The mud splashes the final hours of an electoral campaign that will define an era in Spain, the only country in the European Union governed by a coalition of the old Social Democratic party with the left branch reactivated by protests against economic austerity ten years ago now.
The continuity of that coalition, supported in Parliament by a wide range of peripheral forces, is at stake in a context of relative economic prosperity in southern Europe, while Germany is entering a technical recession as a result of the war in Ukraine.
Next Sunday's elections will say –still not definitively–, to what extent this governmental alliance is in a position to continue leading the country, against a national-conservative bloc in the regrouping phase, today clearly hegemonic in Madrid, Castilla and Andalusia , and with fiefdom in Galicia. In that fight the mud has appeared. The old mud of clientelism.
Isolated cases that attract attention in a country with a very secure electoral system. Several socialist candidates have been arrested in the last hours by the Civil Guard for the alleged purchase of votes by mail in two municipalities in southern Spain. At press time, the arrests had taken place in Mójacar, a tourist town on the Almeria coast, and in the small Murcian town of Albudeite. In Mójacar, the PSOE candidacy was presented in public by the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, who spends his summers in the town. Bolaños has had a low profile in the campaign since the incident on May 2, in which the head of protocol for the Community of Madrid prevented him from entering the authorities' rostrum.
Arrests in two locations. In Spain there are 8,131. municipalities. Both cases would surely have had a lower informative rank if they were not framed by the larger-scale vote-buying plot detected in Melilla, a network in which the Coalición por Melilla formation, which receives part of the Muslim vote in the autonomous city, appears to be involved. Local people in charge of the Popular Party in Melilla have denied that they had come into contact with the plot, according to some information that cited police sources. The requirement of the DNI to vote has stopped 8,000 ballots under suspicion in Melilla. It is not a minor number.
Coalition with Melilla held talks a few months ago with the Turia Agreement platform, coordinator of regional parties, articulated by Íñigo Errejón (Más País), which is part of Sumar. This approximation was criticized from Podemos, which recalled that the leader of the Melilla group, Mustafá Aberchán, was already sentenced for buying votes in the 2008 Senate elections. The aforementioned coalition is not finally part of Sumar.
The PSOE has reacted to the arrests with the expulsion of the suspects and with various complaints about similar practices in the PP. No militant of that party has been arrested for such reason so far. Yesterday was not a good day for the Socialist Party. The number two of his organization in Andalusia, Noel García, is being investigated for the illegal detention and kidnapping of a socialist councilor from the Maracena (Granada) town hall, last February. Urban background. Avalanche of lurid cases when there are 72 hours left for the vote. Temptations to challenge the credibility of the entire electoral process.
MEP Esteban González Pons, deputy secretary general of the PP, spoke on Thursday night of the existence of a "generalized plot" to buy votes, for which he blamed the PSOE and in which President Pedro Sánchez was implicated. Very serious accusation that yesterday was not seconded by the party leader. Alberto Núñez Feijóo asked the PSOE for explanations, but avoided joining the Pons theorem. Feijóo called to trust the Spanish electoral system and to vote
Sánchez accused the PP last night of wanting to destroy the end of the campaign. "The right is not going to stop insulting, disqualifying and muddying the remainder of the campaign," said the president.
