After linking two electoral campaigns, the main parties, PSOE and PP, reach the end of the marathon with hardly any breath. The popular ones start as favorites in the contest, but this last week they have shown signs of fatigue. The PSOE tries to reverse the polls, appealing to the comeback and to mobilize an electorate that turned its back on it in the last municipal and regional elections.
The PP has taken the initiative and the singing voice in almost the entire campaign, but in the last week it has accumulated some major errors and, although it remains to be seen whether these setbacks will end up taking their toll at the polls, they have sown confusion in the electorate.
The decision of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, winner of the only television face-to-face, to delete himself from the debate on RTVE, which had a notable audience, gave PSOE, Sumar and Vox free rein to elaborate on the absent leader of the PP. The president of the ultra party, Santiago Abascal, had the space to spread his electoral program under the criticism of the tandem formed by Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz.
Neither has Feijóo benefited in this final stretch from the different versions that he has offered these days about his relationship with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado. The leader of the PP has tried to avoid criticism for his friendship, in the 90s, with the drug trafficker. He first assured that when he met him he did not know what he did because "before there was neither Google nor the Internet." Yesterday, he acknowledged in an interview at Cope that when the two were photographed on a yacht, Dorado “was a smuggler. Smuggler, never a drug dealer."
This confused strategy is not only attributable to the leadership of Genoa. Yesterday in Vitoria, the PP agreed with Bildu –the first force in the city– the distribution of the presidency of the municipal commissions of the City Council, leaving out the PSE and the PNV. The reaction was immediate. Those with the motto “Que te vote Txapote” allies of the “filoetarra” party. Bad business one day before the elections, especially since the popular leader in the interview published this week in La Vanguardia did not want to censor this controversial phrase with which they attack Pedro Sánchez.
The agreement between PP and Bildu was in force for a few hours, and seeing the controversy generated, the popular decided yesterday to take a step back.
The Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies (FAES), chaired by former Prime Minister José María Aznar and linked to the PP, has also contributed to this strange end to the campaign. He published an editorial in which Yolanda Díaz is branded as "a hastily made neo-communist costume from Dior scraps and mediocre self-help literature." Some comments that she received the rejection for "macho" from the Sumar bench.
In the PSOE they do not take anything for lost. In Ferraz they assure that Feijóo will not be able to join Vox and they propose different scenarios in which they do not rule out that Pedro Sánchez could re-edit the government.
Aware that the socialists have been more penalized by the pacts with EH Bildu and ERC than the popular ones by the agreements in town halls and autonomies with Vox, Sánchez accused Feijóo yesterday of using the "scarecrow" of holding a possible referendum in Catalonia and the Basque Country to scare his voters. A claim by the Republicans and the Abertzales in this electoral campaign. "It does not fall within the Spanish Constitution or any Constitution in the world," he assured.
On the last day of the campaign, the socialist leader also claimed a large majority to govern with the formation of Yolanda Díaz and thus not have to negotiate laws with "15 parties" as in this legislature.
The future of Sánchez and Díaz is linked, like that of Feijóo and Abascal. The struggle to be the third force between Sumar and Vox may end up deciding the post-electoral pacts, if in the end there is no clear winner, but the useful vote grips the electoral results of these two formations.
The same is true of the pro-independence and regionalist parties, which have had a difficult time raising their heads during this campaign that has recovered the old bipartisan tendencies. In Catalonia, the fight for second and third place is being disputed by ERC and Junts, who want to maintain influence in Madrid, although the results that the popular Catalans can obtain remain to be seen, since some polls place them ahead of the two pro-independence forces.
Tomorrow the outcome will be known and it will be known who will have the governance of Spain in hand, if there is no blockade.
