force, Ana Pontón's BNG. It would be the materialization of much more than a utopia, a fact that many of the most irreducible nationalists thought they would not see in her life, not even as a plausible hypothesis.
In addition to “Watching it rain in Galicia” that Gabo published in El País, there is a gem from another great Latin American pen, that of Eduardo Galeano, from Uruguay, the State, not counting Andorra and Spain, with the highest proportion of Galician blood. As a result of his exile in Catalonia, Galeano wrote the story El Río del Olvido, in which he exalted Galicia as a country of memory, since the Galicians “neither when leaving, nor when they were there, nor when they returned: they had never forgotten anything.” . Today the ballot boxes overflow with memory.
Not counting the European referendum of 2005, this is the first time that there have been elections in February in Galicia since those of 1936, the last of the Second Republic and those in which nationalism obtained its first victory. Its patriarch, Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, was the most voted in the province of Pontevedra, within the Popular Front.
The Spanish victory of the alliance of the Azaña Republicans, the PSOE, the PCE, and, among others, the Galeguista Party of Castelao, in Catalonia through the Front d'Esquerres, allowed the 28th of June, on the eve of the military coup, the plebiscite on the status of autonomy of Galicia. All the processing was missing in Madrid, so it is unknown when the elections would have been held, had the insurrection been quelled and the Civil War avoided. Whether it was in 1938 or whenever, Castelao appears in the eyes of historiography as a potential favorite. No nationalist had options again, not even Xosé Manuel Beiras, the first great leader of the BNG, until Pontón's. Only in counting can they be measured. For now, “there are some, there are some.”
The Popular Front won in Galicia in the Atlantic provinces, while the right won in Ourense and the center, in Lugo. The Galician electoral geography is granitic. After Franco's death, the 1936 plebiscite, together with a social mobilization only surpassed by the Prestige, led to recognition as a historical nationality. The autonomy ended up being founded by the former minister of the Fraga dictatorship, first with remote control from Madrid. Fraga can be caricatured as a post-Francoist dressed as a bagpiper, although it is worth not forgetting that he exceeded 50% of the votes three times. His old-age Galicianism has recently increased in comparison to Feijóo.
In the first regional elections, in 1981, the Popular Party of Fraga, steeped in regionalism, took the Galician fiefdom from the UCD. But the best kept secret in current Spanish politics is that Galicia is no longer a fiefdom of the PP. Since 2014, the center-left has won in European, municipal and general elections, except in 2016. Even in July, although Feijóo won in seats due to the overrepresentation of Lugo and Ourense, PSOE, Sumar and BNG together exceeded 50% in Galicia.
The fiefdom is the which is the great popular bastion throughout the State.
The key today lies in whether this model is maintained or if the regional elections are harmonized with the other processes, with a progressive electoral majority. By itself it does not guarantee change, since the system greatly favors the PP. But it would open the scenario in which a woman from a BNG born in 1982 as anti-system can be president. Galicia is torn between the Macondo of Gabo's One Hundred Years of Solitude, in which time is circular, popular in this case, and Galeano's Uruguay of 2004, when the left took over the fiefdom in which white and red alternated. Electoral mythology in its purest form.
